Financial Markets and Economy
There’s good news to be found in the global economy, if you know where to look (Quartz)
It sure doesn’t look good. Trump. Brexit. Racial killings in the US, and the murder of police officers in apparent retribution. Another horrific outrage in France. Chinese maritime aggression. Syria.
When Bank Capital Standards Aren't Actually That Standard (Bloomberg)
Fifty shades of banking regulation might not sound very titillating. Perhaps it should be.
A Little-Noticed Kink in Smart-Beta ETFs Might Blindside Buyers (Bloomberg)
Turns out, one of the hottest parts of the $2.3 trillion ETF industry has a little-noticed quirk with the potential to blindside users.
Top Bond Funds Win by Harnessing Most Dangerous Part of Market (Bloomberg)
In some ways, the managers of the Treasury market’s two best-performing mutual funds couldn’t take a more different approach.
Small-cap stocks are on a roll—but proceed with caution (Market Watch)
Shaking off the underperformance of the past few years, small stocks are finally catching up with their larger counterparts.
By This Measure, Homeownership in the U.S. Has Never Been More Valuable (Bloomberg)
The value of owning a home in the U.S. has never been greater, at least according to one figure buried in a monthly Commerce Department report.
Apple Sneaks Back to 100 Per Share (Afraid to Trade)
If you haven’t been watching, Apple quietly traded back to the $100 per share level, setting up a key pivot and trading opportunity.
Active Managers Stumble Again as Tools Like Buybacks Lose Luster (Bloomberg)
Once-reliable tools for active managers are being sapped of their potency by an aging bull market, sending mutual funds to some of their worst relative returns in history.
How Slow Will China Go? (Project Syndicate)
China’s economic performance over the last few decades has been outstanding. Despite possessing very different institutions than those seen in the advanced economies, no doubt a result of its communist system, China managed to achieve 8.7% average annual per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 2015. The key has been its unique strategy of “crossing the river by feeling the stones,” whereby it has gradually tested, implemented, and adjusted reforms and growth-enhancing policies.
Brexit Has Worsened The Outlook For Global Economic Growth (Forbes)
The economic implications of Brexit continue to rear their ugly head: In a global economic outlook released Tuesday morning, the International Monetary Fund said not only that it is slashing its 2016 and 2017 global growth forecast in light of the referendum, but that had the vote gone the other way, it would have raised the 2017 forecast.
Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – Summer Wind (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
Funny but most people these days are also suckers for bad news too, especially news that spells doom and gloom and grim warnings about the imminent decline of the world as we know it. There are web sites that seem to specialize in it.
BofA Finds Something Odd: With The S&P At Record Highs, Traders Have Never Been More Nervous (Zero Hedge)
A strange paradox emerges when flipping though the latest BofA Fund Managers' Survey: with the S&P trading at all time highs, it appears that nobody trusts this market. Two specific indicators point to this. The first one is that as BofA's Michael Harnett points out, July cash level are now at 5.8%, up from 5.7% in June and the highest since Nov’01.
10 Habits of Highly Profitable Traders (New Trader U)
Create asymmetry in your trading by using stop losses. Profitable trading only happens by making more money than you lose. Big losses are the main cause of not being profitable. Eliminate big losses by cutting your loss when proven wrong.
Politics
Republicans' Pity Party in Cleveland (Bloomberg View)
"We're at a crossroads right now," former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said last September. "Are we going to take the Reagan approach, the hopeful optimistic approach, the approach that says that, you come to our country legally, you pursue your dreams with a vengeance, you create opportunities for all of us? Or the Donald Trump approach? The approach that says that everything is bad, that everything is coming to an end?"
For the first time in decades, the Republican National Convention that opened Monday may be a scene of an all-out political battle. The Democratic convention may see conflict too, although Bernie Sanders’ recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton makes that possibility less likely. The growing fissures in the major parties are causing widespread anxiety, and they do bring with them the risks of incivility, political violence, and other ugly turns in American politics.
Technology
Experience A Virtual Trip To Mars In A School Bus (Popular Science)
Some folks at Lockheed Martin took a boring old school bus and gave it a bit of magic: they designed the cabin to be an immersive, full-rendered VR experience for kids to learn more about Mars while driving around city streets like normal.
Health and Life Sciences
People May Sense Single Photons (Scientific American)
People can detect flashes of light as feeble as a single photon, an experiment has demonstrated—a finding that seems to conclude a 70-year quest to test the limits of human vision.
Scientists create new thin material that mimics cell membranes (Phys)
Materials scientists have created a new material that performs like a cell membrane found in nature. Such a material has long been sought for applications as varied as water purification and drug delivery.
Life on the Home Planet
Summer-on-Steroids Kicks Off With Record Global Temperatures (Bloomberg)
Last month wasn’t just the hottest June on record—it continued the longest-ever streak of record-breaking months: 14.
The surprising reason why people who live in New York City are so smart (Business Insider)
The city most known for its iconic yellow cabs may actually be doing its greatest public service by giving people room to walk.
According to a new study published by Smart Growth America (SGA), cities that are more walkable tend to contain a higher proportion of college grads than cities that are built for cars over pedestrians, and New York City was voted the most walkable metro area in the US.
Turkey Will Pay a Price for Executing Traitors (Bloomberg View)
Cleaning up after a coup is dirty work. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will consider the death penalty for the plotters — of whom there may be thousands. That would certainly send a tough message to anyone who sees the near-miss coup as evidence that his democratically elected government is vulnerable.
