News You Can Use From Phil’s Stock World

Financial Markets and Economy

Big Investors Cut Back on Commercial Property as Bull Market Loses Steam (The Wall Street Journal)

Some prominent real-estate investors are reducing their holdings and getting more selective about new deals, in a sign that the eight-year bull market for U.S. commercial property is coming to a close.

Wall Street rises on earnings despite oil price pressure, dollar climbs (Reuters)

Wall Street ended higher on Tuesday boosted by corporate earnings, while the dollar climbed to a more than one-week high on technical buying and political uncertainty in Europe.

A Bright Idea for Hedge Fund Managers: Do Nothing (The Wall Street Journal)

Hedge-fund managers’ reputations and pay depend on the quality of their trading ideas. Recently they haven’t looked so clever.

GOP-Led SEC Considers Easing Pay-Gap Disclosure Rule of Dodd-Frank (The Wall Street Journal)

The acting head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is quickly targeting rules long-loathed by the business community, moving for the second time since Inauguration Day to ease some Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul requirements.

The New Face of American Unemployment (Bloomberg)

Even at so-called full employment, some 20 million Americans are left behind.

They’re looking for work, out of the labor force but unhappy about it, or report working part-time when they’d prefer more hours, according to data released last week.

Top Trader Vitol Sees Oil Rattled as Trump Makes Market Fret (Bloomberg)

Trading companies such as Vitol and rivals including Trafigura Group and Glencore Plc could reap rewards from volatility. Vitol’s $1.6 billion in earnings in 2015 were boosted as it profited from price swings in the energy market.

Goldman Sachs Economists Are Starting to Worry About President Trump (Bloomberg)

Just a few weeks ago, Wall Street analysts were busy boosting their economic forecasts on the expectation that President Trump would implement sweeping corporate-tax reform, a rollback of regulations, and new fiscal stimulus.

China Jan FX reserves fall below $3 trillion for first time in nearly 6 years (Reuters)

China's foreign exchange reserves unexpectedly fell below the closely watched $3 trillion level in January for the first time in nearly six years, though tighter regulatory controls appeared to making some progress in slowing capital outflows.

There is no Dodd-Frank loan drought: James Saft (Reuters)

Evidence that Dodd-Frank Act regulation is making lending conditions tighter is thin on the ground, at least for the vast majority of the U.S. economy.

What everyone gets wrong about the 'fear index' (Yahoo Finance)

The CBOE Volatility Index (^VIX) is so low that some market watchers worry that complacency is dangerously high in the stock market, making it unusually vulnerable to violent sell-offs.

Be Prepared for a Bear Market (Bloomberg)

Every day since President Donald Trump took office seems to bring a new political shock, so you might be surprised to learn that the stock market is just shy of all-time highs.

A Quiet Giant of Investing Weighs In on Trump (NY Times)

He is the most successful and influential investor you have probably never heard of. His writings are so coveted and followed by Wall Street that a used copy of a book he wrote several decades ago about investing starts at $795 on Amazon, and a new copy sells for as much as $3,500.

Where Active Fund Investors Were Flocking to & Fleeing From in 2016 (Wall Street Rant)

We all have heard about the ongoing industry shift from Active to Passive Funds as illustrated below via Morningstar.

How the Bogle Model Beats the Yale Model (A Wealth Of Common Sense)

In the hierarchy of institutional investors, you won’t find a more competitive group than college endowments. They’re in constant competition with one another and the markets. It’s almost like a bizarre finance version of Duke-North Carolina in basketball or Michigan-Ohio State in football.

My Dow 20,000 Call Was Correct, Now What? (Joe Fahmy)

Back in April 2016, when the Dow was 17,500, I made a call for Dow 20,000 by the end of 2016. At the time, no one on Wall Street was making this call and the majority of money managers were extremely bearish.

Companies

Michael Kors' weak forecast suggests turnaround to take longer (Reuters)

Michael Kors Holdings Ltd (KORS.N) forecast current-quarter profit below estimates, raising concerns that the company's efforts to reinvigorate its brand was taking much longer than expected, sending the handbag maker's shares down 15 percent.

Harvard’s $1.2 Billion Haul Erased by Investing Loss, Payout (Bloomberg)

Harvard University raised $1.2 billion from donations, a record for the world’s richest college. The haul was erased by $2 billion in investment losses and spending.

Twitter Inc (TWTR) Earnings Preview: Did Political Talk Boost User Numbers? (Value Walk)

Twitter Inc (TWTR) is scheduled to release its fourth quarter earnings report on Thursday before opening bell, and analysts are expecting non-GAAP earnings of 12 cents per share on $740.1 million in revenue.

Technology

Silicon Valley Hedge Fund Takes On Wall Street With AI Trader (Bloomberg)

Babak Hodjat believes humans are too emotional for the stock market. So he's started one of the first hedge funds run completely by artificial intelligence.

Google uses AI to sharpen low-res images (Engadget)

Deckard's photo-enhancing gear in Blade Runner is still the stuff of fantasy. However, Google might just have a close-enough approximation before long.

Google Brain brings ‘zoom and enhance’ method one step closer to reality (Digital Trends)

The concept of enhancing a pixelated image isn’t new — “zoom and enhance” is responsible for dozens of criminals being put behind bars in shows like Criminal Minds, but that kind of technology has so far evaded the real world. Well, the boffins over at Google Brain have come up with what may be the next best thing.

UBER FLAT: Ridesharing Service Offers Rides In NYC For Cheap Fees (Digital Trends)

The next subscription service you get may help you around New York City a bit easier. As part of its UberPlus program, Uber has slowly begun rolling out new subscription package — Uber Flat –where anyone in New York City can get a ride for a flat fare of under $6.

Apple v. Samsung legal battle goes back to its roots (CNet)

Apple v. Samsung Electronics is headed back to where it all began: district court in San Jose, California.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered that the long-running patent dispute be sent back to a lower court.

Apple's new iPhone 7 ad sets the perfect mood for our times (CNet)

Looking back on the Super Bowl — surely you remember it — I can't help thinking too many brands didn't necessarily get it right by going all political.

This Cheap And Easy Lab-On-A-Chip Could Save Lives (Popular Science)

From detecting breast cancer to screening for HIV, surviving serious disease depends on early detection. When regular testing isn't available, lives are lost. But early detection often requires expensive lab equipment, and specialty training that isn’t easily common in many parts of the world.

Your old PC's DVD drive might earn you $10 (Engadget)

The PC you had a decade ago might be a clunker in comparison to what you have now, but it might just make you a little extra money. In the wake of a class action settlement with major optical disc drive makers over price fixing, Americans can now claim $10 in compensation for every PC-capable DVD drive they bought between April 1st, 2003 and December 31st, 2008.

Politics

Conservative Republicans Double Down on Push to Repeal Obamacare (The Wall Street Journal)

Conservative Republicans, worried about growing voices within the party advising or accepting a slower pace for repealing the Affordable Care Act, are redoubling their push to speed the GOP’s long-desired goal.

Islamic State sees chance to revive fortunes in Trump presidency (Reuters)

President Donald Trump has set out to crush Islamic State when it is already at a low ebb, but Islamists and some analysts say his actions could strengthen the ultra-hardline group by creating new recruits and inspiring attacks on U.S. soil.

Trump’s Dodd-Frank Do-Over Diverted to Slow Lane With Obamacare (Bloomberg)

President Donald Trump’s pledge to dismantle the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul is colliding with the same reality as his pledge to gut Obamacare: The Republican majority in Congress can’t decide how to make it happen and Democrats are vowing to fight.

Peter Thiel Denies California Governor Run Despite Mysterious Group's Backing (Forbes)

Donald Trump did not give Peter Thiel a position in his cabinet. And despite rumors that he would, the president did not name the venture capitalist to the Supreme Court.

China Woos Ivanka, Jared Kushner to Smooth Ties With Trump (Bloomberg)

At the Chinese Embassy in Washington last week, Ivanka Trump exited a black SUV with her daughter, Arabella, and shook the hand of Ambassador Cui Tiankai.

Senate Expected to Vote on DeVos Confirmation as Education Secretary (The Wall Street Journal)

The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary, concluding an unusually fiery debate that has left her at risk of becoming the first cabinet nominee in 28 years to be rejected.

Iran scorns Trump, rebuffs U.S. warning on missiles (Reuters)

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday dismissed the U.S. decision to put Iran "on notice" over its missile tests and called President Donald Trump the "real face" of American corruption.

Trump's pick for labor secretary admits to employing illegal immigrant (Reuters)

U.S. President Donald Trump's choice to lead the Labor Department admitted to employing an undocumented immigrant as a house cleaner, the kind of revelation that derailed Cabinet nominees in previous administrations.

President backs protest-hit Romanian government to stay (Reuters)

Romania's president on Tuesday tore into the Social Democrat-led government over a corruption decree that has sparked the biggest protests since the 1989 fall of communism but backed it to stay in power, in a potential reprieve for Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu.

Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” (LARB)

THE TRUMP-HITLER COMPARISON. Is there any comparison? Between the way the campaigns of Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler should have been treated by the media and the culture? The way the media should act now? The problem of normalization?

Health and Biotech

Physicists make the case that our brains' learning is controlled by entropy (Science Alert)

The way our brains learn new information has puzzled scientists for decades – we come across so much new information daily, how do our brains store what's important, and forget the rest more efficiently than any computer we've built?

Life on the Home Planet

Syria Detains Opponents as It Reasserts Control (The Wall Street Journal)

Weeks after he disappeared while fleeing the devastated city of Aleppo, Abdulhadi Kamel of the Syrian civil-defense group White Helmets turned up last month in an online video posted by a Russian-language news agency.

Tom Brady’s Missing Super Bowl Jersey Could Be Worth $500,000 (Bloomberg)

Tom Brady’s Super Bowl jersey is missing, and it may be worth as much as half a million dollars.

After leading New England to an overtime victory in the National Football League championship on Sunday, Brady reported that his No. 12 game jersey was nowhere to be found.

Dashboard Camera Captures Bright Green Fireball Streaking Over U.S. Midwest [Video] (Scientific American)

A brilliant, bright-green meteor blazed through the sky just north of Milwaukee early this morning (Feb. 6), and likely sprinkled space rocks into Lake Michigan.

Argentine Women Go Topless For Sunbathers' Rights (Reuters)

Dozens of topless women, joined by hundreds of fully clothed protesters, demonstrated in Buenos Aires on Tuesday to demand the right to sunbathe semi-nude after police asked bare-breasted women to leave a nearby beach.

Lady Gaga Halftime Drone Swarm Was Pretaped to Shield Crowd (Bloomberg)