Financial Markets and Economy
When Bank Capital Standards Aren't Actually That Standard (Bloomberg)
Fifty shades of banking regulation might not sound very titillating. Perhaps it should be.
Coups Don't Depress Economic Growth (Bloomberg View)
As the chaos in Turkey is starting to clear, investors are asking what the failed coup might mean for the country’s economic future. The news stories show many conflicting elements in play, and right now it is hard to make specific verifiable claims about what the country can expect. We can, however, turn to the broader historical record, and that suggests failed coup attempts against democratic governments don’t much lower subsequent rates of economic growth in those countries.
The No. 1 thing companies are complaining about right now (Business Insider)
Second quarter earnings season kicked off (unofficially) last Monday with Alcoa reporting, and that means we're going to be hearing a lot from the largest companies in the US over the next two weeks.
Traders Reviving Fed Rate-Rise Bets Put a Floor Under the Dollar (Bloomberg)
Traders boosted bets of an increase in U.S. borrowing costs this year, helping a gauge of the dollar hold its advance after climbing to a one-week high on Friday.
No haven bid for gold after failed Turkey coup attempt (Market Watch)
Gold futures slumped Monday as a renewed push higher by stocks and the return of relative calm after a failed weekend coup in Turkey lowered haven demand for precious metals.
Gold’s price drop follows a 2.3% retreat last week. It was the yellow metal’s first weekly loss in almost two months as record-high U.S. stocks and the Bank of England’s pass, for now, on cutting interest rates lured investors into riskier markets away from nonyielding gold.
Bank of America profit falls 19.4 percent as provisions rise (Reuters)
Bank of America Corp, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, reported a 19.4 percent fall in quarterly profit on Monday as it set aside more money to cover potential bad loans and earned less on its loans.
Dollar up on failed Turkey coup; SoftBank's ARM bid boosts shares (Reuters)
The dollar strengthened against the yen on Monday as investors unwound safety trades after a failed coup in Turkey, while SoftBank Group's $32 billion deal to buy British chip designer ARM Holdings lifted European equities.
Oil Prices Steady but Products Glut Looms (Wall Street Journal)
Oil prices were steady on Monday, supported by favorable growth data reported by the U.S. and China, but a looming glut of oil products could put pressure on the market, analysts said.
Silver is getting smoked (Business Insider)
Precious metal prices are sliding on Monday after the failure of Turkey's attempted military coup.
The Japanese yen is tumbling again (Business Insider)
The Japanese yen is weaker during an otherwise quiet morning.
Dollar trades mixed, Turkish lira and euro rise as coup jitters subside (Market Watch)
A broad measure of the U.S. dollar rose modestly on Monday, owed largely to the greenback’s advance against the Japanese yen as relative calm returned to the currency market after a failed weekend coup in Turkey.
9 million barrels of oil are being hoarded on tankers in the North Sea (Oilprice.com)
Nine tankers carrying as much as nine million barrels of crude are floating in the North Sea as traders can’t afford to sell the crude they have—at least not profitably enough.
For a Few Days, Essex Town Becomes Hub of Global Metals Market (Bloomberg)
It may be only about 40 miles from the City of London, but the ancient market town of Chelmsford has never been counted as a global financial center.
ExxonMobil Corp has made a bid worth at least $2.2 billion for Papua New Guinea-focused InterOil Corp, winning the support of InterOil and topping an offer from Oil Search Ltd, Oil Search said on Monday.
ExxonMobil's move pits it against French giant Total SA, which is backing Oil Search's offer with an agreement to buy part of InterOil's stake in the potentially lucrative Elk-Antelope gas field.
Speaking with trading and investment professionals, particularly in the quant world, I've been struck by the fact that the models they employ to guide their decisions are not the kind of models we typically read about in trading texts. There are no technical indicators or chart patterns in their inputs. Nor are there any inputs pertaining to company earnings, economic growth, upcoming central bank meetings, or geopolitical events.
Politics
A Globe-Trotting Billionaire Defends Trump's Trade Policy (Bloomberg Politics)
The business community hasn't exactly unified behind Donald Trump. Many corporate honchos who normally support Republican candidates are alarmed at his economic plans, which include scrapping trade agreements and punishing companies that shift jobs abroad. Even before Trump finished delivering a major speech on trade policy in Pennsylvania last month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was targeting him with a torrent of criticism on social media.
Erdogan's Opportunity After the Coup (Bloomberg View)
It’s hard to feel great sympathy for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president who just survived a coup attempt. A decade ago, Erdogan seemed to have found the magic formula to combine Western liberal democracy with Islamic faith. But in recent years, he has grown increasingly authoritarian: jailing enemies, muzzling the media, renewing war against Kurdish nationalists, and vying to alter the constitution to stay in office indefinitely.
Technology
Beware of Robots Telling You How to Vote (Bloomberg View)
Voting is partially a social endeavor, in which people consider the opinions of others when making up their own minds. Increasingly, though, they're being influenced by an inhuman force: software robots specifically designed to deceive them.
Health and Life Sciences
Imbalance Of Gut Bacteria Linked To Elevated Risk For Diabetes (Forbes)
New data from researchers at the University of Copenhagen provides stronger evidence linking certain bacteria that populate our intestinal tract with a higher risk for developing insulin resistance, ultimately a precursor to developing diabetes.
What Can't Medical Marijuana Do? (The Atlantic)
Things aren’t going so hot in the public-health war against the opioid epidemic that is sweeping America right now. Deaths from opioid overdoses hit an all-time high in 2014, the latest year for which there’s official data, and there isn’t much reason to believe the epidemic will be over any time soon. New legislation provides for a range of policy options for addressing the epidemic, but all will likely be woefully underfunded.
A new drug that could save the US billions just got one step closer to an approval (Business Insider)
A US Food and Drug Administration advisory committee just gave a critical recommendation for a version of Humira, the blockbuster arthritis drug made by AbbVie that brought in $14 billion in sales in 2015.
Life on the Home Planet
Algae May Be Melting the Greenland Ice Sheet (Nature)
Researchers are fanning out across the Greenland ice sheet this month to explore a crucial, but overlooked, influence on its future: red, green and brown-coloured algal blooms. These darken the snow and ice, causing it to absorb more sunlight and melt faster.
