Financial Markets and Economy
Oil rig count rises for a 6th straight week (Business Insider)
The US oil rig count increased by seven to 381 this week, according to driller Baker Hughes.
Bond Traders Slow to Sell on Jobs Surge in Face of Patient Fed (Bloomberg)
The Federal Reserve’s patience is rubbing off on bond traders.
U.S. Companies Have Plenty of Confidence to Hire, If Not Invest (Bloomberg)
American employers were optimistic enough in the nations economic prospects to hire an unexpectedly large number of workers in July for a second month. So far, the same cant be said for their inclination to invest in updating their operations.
Wall Street is now bracing for its worst 2 years since the financial crisis (Business Insider)
It's official: Wall Street thinks earnings growth in 2016 will be negative.
For More Cities, Downtown Is a Center of Economic Strength (Wall Street Journal)
Theresa Lounsbery sets out from her apartment in this city’s blue-collar Lower Northeast section each workday. Her neighborhood, Oxford Circle, a district of 2 square miles, has been hammered by manufacturing’s long slide. Median household income in her immediate area is down more than 30% since 2000 to roughly $37,000.
S&P 500 Shakes Off Doldrums to End Week at Record on Jobs Report (Bloomberg)
Evidence the U.S. economy is churning out jobs salvaged the week for equities, sending the Nasdaq Composite Index to its first record close in a year and handing the S&P 500 Index its fifth weekly advance in six since the start of July.
Summer Lets Down Hedge Funds That Bet Big on a U.S. Gas Rally (Bloomberg)
Hedge funds are still feeling the burn of last months heat wave.
Insider Trading Isn’t What You See in the Movies (Bloomberg)
Insider trading has long captured the public imagination, featuring in headlines, television and movies ranging from Wall Street in 1987 to the more recent TV series Billions. It's thus worth asking: To what extent does all the drama correspond to what insider traders actually do?
Will rising rig counts lead to another rout in oil? (Market Watch)
There are plenty of reasons to worry about a glut of oil, but a summer rebound in the number of U.S. oil rigs might not be the most pressing.
Investors could see U.S. profit slide continue into third quarter (Reuters)
The U.S. profit recession may go on, dashing hopes of investors and business people who had been banking on a turnaround in the third quarter for companies that had been watching their profits shrink for the last year.
The debt market could get ugly (Business Insider)
Things haven't been pretty for energy companies that have a lot of debt. Low oil prices have pressured profits and led to skyrocketing defaults and an ugly state of affairs for energy debt.
Looking At Brazil’s Economic Fall From The Top (Think Progress)
The room went quiet once Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, received the envelope that held the much-awaited decision. Rio de Janeiro and Madrid were the finalists to host the largest sportings event on the planet, as Chicago and Tokyo had been eliminated in previous voting rounds. The stakes were high and the competition had been notoriously stiff. Even President Barack Obama had done some lobbying on behalf of his hometown, the first sitting U.S. president to do so.
Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – Where the Elite Meet To Cheat (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
As you may recall I said last month that we would probably be seeing 'better than expected' jobs reports from now until the election. The incumbent party wants to paint a pretty recovery picture quite badly.
Earnings beats are concealing bad results (Market Watch)
Investors shouldn’t be fooled by this season’s “better-than-expected” earnings—they are still pretty bad.
The Sobering Lesson of a Good Jobs Report (Bloomberg View)
The improvement in the U.S. labor market is certainly good news. It could soon become a headache, however, if it persists alongside disappointing economic growth.
The economy added 255,000 jobs in July, after adding 292,000 in June. Employment growth was weaker earlier in the year, and two solid months don’t make a trend — but even so, the labor market is in pretty good shape.
Apple just spent $200 million for more artificial intelligence (Business Insider)
Apple has bought Turi, a Seattle-based machine learning startup.
Investors have placed a one-way bet on Uber—which made us want to find a way to short it (Quartz)
In its first seven years of existence, Uber has irked cities, flouted regulators, and petrified whole industries. It has yet to make money but is worth a fifth more than BMW and almost a third more than General Motors, both the owners of tons of futuristic technology, tens of billions of dollars in capital equipment, and big profits. In recent deals resembling famous speculative bubbles, rich investors eager for a piece of this juggernaut have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into custom funds that provide exposure to Uber but no equity or financial disclosure.
Politics
Why Party Defections Matter (Bloomberg View)
It was treated as big news earlier this week when Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, along with a handful of other Republican figures, announced they would vote for Hillary Clinton. Whitman, who was a GOP candidate for governor of California in 2010, is a billionaire and will be raising money for Clinton. The other Republicans decamping are Richard Hanna, a New York congressman who is retiring, and at least three campaign operatives.
Hillary Clinton Tries to Win Over Black and Latino Voters (The Atlantic)
Hillary Clinton has pledged for months to pass comprehensive immigration reform within the first 100 days of taking office. In fact, she’s pledged that for years—The Washington Post noted recently that she promised new laws during her 2008 campaign against Barack Obama.
Technology
A Bike-Car Hybrid For Every Season (PSFK)
Bicycle share programs are starting to gain more momentum in cities as a popular alternative to crowded mass transit. However, bad weather quickly turns people away from cycling. Mikael Kjellman, a design engineer and avid cyclist, found a solution to this problem by creating his own version of a bike and car hybrid. Called the PodRide, the studded tires and waterproof fabric make it possible to bike despite icy roads and heavy snowfall.
This Power Generator Runs on Saltwater (Popular Science)
Gaze at the end of a river, where saltwater and freshwater meet. It may not look like anything, but new research suggests this could be a massive source of electricity.
Imagine a tub divided in half by a semi-permeable membrane. On one side of the membrane, the tub is filled with saltwater. On the other side, it is filled with freshwater.
Health and Life Sciences
Seeking Cures for Terrible Brain Diseases (Scientific American)
In the August Scientific American, Elena Cattaneo of the University of Milan outlines the key role that the Huntington’s gene may have played in evolutionary history. Beyond studying the gene’s evolution, Cattaneo researches stem cells that may aid in treating neurodegenerative disease. Watch a talk she gave on stem cells at The Brain Forum in Switzerland, in 2015.
Asthma pill 'promising' for people with severe symptoms (BBC)
An experimental pill could help adults with severe asthma, an early study in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal suggests.
Life on the Home Planet
Greenland Ice Melt Could Expose Hazardous Cold War Waste (Scientific American)
When the U.S. military abandoned Camp Century, a complex of tunnels dug into the ice of northwest Greenland, in the mid-1960s, they left behind thousands of tons of waste, including hazardous radioactive and chemical materials. They expected the detritus would be safely entombed in the ice sheet for tens of thousands of years, buried ever deeper under accumulating layers of snow and ice.
How sunflowers swing their ‘faces’ to the sun (Futurity)
Plant biologists have discovered how sunflowers use their internal circadian clock, acting on growth hormones, to follow the sun during the day as they grow.
