Financial Markets and Economy
OPEC, Russia see smooth road to global deal on output cut (Reuters)
Russia and Saudi Arabia said they expect OPEC and non-OPEC producers to reach an agreement on Saturday to curtail oil output and prop up prices in the first such joint move since 2001.
OPEC, Russian Oil Cut Deal Pushes Up Asian Natural Gas Prices (Forbes)
The OPEC agreement reached last week to cut oil output by 1.2 million b/d (removing around 1% of global oil supply from the market) has also impacted liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices.
As Fed Meets, All Eyes On Yellen With Rate Cut Essentially Baked In (Forbes)
We haven’t spent much time recently talking about odds for a December rate hike, quite simply because it already seems like a fact on the ground. The futures market pegged chances at 97% as of midday Friday, and various Fed governors have telegraphed the expected decision quite clearly.
After the worst start to a year ever, the stock market surged to new highs in 2016.
All the major indexes rebounded to records and defied the doomsday forecasts that preceded events like Brexit and President-elect Donald Trump's election.
Some UK peer-to-peer lenders are buying each other's loans and the watchdog is worried (Business Insider)
LONDON — Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has found some peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms are using customer money to buy loans on rival platforms, rather than fund loans over their own platforms.
Stock as a Gift for Your Kids? It Will Pay Dividends (Consumer Reports)
Are you searching for a gift for a young person in your life that will last a lot longer than the paper it’s wrapped in? Here’s a solution: stock.
Donald Trump Bump Investors Have This Unlikely Stock to Thank For Dow Record (Fortune)
That’s something Donald Trump voters probably didn’t think they’d say a month ago. But stock market investors who are enjoying the post-election rally—dubbed the “Trump Bump—owe a major debt to the controversial bank that became a political lightning rod in the presidential campaigns.
Bitcoin is approaching new highs for the year because of India’s demonetization (Quartz)
Since prime minister Narendra Modi pulled Rs500 and Rs1000 notes from circulation on Nov. 8 in a bid to fight corruption and terrorism, the weekly volume of bitcoin trading in India has nearly doubled from prior levels.
California’s Growing Public Pension Crisis (Financial Sense)
The Kersten Institute for Governance and Public Policy at Stanford University has a project that tracks the liabilities of pension funds for state government workers across the nation, where the liabilities represent the gap between the money that the pension funds hold and how much they would need in order to pay 100 percent of the retirement pension benefits that state government officials have promised to pay state government workers.
Carney Panel Set to Demand Climate-Risk Scenarios From Companies (Bloomberg)
Companies should tell investors how their profits may be hit by tighter pollution rules and extreme weather events coming from climate change, a panel advising the Group of 20 nations will conclude next week.
Should the stock market's record rise concern me? Six things to consider (Dallas News)
The post-election rally has taken stock markets to all-time highs. Readers know I am not a fan of making stock-market predictions, but the recent gains do raise some interesting questions.
Warren Buffett Becomes World's Second Richest Person After Nearly $8 Billion Surge In His Fortune Since Election DayBillionaire investor Warren Buffett campaigned for Hillary Clinton before last month's presidential election, but his Berkshire Hathaway investment firm has benefited from the stock market rally since Trump's win.
S&P 500 Weekly Update: A Dow Theory Buy Signal Sends The Major Indices To New All-Time Highs (Fear And Greed Trader)
Now that the election is behind us, and the stock market has new found enthusiasm, the focus switches back to the Fed. It now appears to be a certainty that interest rates will be raised at the next Fed meeting on December 14th.
Rising Bond Yields Could Send $250 Billion Into Equity Funds (Financial Sense)
A sustained recovery in US 10-year bond yields to 2.5% could drive a rotation of $250 billion from developed market bond funds into developed market equities according to proprietary analysis from Deutsche Bank.
Turkey Maneuvers to Escape Its Dollar Trap (Financial Sense)
In Turkey, patriotism appears to be running deeper than a profit motive. A number of major Turkish companies in the past few days have announced that they will heed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's behest announced Friday to convert their US dollars to the lira.
RBC Answers "THE" Question Every Investor Is Asking: "What Could Derail This Rally?" (Zero Hedge)
As RBC's head of cross asset-strategy, Charlie McElligott, asks rhetorically in a note on Friday morning, “THE” question that every investor (across all asset classes and strategies) is asking remains this: when is “the gig up” with this reflation trade?, as we know this violent pace can’t last forever, and price trajectories in same cases exceed even the most optimistic expectations of the future state of the world.
Companies
Wells Fargo Scandal Infects Prudential as Whistle-Blowers Sue (Bloomberg)
Prudential Financial Inc. was accused of covering up fraudulent sales of life insurance policies through Wells Fargo & Co. to low-income customers with Hispanic last names.
Accusations of Fraud at Wells Fargo Spread to Sham Insurance Policies (DealBook)
When Wells Fargo admitted a few months ago that thousands of its employees had created as many as two million unauthorized accounts for its customers, alarm bells went off at Prudential, one of the nation’s biggest insurance firms.
Technology
Danish Man Victoeious, Apple Ordered To Provide New, Not Refurbished, iPhone (Digital Trends)
David Lysgaard of Denmark emerged victorious in a court battle against Apple, but this case has nothing to do with patents and everything to do with how Apple conducts its business when it comes to replacing devices, reports MacRumors.
China's elevated bus test site has been abandoned for months (Engadget)
Remember China's wacky Transit Elevated Bus aka TEB which promised to carry passengers over traffic? Well, we have some bad news for you. China News reported that the 22-meter-long prototype unveiled in early August had been collecting dust in its hangar for well over two months, according to the two old men who were guarding the vacated test site in Qinhuangdao.
With fake news spiraling out of control, what can real people do? (Salon)
Fake news is a big deal. Recent research suggests that the proliferation of conspiracy theories and other urban legends, vaguely disguised as real news and disseminated widely on social media, played a significant role in helping elect Donald Trump as president.
7 gifts for people who were burned by the Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Mashable Asia)
The Samsung Galaxy Note7 was hands-down one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Samsung finally built the Voltron of phones, only for the Note7 to literally burn up and be permanently discontinued.
Apple AirPods still delayed because of technical problems, may not be ready as holiday gifts (Venture Beat)
It looks like Apple’s wireless earphones won’t be ready for the holiday season.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the technology giant continues to delay the availability of its AirPods, which were announced in September with great fanfare as a companion to the new iPhone 7.
Politics
Obama Talks About The Crippling Partisanship That Plagued His Presidency (The Huffington Post)
During the most recent episode of “Vice Special Report: A House Divided,” which aired Friday night on HBO, the outgoing president spoke with Vice founder Shane Smith about what he had originally hoped for his presidency and how it unfolded in reality.
Exxon Mobil Chief Rises as Trump’s Choice for Secretary of State (NY Times)
Rex W. Tillerson, the president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has emerged as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s top choice to become secretary of state, according to a person with direct knowledge of the search process.
Climate Change Conversations Are Targeted in Questionnaire to Energy Department (NY Times)
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team has circulated an unusual 74-point questionnaire at the Department of Energy that requests the names of all employees and contractors who have attended climate change policy conferences, as well as emails and documents associated with the conferences.
CIA says Russia intervened to help Trump win White House (Reuters)
The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
State Of Emergency To Be Extended Until July 15 In France (Associated Press)
PARIS (AP) — French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says 17 attacks have been thwarted in the country so far this year and he is asking Parliament to extend the state of emergency until July 15.
Trump Says Blacks With Doubts Stayed Home, 'That Was Almost as Good' (NBC News)
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Donald Trump at a rally on Friday said African-American voters who didn't show up to the polls were "almost as good" for him as those who went out and voted for him.
The Gambia: troops deployed to streets as president rejects election defeat (The Guardian)
Troops have been deployed to the streets of Banjul, the capital of the Gambia, after the autocratic president, Yahya Jammeh, unexpectedly rejected his defeat in an election last week and called for a fresh vote.
How a network led by the billionaire Koch brothers is riding the Trump wave (The Guardian)
Despite deciding not to back Donald Trump financially with ads during the presidential election, the sprawling donor and advocacy network led by the multibillionaire Koch brothers is emerging as a winner in the transition.
Ryan: 'We've been fighting Barack Obama for 8 years' (Fox News)
The Speaker of the House said Friday that while President-elect Donald Trump and him had previously had their differences, now their relationship is great, saying at the “end of the campaign we merged forces.”
‘Might Does Not Make Right; Being in the Right Does.’ (NY Times)
Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment.
International College Students Leery of Trump Could Cost U.S. Billions (NBC News)
Talal Al-Johani, a high school student in Saudi Arabia, couldn't imagine going to college anywhere else but the United States. For the last two years, the 17-year-old has been collecting university applications and making connections with admission counselors in an effort to land at a leading American institution.
When Donald Trump swept to victory in the Electoral College on Nov. 8, perhaps no group was more surprised than journalists, who had largely bought into the polls showing Hillary Clinton was consistently several percentage points ahead in key swing states.
Could Trump's chest-thumping over China trigger a trade war? (The Guardian)
Between the US president-elect’s campaign promises of tariffs to his phone call with Taiwan, Trump has frequently rattled Beijing. But is it bluster, or a sign of a seismic global economic shake-up?
Life on the Home Planet
Thousands Flee Syria's Aleppo As Assad Nears Victory (Associated Press)
BEIRUT (AP) — Some 50,000 civilians have fled eastern Aleppo over the past two days in a "constant stream," Russia said Saturday, as Syrian government forces close in on the last pocket of opposition control in the northern city.
Spectacular Feathered Dinosaur Tail Preserved In 99-Million-Year-Old Amber (Forbes)
Fossilized tree resin, better known as amber, typically conjures up images of mosquitos frozen in time (and full of dinosaur blood if you are watching Jurassic Park). Recently, researchers have been able to find not just insects but dinosaur feathers and whole lizards in amber, giving tantalizing hints about what future discoveries could reveal.
Iraq says army makes gains in grueling Mosul battle (Reuters)
The Iraqi army said it took full control of two more districts of east Mosul on Saturday, pushing back Islamic State militants in a slow and hard-fought advance into the city whose 1 million residents face growing shortages of fuel, water and food.
Five killed as cargo train explodes in Bulgaria (Reuters)
At least five people were killed and 29 injured when a cargo train derailed and exploded in the northeastern Bulgarian village of Hitrino, demolishing about 50 houses and public buildings, officials said on Saturday.
