Financial Markets and Economy
IEA Sees Oil Market Rebalancing Despite Record Gulf Production (Bloomberg)
Global oil markets will continue to re-balance this year as a pick-up in demand from refiners absorbs record output from several Persian Gulf producers, the International Energy Agency predicted.
U.S. mutual funds boost own performance with unicorn mark-ups (Reuters)
Some U.S. mutual funds are boosting their performance with relatively big bets on private companies such as Uber and Pinterest, which they have been marking up at a rate far greater than the broad stock market.
U.S. Drillers Need $60 Oil to Stage Real Comeback, IEA Say (Bloomberg)
While shale drilling in the U.S. is on the rise again, prices need to climb nearer to $60 a barrel for U.S. producers to have a “substantial” boost in activity, the International Energy Agency said.
Why the only way is up for this weird market (Market Watch)
If you’re keeping one eye on the record-shattering action in Rio, and the other on this unprecedented market, you might be getting it exactly right.
The oil industry's massive supply and demand problem is about to get even worse (Business Insider)
Global demand for oil will slow at a greater rate than first thought in 2017, according to the latest oil market update from the International Energy Agency, intensifying the oil industry's supply and demand imbalance.
Brazil Is Still the Country of the Future (Bloomberg View)
Brazil, it is often and not quite fairly said, is the country of the future and always will be. As the Olympics focuses global attention on the country, it's worth exploring the various ways in which this maxim is — and may not be — true.
Here's proof that Saudi Arabia doesn't care about killing oil prices — only the competition (Business Insider)
There is proof that Saudi Arabia is more interested in trying to kill competition in the oil industry at the expense of cratering oil prices — its oil production just hit a record high.
Gold Price Surge Seen Cutting India’s Demand This Year, World Gold Council Says (Bloomberg)
A rally in gold prices since the start of 2016 will reduce purchases in India, the world’s second-biggest consumer, trimming import prospects amid high inventories, according to the World Gold Council.
There's a huge sign of a looming Brexit jobs disaster (Business Insider)
Britain was just given a huge sign that there could be a disaster in the jobs market, thanks to Brexit — Page Group, one of the UK's biggest recruitment agencies, is cutting staff in the UK.
The pound tumbles below $1.30 (Business Insider)
The pound is at a 1-month low against the dollar after falling in early trade on Thursday.
Dollar firms, New Zealand’s currency rises after milder rate cut (Market Watch)
The U.S. dollar rose slightly on Thursday, a day after losses against major rivals, as the market adjusted to a view that the Federal Reserve could leave interest rates unchanged for the rest of the year.
The Dirty Little Secret of Finance: Asymmetric Information (Bloomberg View)
There’s a very deep, important concept in economics that gets way too little attention from the public (and possibly from economists themselves). This is the idea of asymmetric information. The concept has been around for decades, and research about it has won Nobel prizes, but neither the profession nor the public has ever put it at the center of our understanding of markets . That should change.
Noble Group Posts Loss as New Leaders Focus on Restructuring (Bloomberg)
Noble Group Ltd. lost money in the second quarter and net debt increased as the embattled commodities trader withdraws from some markets in an attempt to conserve cash and reverse a two-year collapse in its shares.
Bite on these three market bargains instead of pricey FANG stocks (Market Watch)
The best internet companies — Facebook, Amazon.com, Netflix, and Google — have become such popular stock investments they now even have their own acronym: FANG.
IBM's Watson won Jeopardy, but can it win business from banks? (Reuters)
International Business Machines Corp is in an unusual fix in telling big U.S. banks they can use its Watson software of Jeopardy-winning fame as a cost-saving solution: bankers say they like it, but cannot afford it.
IBM is in a good company.
No easy choices for investors looking to buck the herd with contrarian funds (Investment News)
Most investors consider themselves to be contrarians, just as most people think of themselves as above-average drivers, moderate voters and sensible shoppers.
Politics
Republicans Need to Get Ready for the Trump Aftershock (The Atlantic)
This week’s cascade of Republican defections from Donald Trump has plunged the GOP into the deepest general-election divide over its presidential nominee in more than 50 years.
Hillary Clinton is set to rip into Donald Trump's new economic vision in a major speech (Business Insider)
Hillary Clinton will deliver a major economic speech on Thursday in Michigan in which she will chastise new tax-cut proposals from Donald Trump while labeling his plan as one that only benefits the ultra-wealthy.
Technology
How Cloud Computing Helps The US Cycling Team (PSFK)
In the London Olympics of 2012, the US Cycling Women’s trio was 5.676 seconds shy of snatching the gold from the Great Britain contenders (who broke the world record). This year, the US team is leaving nothing to chance by upgrading their tools, using the best technology available in the cloud computing space.
Augmented Reality Games Like Pokémon Go Need a Code of Ethics—Now (Wired)
The world is full of Pokémon now. This should not be cause for moral panic, but celebration. Contrary to a few handwringing editorials and Twitter hot takes, Pokémon Go is not a triumph of the normalization of violence, the apotheosis of cell-phone zombification, or even gamification gone awry. Amid the neo-Luddite contrarianism, a shining truth rises above all the (Magi-)carping: Pokémon Go comes in peace. But it raises profound questions about ethics in this new overlaid world of augmented reality.
Health and Life Sciences
Best look yet at how our brain's sewage system flushes out waste (New Scientist)
This is how you clear your mind. Researchers have had the best look yet at microscopic vessels that take waste away from nerve cells in the brain.
The first clear picture of this network, called the glymphatic system, came in 2012 from experiments in mice.
The Anger of Cancer (NY Times)
While dealing with lung cancer, my friend Nancy K. Miller seethed in her blog at pharmaceutical advertisements and hospital commercials that bombard us daily with pictures of joyous cancer patients supported by doting intimates. These jubilant characters have nothing to do with the frustrated people we know who periodically erupt in righteous indignation. I often must remind myself that anger needs to be understood as the flip side of the roiling fear that cancer instills in patients and also in caregivers.
Life on the Home Planet
Countdown to the end of polio in Africa (BBC)
It has been 28 years in the making.
When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was formed in 1988, about 350,000 children were getting infected with wild polio virus every year worldwide.
Seafloor Miners Poised to Cut into an Invisible Frontier (Scientific American)
People have been clawing valuable minerals like iron and gold out of the ground for millennia. And for much of the stuff that touches our lives today—from the europium, terbium and yttrium that help illuminate the screen you are reading to the copper in the wires that power it—we increasingly depend on elements from the depths of the Earth. But finding new deposits gets harder every year and mines are steadily growing larger, more expensive and more environmentally destructive.
