Financial Markets and Economy
Global Stock Markets Sink After Wall Street Gains (Associated Press)
KEEPING SCORE: In early trading, London's FTSE 100 lost 0.5 percent to 7,333.81 and France's CAC 40 shed 0.3 percent to 5,074.11. Germany's DAX declined 0.1 percent to 12,246.81. On Thursday, the DAX and CAC 40 gained 0.2 percent while the FTSE 100 lost 0.5 percent.
If the early indicators are anything to go by, China’s economy continued to perform strongly in March.
Here's a primer on the Dalian Commodity Exchange, China's market for everything from iron ore to eggs (Business Insider Australia)
The Dalian Commodity Exchange has been around since 1992 but its increasing levels of activity have had it becoming a more frequent feature of market chatter.
Investors puzzled by Chinese company’s skyrocketing stocks (New York Post)
A mysterious Chinese company has seen its stock skyrocket 4,500 percent in the last 18 months, which puzzles and delights its investors.
PBOC Sets yuan parity rate at 6.8993 against dollar (Investing.com)
The China Foreign Exchange Trade System sets the weighted average of prices given by market makers. The highest and lowest offers are excluded from the calculation. The central bank allows the dollar/yuan rate to move no more than 2% above or below the central parity rate.
UN experts raise alert over 'alarming' US state bills (Al Jazeera)
Nineteen US states have introduced bills that would curb freedom of expression and the right to protest since Donald Trump's election as president, an "alarming and undemocratic" trend, UN human rights investigators say.
"Trickle Down" Has Failed; Wealth and Income Have "Trickled Up" to the Top .5% (OfTwoMinds)
Over the past 20 years, central banks have run a gigantic real-world experiment called "trickle-down."
Michael Noonan: When The Chinese Are Done – Gold And Silver Will Move Much Higher (Gold Seek)
A lot of precious metals analyst that I follow are busy with supply and demand fundamentals, technicals and creating charts with graphs and lines. Michael Noonan is not this type of analyst. Michael watches the “market” movement and makes his plans for extracting wealth according to what has happened over the past week and how it is impacting the charts today.
Marijuana ETF ‘the most scrutinized fund that we’ve ever launched,’ Horizons CEO says (Financial Post)
Canadians will be able to invest in a basket of marijuana companies when the first marijuana exchange-traded fund launches next week, helping investors diversify their exposure to the volatile and frothy sector.
The Definitive Brexit "Wall Chart" (Zero Hedge)
Yesterday the UK government triggered Article 50 and fired the starting gun on a two-year negotiation towards the UK's exit from the EU. These negotiations will be complex and contentious, and as Goldman writes this morning, the open question is whether they will prove constructive or adversarial.
How The "Trump Trades" Have Mutated Over Time, In Pictures (Zero Hedge)
Is the Trump trade alive or dead: that is the question Bank of America analyst Savita Subramanian tries to answer in a report overnight, in which she notes that it is not one Trump trade but several, and they tend to be "harder to isolate."
Companies
Amazon To Charge Sales Tax On Books Purchased Across US (Forbes)
Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, and New Mexico residents are about to start paying more for books. On Saturday, Amazon will begin collecting sales tax on books and e-books, among the myriad other products the retailer sells, purchased in the states.
Sour Lululemon results may signal squeeze for athletic leisure lines (Reuters)
The steep drop in Lululemon Athletica's (LULU.O) stock price, following a sales warning that resulted from poor color choices in the company's spring collection, turns the spotlight on slowing growth in the athleisure category pioneered by the Canadian yogawear retailer.
Huawei 2016 Sales up 32 Percent, Profit Little-Changed (Associated Press)
Huawei Technology Ltd., the world's biggest maker of telecoms equipment, said Friday its 2016 sales rose 32 percent from a year earlier but profit increased by only 0.4 percent due to higher spending on research and marketing.
Starbucks to Test a Cashier-Free Store at Its Headquarters (Reuters)
Starbucks will open a dedicated mobile order and pay store next week in its Seattle headquarters building as it tests how to best serve convenience-oriented customers, the company said in a letter to employees on Thursday.
Panera Wants You to Know What’s in Your Soda (Fortune)
Panera Bread says it will become the first national restaurant chain to label added sugar and calorie information for every beverage it serves, a move meant to give customers more information about the drinks they consume.
Cramer says ConocoPhillips just proved low oil prices are here to stay (CNBC)
Jim Cramer saw ConocoPhillips' sale of a portion of its oil sands to Canadian producer Cenovus as a sign that the oil glut will keep prices low for a while.
Tesla Needs Help in China (Bloomberg)
The $1.8 billion that Tesla Inc. is receiving from Tencent Holdings Ltd. will go a long way toward shoring up its ugly balance sheet. It should also help boost production of the Model 3, Tesla's heavily hyped mass-market car due out this summer.
Cathay to Squeeze More Seats on B777-300 Plane (Bloomberg)
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., the premium airline that is seeking ways to revive earnings after its first annual loss in eight years, plans to cram more passengers in some aircraft to squeeze out extra revenue.
Technology
Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey is leaving Facebook, which acquired his virtual reality startup for $2 billion in 2014.
Twitter Makes More Character Limit Changes (PC Mag)
Twitter on Thursday announced changes to character limits for reply tweets, the latest step in the struggling company's ongoing journey to whittle away the strict 140-character limit on which it originally made its name in the social media world.
How AI will boost your sales (Venture Beat)
Every morning, I see a self-driving car cruising around my neighborhood. The only thing that’s remarkable about it is how unremarkable it is. There aren’t scientists running alongside it, or press taking photos. When I see it, I’m reminded that artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t some future dream; it’s here, now, in our everyday lives.
Politics
Marco Rubio Was Targeted by Russian Influence Operation, Ex-FBI Agent Reveals (The Daily Beast)
In an explosive claim made before the Senate Intelligence Committee, a former FBI special agent told Sen. Marco Rubio that he had been a target of Russian influence operations during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Net Neutrality Is Trump’s Next Target, Administration Says (NY Times)
The Trump administration said on Thursday that its next move to roll back the regulation of broadband internet service companies would be to jettison the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules, which were intended to safeguard free expression online.
Republicans who voted against internet privacy got paid out (Mashable Asia)
That's hardly a new revelation, but it's worth revisiting after Congress recently voted (twice) to gut important data privacy regulations that would have forced your internet provider to at least ask your permission before tracking you across the internet and selling that information to the highest bidder.
Confusion over James Comey: Two reports shine different lights over the state of the Trump-Russia probesFBI Director James Comey has found himself in the spotlight again as the congressional investigations into Russia election interference seem to be heading in opposite directions.
This Is Almost Certainly James Comey’s Twitter Account (Gizmodo)
Digital security and its discontents—from Hillary Clinton’s emails to ransomware to Tor hacks—is in many ways one of the chief concerns of the contemporary FBI. So it makes sense that the bureau’s director, James Comey, would dip his toe into the digital torrent with a Twitter account.
What a Bipartisan Approach to U.S. Health Care Could Look Like (Harvard Business Review)
As a friend once told me, “Government is about compromise.” That friend was Tommy Thompson, a four-term governor of Wisconsin who went on to serve in George W. Bush’s cabinet as secretary of health and human services.
China's Xi To Meet Trump, Who Predicts 'Difficult' Meeting (Associated Press)
U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the first time on April 6-7 at Trump's Florida resort, China's Foreign Ministry announced Thursday, amid a range of pressing issues including trade, North Korea and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
GOP scrambles to head off special election disaster (Politico)
Republicans are increasingly anxious that a splintered GOP field could lead to a Democratic upset victory in one of the first congressional elections of the Trump era.
Federal judge blocks Trump’s travel ban indefinitely (Salon)
Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump faced a second speed bump in his attempt to implement a travel ban when a federal court in Hawaii temporarily prevented the Trump administration from implementing its ban, which was focused on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries.
Republican distrust in the press spikes during presidential election years (The Washington Post)
For the past 40-plus years, the National Science Foundation has funded something called the General Social Survey — a poll gauging the attitudes of hundreds of Americans on a consistent set of issues.
Life on the Home Planet
Elon Musk has just pulled off his dream of more than 15 years: fuel up a used rocket booster, fire it off, then recover it for yet another launch.
"It's an amazing day for space as a whole, for the space industry," Musk said during a live broadcast of the launch.
About one-in-four U.S. workers have taken leave to care for a seriously ill family member (Pew Research Center)
About one-in-four Americans (23%) say there has been a time when they took leave from work to care for a family member with a serious health condition. An additional one-in-four say that if this hasn’t happened to them already, it’s at least somewhat likely that it will in the future.
NASA astronauts lose key piece of ISS shield, and now it’s floating free in space (The Washington Post)
NASA astronauts on a spacewalk Thursday accidentally lost a fabric shield needed for the International Space Station — a minor setback in what was otherwise a record-setting mission for one of the crew members.
20 percent of millennials openly identify as LGBTQ (SF Gate)
LGBTQ folk and their allies celebrated nationally in June 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that every American has the constitutional right to marry whomever they please. Trends of acceptance of LGBTQ – lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and questioning – individuals have only grown in recent years, and more people than ever openly identify as such.
