Financial Markets and Economy
U.S. Rig Counts Jump in Wake of OPEC’s Production Accord: Chart (Bloomberg)
U.S. oil and gas producers increased drilling activity the most since April 2014 after OPEC agreed to its first production cut in eight years last month.
Oil Climbs as Saudis Show Commitment to Cut Output Before Talks (Bloomberg)
Oil advanced as Saudi Arabia was said to have informed its customers it will stand by its commitment to cut production before OPEC meets with producers from outside the group to discuss reductions.
Dollar Stalls Near Weekly High, Looking Toward FOMC Decision (Bloomberg)
The dollar is trading near its best level of the week as a rise in dollar-yen to a 10-month high is underpinned by still-robust U.S. Treasury yields and a stock market that refuses to say “enough.”
Venezuela Seizes Millions of Toys, Accuses Importer of Hoarding (Bloomberg)
Venezuela price regulators on Friday seized almost 4 million toys from warehouses around greater Caracas and said they’d distribute them to low income children ahead of the Christmas holiday.
S&P 500 Rises for Sixth Day, Hits Another Record; Drug Stocks Up (Bloomberg)
Gains in consumer staples stocks, health-care companies and tech firms sent U.S. equities higher for a sixth day as the S&P 500 Index, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell 2000 Index all closed at records Friday.
More Stocks Joining Trump Rally Than Any Time Since 2013: Chart (Bloomberg)
Donald Trump’s election has fueled one of the broadest rallies in history as the number of stocks making new highs on the New York Stock Exchange climbed to the highest on a closing basis since May 2013.
Stocks have only been this expensive during the crash of 1929, the tech bubble, and the financial crisis (Business Insider)
Stocks are getting a bit pricey.
All three major indexes break though their all-time highs on a seemingly daily basis, and this has pushed earnings multiples higher and higher.
STOCKS HIT ALL-TIME HIGHS: Here's what you need to know (Business Insider)
Stocks continued to be seemingly unstoppable on Friday as the major indexes climbed to new highs again. At least one of the major indexes closed every day this week at a record.
Good to be on Trump blacklist. Stocks he bashed soar (CNN Money)
The stocks of 10 U.S. companies that Donald Trump has taken jabs at during the campaign and after are up, on average, 9% since Election Day. The S&P 500 is up 5% during the same time frame.
China isn't the only reason Americans are losing manufacturing jobs (Business Insider)
Protectionism has grown quite popular as American workers continue to worry about losing jobs to other countries.
Icahn Cheers Trump EPA Pick Amid Calls for Fuel-Rule Revamp (Bloomberg)
Six weeks before he becomes U.S. president, Donald Trump is already disrupting an obscure, $15 billion corner of the world’s biggest fuel market, drawing cheers from long-time supporter and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn.
Dollar Breaks 115 Yen on Way to Best Run of Gains in Two Years (Bloomberg)
The dollar climbed to the highest level in 10 months against the yen as its best run since 2014 showed little signs of abating.
Investors Flood Into European Financial ETF by Record Amount After Draghi's Non-Taper Taper (Bloomberg)
A U.S.-listed exchange-traded fund that owns Europe's largest financial firms saw investors rush in at a record pace on Thursday, after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi outlined tweaks to the central bank's asset purchasing program.
Raging Stocks, Fed Fears Trigger ‘Dislocation’ in Global Markets (Bloomberg)
The Trump rally in stocks and expected interest rate increase at the Federal Reserve meeting next week is whipsawing traders in most asset classes who are searching for signs of where the markets are headed.
So far, Obamacare isn't hurting the economy or killing jobs (CNN Money)
"The first thing we have to do is pry the enormous weight of Obamacare off the national economy," Vice President-elect Mike Pence said on ABC News on Sunday. "It's all going to begin right out of the gate by repealing this disastrous policy that's been killing jobs."
GOLDMAN SACHS: We're bullish on these 3 Asian economies (Business Insider)
Emerging economies were once seen as being all set to take over the world.
Gradually, the optimism withered as the global economy tanked, the commodities boom turned into a bust, and institutional weaknesses of emerging economies became exposed for all to see.
Stocks close at record as S&P 500 logs longest win streak since 2014 (Market Watch)
U.S. stocks closed at a record on Friday with the S&P 500 notching its best winning streak since June 2014 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average extending gains for a fifth week.
Where A Strong Dollar Will Do The Most Damage (Stratfor)
Forecasting the future of currencies is a notoriously risky business. Forces may push them in a particular direction, as is currently the case with the dollar, but in the ever-changing environment of the foreign exchange market, events anywhere in the world, at any point in time, can alter their course.
Bond funds losing money in roughest stretch since ‘taper tantrum’ of 2013 (Market Watch)
During the past six weeks, investors have pulled $34 billion from global bond funds, according to a weekly fund-flows report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. That’s the longest run of declines since the so-called bond-market “taper tantrum.”
Cash Is No Longer King: The Phasing Out Of Physical Money Has Begun (TheAntiMedia.org)
As physical currency around the world is increasingly phased out, the era where “cash is king” seems to be coming to an end. Countries like India and South Korea have chosen to limit access to physical money by law, and others are beginning to test digital blockchains for their central banks.
Companies
Starbucks Is Raising the Prices of Some of Your Fave Drinks and Snacks (Brit+Co)
It’s been a bumpy few weeks for Starbucks — first finding themselves embroiled in their annual red holiday cup brouhaha, then getting caught up in post-election drama — and we have even more news that you likely won’t be pleased about.
Starbucks courts millennials with $10 coffee at new Reserve bars (Reuters)
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp Chief Executive and co-founder Howard Schultz's plan to build a new prestige brand is a bet that moving upscale can raise the profile of the world's largest coffee brand with millennials like Megan Sauers.
Dunkin Donuts Recruits Coke to Take on Starbucks' Bottled Coffee Empire (Inc)
Dunkin' Donuts is teaming up with Coca-Cola to take on Starbucks in a battle to win the bottled coffee business.
To Invest In The Future Of Coffee, Starbucks Turns To The Capital Markets (Forbes)
Consumers these days seem to have an insatiable thirst for coffee. In just the next five years, global demand for coffee will increase 25 percent, according to the International Coffee Organization.
Starbucks is spending millions of dollars to fix its 'basic' image problem (Business Insider)
Starbucks will go down in history books as the brand that made it OK to charge more than $2 for a cup of coffee. But its reputation as a higher-end coffee shop has faded — and that has the company worried.
JCPenney, Kohl's, Macy's and Sears sued over misleading prices (CNN Money)
The Los Angeles city attorney is suing four major retailers over claims that they deliberately inflated the original price on some items that misled customers into thinking they were getting a better deal.
McDonald’s Is Buying $12,000 Espresso Makers for All of Its U.S. Restaurants (Money)
The fast food chain is reintroducing its coffee shop, the McCafé, in 2017, with improvements like getting beans from sustainable sources, Bloomberg reported.
Technology
If you still own a Note 7, Samsung is going to make it really hard for you to charge it (CNN News)
Samsung will release a software update starting on December 19 that prevents all remaining Galaxy Note 7 smartphones from charging.
The software update will "eliminate their ability to work as mobile devices," Samsung said in a statement Friday.
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Spinn coffee thinks it’s better than pods, but who is really above pods? (The Verge)
Pod tech creates both the worst and most encouraging gadgets. Tortilla pods? Dumb, but probably useful. Cookie pods? Insulting, but likely tasty. We all know that pod tech has its roots in the OG of pod machines: Nespresso.
AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint willing to kill off Galaxy Note 7 (CNet)
AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are working with Samsung to kill off your Galaxy Note 7. But they're going to let you enjoy Christmas first.
Google starts using HTML5 by default instead of Flash for some Chrome users (Venture Beat)
Google has started disabling Flash and displaying HTML5 content instead on certain websites for a small number of people using its Chrome browser. People can still explicitly permit Flash to load on the affected sites — which are the top 10 that use Flash.
The inventor of Bluetooth on where wireless is going next (Engadget)
Bluetooth has come a long way. It's gone from being a frustrating standard that only businesspeople used for mobile headsets to something that millions rely on daily for wireless speakers and headphones, syncing with wearables and more.
Oculus releases developer preview of Carmel WebVR product (Tech Crunch)
There are still quite a lot of unknowns when it comes to WebVR but Oculus is looking to start shedding some of the mystery through its own browser. Today, the company launched the Carmel Developer Preview, giving devs some early tools and APIs to begin building and testing content for the web on Oculus headsets.
Politics
Senate Democrats Give Up On Coal Miner Health Benefits As Government Shutdown Looms (The Huffington Post)
Coal-state Senate Democrats on Friday appeared to back off their threat to shut down the government over health benefits for retired coal miners after an impasse with Republicans.
Donald Trump's transition team has asked the Energy Department for a list of people who worked on policies designed to address climate change under Barack Obama, Bloomberg reports.
Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn Is Leading Candidate for Top White House Economic Post (The Wall Street Journal)
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary Cohn is the leading candidate to serve as director of the White House National Economic Council, two Trump transition advisers said Friday, putting alums of the prominent Wall Street investment bank into the top two economic jobs of the new administration.
Trump Admits His Threat To Lock Up Clinton Was Just For Show (The Huffington Post)
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday acknowledged his threat to imprison Hillary Clinton for using a private email server during her time as secretary of state was simply an appeal to win voters.
Donald Trump calls Nicola Sturgeon for 'brief introductory' talk (The Guardian)
Donald Trump and Nicola Sturgeon have spoken for the first time since the US election. The president-elect called Scotland’s first minister on Friday for what aides described as “a brief introductory conversation”.
Barack Obama orders 'full review' of possible Russian hacking in US election (The Guardian)
Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after coming under sustained pressure from congressional Democrats.
Health and Biotech
How Drinking Coffee can Improve your Health? (Be Health And Fit)
Like wine, chocolate and popcorn, also and coffee joined the list of unusual foods with health benefits. According to a 13 year study by the National Cancer Institute of the US in the “New England Journal of Medicine” it concluded that people who frequently drink coffee have a lower risk of early death by as much as 16%.
Coffee May Protect Against Cancer, W.H.O. Concludes (NY Times)
An influential panel of experts convened by the World Health Organization concluded on Wednesday that regularly drinking coffee could protect against at least two types of cancer, a decision that followed decades of research pointing to the beverage’s many health benefits.
Life on the Home Planet
A coffee shortage is looming — here's how soon it could be extinct (Business Insider)
Coffee is more than just the crucial beverage that makes it easier to face the workday. It provides comfort, culture, and is an essential source of the caffeine that Harvard neuroscientist Charles Czeisler says makes modern life possible.
This Is Where Your Coffee Comes From (Slate)
A cup of coffee prepared quickly and consumed on the go may seem like one of life’s simplest pleasures. But the journey from bean to barista is not an easy one; it involves hundreds of people and thousands of miles.
The magic behind Starbucks Nitro Cold Brew (1912 Pike)
On the coffee bar at the Starbucks Reserve® Roastery & Tasting Room in Seattle sits a small, unassuming sign. Placed next to a shiny, silver tap, it reads: "Introducing: Nitro Cold Brew, a velvety cascade of delicious." There couldn’t be a more perfect way to describe this new drink.
What Would Happen if the Coffee Plant Went Extinct? (Vice Canada)
You probably don't want to think about a world without coffee. Even if you're not a three-cups-a-day pour-over fetishist, it's fairly easy to imagine this scenario could end with Mad Max-style road wars. Just the thought of losing it is enough to spark a hoarding instinct.
Turns out there’s a genetic reason why you drink so much coffee (Hello Giggles)
Many people cannot function properly without copious amounts of caffeine in their system on the daily basis. They drink cup after cup of coffee to open their eyes wider and wire up their systems. And after that coffee wears off and the dreaded “2PM slump” hits, everyone knows it’s time for a second round.
The world's best coffee shops (The Telegraph)
There are few cafes in the world as stunning as Truth, a "steampunk inspired" artisan coffee shop that is filled from top to bottom with metal piping and quirky old machinery.
Drone strike kills militant linked to Charlie Hebdo attack: U.S. (Reuters)
A U.S. drone strike in Syria has killed an Islamic State militant linked to the Jan. 7 2015 attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, defense officials said on Friday.
