Financial Markets and Economy
Sterling basks in glow of May's Brexit speech; stocks slip (Reuters)
The British pound consolidated gains on Wednesday after posting its biggest rise in nearly two decades in the previous session, while Asian stocks are set to drift lower following a weak Wall Street.
Trump’s Options for Weakening Dollar Extend Far Beyond Tweeting (Bloomberg)
Donald Trump may have a point: the dollar is indeed strong. Judging from the Federal Reserve’s own trade-weighted dollar index, the U.S. currency is now around 7 percent above its four-decade average.
Trump Comments Signal Shift in Approach to U.S. Dollar (The Wall Street Journal)
By talking down the value of the U.S. dollar, President-elect Donald Trump is potentially veering away from more than two decades of strong-dollar precedent.
Morgan Stanley Sees Better Trading Environment in 2017 (Bloomberg)
Morgan Stanley said momentum from a strong fourth quarter, including bond-trading revenue that more than doubled, continued into the first weeks of this year.
Trump, Fed Headed for Clash Amid Dollar Surge, Economists Say (Bloomberg)
Donald Trump and the U.S. Federal Reserve are heading for a collision that will almost certainly result in a stronger dollar, two leading economists said.
Be Skeptical of the Fed's Rate Signals (Bloomberg)
At its last policy meeting, in December, the Federal Reserve decided to increase the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. It also indicated that it expected to increase interest rates three times in 2017, as Chair Janet Yellen painted a rosy picture of the prospects for the U.S.
SEC to award contract to build stock transaction tracking system to Thesys (Market Watch)
Thesys Technologies LLC won the award to operate one of the largest databases ever created, a forensic tool for detecting suspicious trading and investigating the causes of flash crashes in stock markets, people familiar with the matter said.
STOCKS SLIDE: Here's what you need to know (Business Insider)
The dollar tumbled after president-elect Donald Trump said the currency was "too strong." The US dollar index was down by 0.8% at 100.35 in the mid-afternoon.
Japan Stocks Fall as Anxiety Remains, Won Climbs: Markets Wrap (Bloomberg)
Asian stocks fell as investors weighed policy uncertainty ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The ringgit and won climbed to the highest levels in a month after the U.S. president-elect called the dollar “too strong.”
‘Bond surrogates’ ETFs fall out of favor with yields expected to rise (Market Watch)
The lengthy rally in fixed income — which results in lower bond yields — has led to heavy demand for these groups, with investors seeking their higher dividend payouts as a way to generate income in a low-growth environment.
China's Oil Collapse Is Unintentionally Helping OPEC (Bloomberg)
China’s production is forecast to fall by as much as 7 percent this year, extending a record decline in 2016, according to analysts at CLSA Ltd., Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. and Nomura Holdings Inc.
Cash Is King for Diamond Market Reeling From India’s Money War (Bloomberg)
As diamond traders descend on Botswana this week for one of the year’s biggest sales, the $14 billion industry is struggling to recover from India’s war on black money.
Stock market sags as Trump talks down the dollar (Market Watch)
U.S. stocks retreated on Tuesday as investors remained cautious in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s charge that a strong dollar is hurting the economy.
China Home Prices Rose in Fewest Cities in 11 Months Amid Curbs (Bloomberg)
China home prices increased last month in the fewest cities since January last year, signaling property curbs to deflate a potential housing bubble are taking effect.
Companies
Women's apparel retailer Limited Stores files for bankruptcy (Reuters)
U.S. women's apparel chain The Limited filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday after closing all 250 stores, the latest brick-and-mortar retailer to fall victim to changing tastes and online competitors.
Samsung chief faces long day as South Korean court weighs arrest warrant (Reuters)
The head of South Korea's giant Samsung Group faces a long day in court on Wednesday as a judge decides whether he should be arrested for bribery in a corruption scandal that has engulfed President Park Geun-hye's administration.
Exxon Mobil Expands Permian Basin Footprint in Deal Worth More Than $5.6 Billion (The Wall Street Journal)
Exxon Mobil Corp. is the latest company to expand in the red-hot Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, announcing a deal Tuesday to buy companies owned by the Bass family for $5.6 billion in stock and up to $1 billion in additional payments.
Hyundai-Kia to Invest $3.1 Billion in U.S., Mull New Plant (Bloomberg)
Hyundai Motor Co. and affiliate Kia Motors Corp. said they will spend $3.1 billion in the U.S. in the next five years, joining other vehicle manufacturers in announcing investment plans amid threats from President-elect Donald Trump of higher levies on auto imports from Mexico.
HP Enterprise has bought SimpliVity, a Massachussetts-based storage startup, for $650 million in cash.
At the time of SimpliVity's last fundraising, in March 2015, the company had declared that it was valued at "more than $1 billion."
Technology
Toshiba Considering Spinoff of Memory-Chip Business (Bloomberg)
Toshiba is considering an infusion of cash as part of the spinoff, said Kaori Hiraki, a spokeswoman for the Tokyo-based company. While a spinoff is one of the options, nothing has been decided at the moment, Toshiba said in a statement on Wednesday.
Google Drive goes down (Tech Crunch)
Google Drive is having some major issues today. Sometime around 8am PT this morning, the storage service that forms the basis of most of Google’s online productivity suite (though not Gmail) started slowing down and many users (at least in the U.S.) are seeing now only seeing Google’s version of the spinning beach ball instead of their files.
AT&T no longer works with your 2G phone (Engadget)
We hope you weren't planning to use your old-school iPhone or BlackBerry Pearl on AT&T's network for nostalgia's sake — unfortunately, you're not going to get anywhere. As promised way back in 2012, the carrier has confirmed that it shut down 2G services on January 1st, 2017.
LG's Nexus-like Android Wear watches emerge in a leak (Engadget)
For months, rumors have circulated of Google formally launching Android Wear 2.0 with a pair of flagship smartwatches — not Google-designed, but certainly intended as reference models like Nexus phones used to be.
This chart shows when robots might take over all trucking jobs (Business Insider)
Self-driving trucks will take over nearly 100% of trucking jobs, according to a new McKinsey report. The only question is when.
Electronic gene control could let us plug bacteria into devices (New Scientist)
We don’t usually welcome bugs in digital technology, but that’s about to change. Researchers have developed a way to control bacterial genes at the flick of a switch using electricity.
How to Make the Amazon Echo Hear You Better (TIME)
One of the near-universally praised aspects of the Amazon Echo smart speaker is how well it hears and understands users’ voice commands. This is partially due to the array of microphones on top of the device, as well as the backend software that interprets the sounds and gives them meaning.
Politics
Senate Democrat leader attacks Price on ethics charge (Reuters)
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services may have broken the law by making a stock purchase just before he introduced legislation that would have benefited the firm, the Senate's leading Democrat charged on Tuesday.
May Sets Out Brexit Vision With Vow to Quit EU Single Market (Bloomberg)
Prime Minister Theresa May offered her most explicit vision of Britain’s future relationship with its European Union neighbors, pledging to quit the single market and instead seek a customs agreement with the bloc to deliver “a smooth and orderly Brexit.”
Donald Trump Warns on House Republican Tax Plan (The Wall Street Journal)
President-elect Donald Trump criticized a cornerstone of House Republicans’ corporate-tax plan, which they had pitched as an alternative to his proposed import tariffs, creating another point of contention between the incoming president and congressional allies.
China’s Xi Takes on Trump in Rebuttal Against Protectionism (Bloomberg)
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged global business and political elites to reject trade wars and protectionism, in his first public rebuttal of the policies advocated by incoming U.S. leader Donald Trump.
Trump implies he's glad Democrats are boycotting his inauguration: 'We need seats so badly' (Business Insider)
President-elect Donald Trump doesn't seem concerned that more than 50 Democratic lawmakers are boycotting his inauguration ceremony.
White House Concedes It Won't Close Guantanamo After All (Associated Press)
The White House said Tuesday that the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba will still be open when President Barack Obama leaves office, conceding that a core campaign promise will go unfulfilled.
Russia expects dialogue with Trump on nuclear weapons: Lavrov (Reuters)
Russia expects to have a dialogue with the Trump administration on strategic stability, including on nuclear weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
Wilbur Ross, Trump's Commerce pick, offshored 2,700 jobs since 2004 (Reuters)
Billionaire Wilbur Ross, chosen by Donald Trump to help implement the president-elect's trade agenda, earned his fortune in part by running businesses that have offshored thousands of U.S. jobs, according to Labor Department data attained by Reuters.
Limo Ride and White House Tea: When Ritual Tops Partisanship (Bloomberg)
Three days from now, Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, will arrive at the White House for morning tea with President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. Upstairs, in the residence, movers will rush around, simultaneously packing up the outgoing family’s last belongings as they unload those of the Trumps.
Germany says NATO concerned about Trump 'obsolete' remark (Reuters)
Germany's Foreign Minister said on Monday that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's comments that NATO was obsolete had aroused concern across the 28-member alliance.
Life on the Home Planet
In U.N. lawsuit, Ukraine demands Russia end support for separatists (Reuters)
Ukraine filed a lawsuit at the United Nations' highest court demanding that Russia immediately halt its support for pro-Moscow separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Islamic State surrounds military airport in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria (The Guardian)
Islamic State fighters have broken through government defensive lines in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, surrounding a military airport and cutting off food supplies for roughly a quarter of a million civilians in what could become a major humanitarian disaster.
Dozens killed in Nigeria as jet mistakenly bombs displaced families' camp (The Guardian)
Dozens of people have been killed after a Nigerian military jet mistakenly bombed a camp where thousands of families displaced during the offensive against Boko Haram militants were sheltering.
