Financial Markets and Economy
Vancouver Home Prices Jump a Quick 40%. So Why Is No One Building? (Bloomberg)
When something becomes more expensive, people will produce more of it. According to that pillar of Econ 101, new homes should be springing up all over Vancouver. Which they aren’t.
Surging Funding Costs Pressure Hong Kong Equities (Bloomberg)
Funding costs in Hong Kong surged for a 10th day as the Federal Reserve prepares to tighten monetary policy.
Does Trump Have Wrong Asian Currency in Crosshairs? (Bloomberg)
President-elect Donald Trump has accused China of ripping off the U.S. on trade and threatened to brand the country a currency manipulator soon after taking office. Yet economists say his new best bud and China nemesis, Taiwan, is much better suited to bearing that damning label.
China Retail, Factory Pick Up Show Continued Momentum in Economy (Bloomberg)
China’s economic stabilization held in November, offering policy makers more room to switch focus away from stimulus and toward curbing financial risks.
These Two Indicators Will Tell You When 'Trump Trades' Are Over (Bloomberg)
Despite the magnitude of some of the moves in currencies and bond yields, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Head of Rates and Currency Research David Woo doesn't think the markets have adequately adjusted to how the macroeconomic backdrop will shift under the new administration.
China Home Sales Rose 16% in November at Slowest Pace This Year (Bloomberg)
The value of new homes sold rose 16 percent to 910 billion yuan ($132 billion) last month from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data the National Bureau of Statistics released Tuesday. The increase compares with a 38 percent year-on-year gain the previous month.
Monte Paschi Presses With Capital Plan as Rescue Clock Ticks (Bloomberg)
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is making a last-ditch effort to raise funds as the prospect of a state rescue looms.
After regulators rebuffed its request for an extension, the world’s oldest bank said it will press ahead with a plan to raise 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) from investors in the next 19 days.
Pickens Sees $60 Per Barrel of Oil in Next 30 Days (Bloomberg)
T. Boone Pickens, chairman and chief executive officer at BP Capital, discusses the OPEC production cut deal and his outlook for oil prices.
Japan to Change Pensions So They Fall If Prices and Wages Drop (Bloomberg)
In an effort to make the pension system more sustainable as the elderly population swells, the upper house of parliament is poised to vote Wednesday on a bill that will see payments drop when prices and salaries decline, not just rise when they go higher.
These states leave the most pension money on the table, in one chart (Market Watch)
Many Americans never collect the pensions they’re owed. They switch jobs and forget. They have an address or name change and essentially go off the radar of their old employer.
Even Car Sales Have Been Hit by India’s Chaotic Cash Clampdown (Bloomberg)
Industrywide demand for passenger vehicles in India will be depressed for a few months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unprecedented cash clampdown, according to senior executives at Tata Motors Ltd. and Honda Motor Co.
Asia Stocks Rise to 1-Month High as Fed Day Dawns; Dollar Steady (Bloomberg)
Stocks extended their climb in Asia, while the dollar meandered with investors convinced the Federal Reserve is poised to raise interest rates for the first time in a year.
Japan Corporate Sentiment Rises for 1st Time in Six Quarters (Bloomberg)
Confidence among Japan’s large manufacturers improved for the first time since June last year as the fall in the yen improved prospects for company earnings.
Titans of Finance Facing Off Over $5 Trillion London Gold Market (Bloomberg)
Some of the biggest names in finance are fighting for control of the London gold market — a $5 trillion, three-century-old trading hub that is being forced to adapt to a digital age.
Asia ready for Fed hike, anxious on rate outlook (Reuters)
Asia shares crept cautiously higher on Wednesday while a hush settled on the U.S. dollar as investors felt certain the Federal Reserve would raise rates for the first time in a year, but were less sure what it might herald for 2017.
Companies
Wells Fargo Faces California, New Jersey Probes Over Sales (Bloomberg)
Wells Fargo & Co. is under investigation by regulators in California and New Jersey to determine whether the bank signed up customers for Prudential Financial Inc. life policies without their permission.
Wells Fargo fails 'living will' test, faces restrictions: U.S. regulators (Reuters)
U.S. officials on Tuesday limited Wells Fargo & Co's (WFC.N) ability to grow its business, punishing the bank for not having a sufficient plan to protect markets in the case of bankruptcy.
Salesforce just bought a startup called Twin Prime, adding to its $5 billion buying binge (Business Insider)
Twin Prime is a five-year old startup that helps mobile apps perform better. Its CEO Katrik Chandrayana claims that Twin Prime customers increased their time spent in-app by up to 50%.
Johnson & Johnson Pulls Out of Talks to Buy Actelion (The Wall Street Journal)
Johnson & Johnson pulled out of talks to buy Swiss drug company Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. after the price needed to seal the deal got too high.
Chipotle shows why two heads aren’t always better than one (Market Watch)
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is the latest company to do away with its dual-CEO positions, showing how difficult, if not impossible, it is for this structure to work.
Technology
Here's Why Shares of Tesla Are Soaring Today (Fortune)
Shares of Tesla jumped as high as 5% in trading Tuesday, even though it was General Motors that made headlines for delivering its first three Chevrolet Bolt electric cars to Tesla’s backyard.
Sprint Aims for 1 Gigabit-Per-Second Speeds as Soon as 2017 (Bloomberg)
Sprint Corp. is aiming to offer its customers peak wireless speeds of 1 gigabit per second next year — about 100 times faster than most wireless services — in hopes it can boost its service reputation and attract more customers.
'There is no real plan': A longtime Apple Store employee says the iPhone battery replacement plan is a mess (Business Insider)
Apple's having a hard time keeping up with demand from iPhone customers, but this time it's not because of a hot new version of the ubiquitous smartphone.
Facebook's Oculus Virtual Reality Unit Needs A New Leader (Fortune)
Brendan Iribe, a co-founder of Oculus, said Tuesday that he is stepping down as Oculus’s CEO and will instead lead the unit’s new personal computer division. Additionally, Iribe wrote that Jon Thomason, who recently joined Oculus from Amazon AMZN 1.85% where he was vice president of mobile shopping, would lead Oculus’s new mobile unit.
Google says driverless cars are ready to make money, but we won’t know if they do (Market Watch)
Alphabet Inc. has changed its self-driving cars business, creating a separate entity called Waymo that plans to sell autonomous technology instead of building its own cars, but Google’s parent company won’t change the way it hides the effort’s finances.
This is the tangled future of tech and transportation (Business Insider)
When Didi Chuxing merged with Uber China in a $35 billion mega-merger last August, it created a partnership between the two biggest ride-hailing companies in the world.
When apps collect more data, outrage is powerful — sometimes (CNet)
Ever just skip the reading part and hit the Accept button after one of your favorite apps changed its terms and conditions? Yeah, you're not alone.
Nokia returns with a dumb phone from its new owner (Engadget)
It looks like we won't have to mourn the demise of the Nokia brand for much longer. HMD Global, the new owners of the Nokia name, unveiled their first device today: the Nokia 150.
Microsoft Translator now lets you translate in-person conversations (Venture Beat)
Microsoft today is announcing an update to its Microsoft Translator app that makes it possible to see live translations of the things people say nearby during in-person conversations. The idea is that everyone participating in the conversation uses the app and gets to see translated words on their devices. And for some languages, devices can even provide spoken translations.
Microsoft to open Cortana virtual assistant to third-party devices and apps (Tech Crunch)
Microsoft is making Cortana available to third-party device makers, and opening up the platform to third-party developers, too, so that they can integrate their own services in Cortana-powered devices. The news comes after an earlier revelation that Cortana would be coming to some IoT devices via next year’s Creators Update for Windows 10.
Politics
Trump Said to Delay Business Plan Announcement (Bloomberg)
President-elect Donald Trump is postponing an announcement on how he's going to handle his business empire while he's in the White House.
Pickens: Tillerson Would Be Excellent Choice (Bloomberg)
T. Boone Pickens, chairman and chief executive officer at BP Capital, discusses the possibility of Rex Tillerson being chosen as Secretary of State under Donald Trump.
Five Facts About Trump's 'Popularity' (Bloomberg)
Donald Trump won the election. That's a fact. But since then, Trump, his supporters and even some pundits are making various claims about his victory that aren't true, starting with his Orwellian assertions to have won in a landslide or even recording "one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history."
U.S. judge to review FBI's Clinton emails search warrant (Reuters)
A U.S. judge on Tuesday directed federal prosecutors to show him the search warrant application used to enable the FBI to access emails related to Hillary Clinton's private server that were discovered shortly before the Nov. 8 presidential election.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich Signs 20-Week Abortion Ban (The Huffington Post)
WASHINGTON? Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a 20-week abortion ban into law on Tuesday, making the state the 18th to do so.
Big Oil Gets a Huge Role in Trump's Administration (Bloomberg)
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court broke up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911, the energy industry has been at loggerheads with the federal government. Now it is the government — or may be if Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson is confirmed as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
Meet Rex Tillerson, Vladimir Putin's Pal And Donald Trump's Nominee For Secretary Of State (Newsweek)
Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, personifies two major concerns about the incoming Trump administration: conflicts of interest and ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s unconventional picks make Europe tremble (Politico)
America’s closest overseas allies struggled Tuesday to understand and digest Donald Trump’s emerging foreign policy team.
Life on the Home Planet
Scientists discovered 55 lakes in Eastern Antarctica that shouldn't have been there (Business Insider)
Eastern Antarctica is considered to be the coldest place on Earth. So cold, that scientists expected its ice shelves were frozen solid and more stable against climbing global temperatures than Western Antarctica or Greenland.
Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts so much about the universe at large, including the existence of gravitational lenses or "Einstein rings."
'All anyone ever wanted was to be treated no better than animals': Syrians lose hope as Aleppo falls (Business Insider)
The Syrian city of Aleppo has mostly fallen to regime forces, leaving opponents of the brutal rule of President Bashar al-Assad feeling hopeless after enduring days of bombardment with an almost complete lack of medical care.
How Big Will Disney's 'Rogue One' Be? (Bloomberg)
The release of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" next week is a crucial test of Disney's strategy of releasing a "Star Wars" film every year through 2020. Will this new tactic work?
Islamic State claims responsibility for Cairo church bombing (The Guardian)
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Cairo church on Sunday that killed 25 people, mainly women. In a statement circulated online, it said the bomber had killed and injured 80 people, vowing “to continue war against apostates”.
It’s Hard to Describe Just How Badly the Arctic Is Doing (TIME)
A series of records collapsed in the Arctic this year as the region faced unprecedented changes due to man-made global warming, news with wide-ranging implications for the health planet, according to a new report.
U.S. strike kills Islamic State militants linked to Paris attacks (Reuters)
A U.S. drone strike in Syria last week killed two Islamic State leaders linked to the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people as well as a third militant convicted in absentia in Belgium for a disrupted plot, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
