Financial Markets and Economy
American Drivers Won't Pay Much More at the Pump This Summer (Bloomberg)
American drivers paying the the most for gasoline since 2015 can take some comfort from forecasts that prices don’t have much further to rise.
It's especially hard to find a home to buy right now — and it could get worse for millennials (Business Insider)
Home shoppers might have an especially hard time finding the house of their dreams this spring.
According to real-estate site Zillow, there are 3% fewer homes on the market than there were a year ago.
Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness (in America) (Bloomberg)
Chances are, if you live in the U.S., you feel worse today than you did 10 years ago. Don’t worry, it’s not you. This is a national problem: America’s rank on the happiness scale is falling.
Opec warns of a world that still has far too much oil (Live Mint)
The oil market is tipping slowly from glut to equilibrium, as output cuts from Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and 11 non-Opec countries start to reduce crude flows.
In recent years, U.S. shale has thrown in another unknown in the mix of factors driving the price of oil. This year, shale output forecasts combine with OPEC’s production cuts, geopolitical factors, and unexpected outages to further complicate supply/demand and oil price forecasts by Wall Street’s major investment banks.
The Main Investing Advantage of the Wealthy (Value Walk)
It is a well-known phenomenon that most investors underperform even their own investments as they have a tendency to move in and out of their investments at the most inopportune times. The consequence of this poor investment behavior is that much wealth is left unrealized, especially by those in lower income tiers, and wealth inequality is thereby exacerbated.
GDP Now (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta)
The growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) is a key indicator of economic activity, but the official estimate is released with a delay. Our GDPNow forecasting model provides a "nowcast" of the official estimate prior to its release.
Trump's tax returns are the target of nationwide protests on Saturday (CNN)
On Saturday, protesters across the U.S. plan to demand that Trump make his most recent tax returns public. It's something every president and presidential nominee has done for the past 40 years.
Earning Less Than Their Wives Makes U.S. Men More Partisan (Harvard Business Review)
The Great Recession of 2008 was a watershed moment in American society for many reasons — but one of the underappreciated effects may be how the recession changed gender relations in America.
US Banking Indicators Have Stopped Growing and A Very Important One is Crashing (The Wall Street Examiner)
The coming turmoil in the US Treasury’s bank account at the Fed will have a huge impact on bond prices in particular, and thus yields. It will also have an impact on stock prices that won’t be pretty.
Weekend Reading: Markets Go On Alert (Real Investment Advise)
In my money management process, portfolio “risk” is “ratcheted” up and down based on a series of signals which tend to indicate when market dynamics are either more, or less, favorable for having capital exposed to the market.
Bank Lending Shrinking As Wage Growth Remains Stagnant (Confounded Interest)
I appeared on Fox News Radio today on the Tom Sullivan Show. He asked me about the non-existant inflation report today, the poor retail sales numbers and the zero percent wage growth report.
Junior Gold Miner ETF Suspends Creation Orders Due To Shortage Of Underlying Instruments (Zero Hedge)
Over the last several weeks, two years after Howard Marks first brought attention to the topic with a letter in which he asked "What Would Happen If ETF Holders Sold All At Once?" some investors have once again quietly voiced concern about the inordinate and rising influence passive investing in general, and ETFs in particular, exert on stocks but especially on fixed income securities, including illiquid bonds and loans.
Companies
Seattle is the testing ground as Amazon eyes its next big idea (The Guardian)
The buzz of a text message heralds the latest offer on Amazon’s Treasure Truck – a funky lorry bedecked with funfair lights and retro signs that appears at random in the streets of Seattle with a one-off discounted product for sale.
Best Buy Could Be a Big Winner in the Great Retail Shake-Up (Fool.com)
The list of consumer electronics retailers is getting shorter. Regional chain hhgregg is liquidating its assets after filing for bankruptcy in March, and RadioShack, which went bankrupt more than two years ago and restructured its business, has filed for bankruptcy for a second time.
Tesla is getting dangerously distracted (Business Insider)
The business news cycle for weeks has been dominated by the carmaker's surging market cap, which at about $48 billion has passed both Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ford. For a brief period, Tesla also climbed above General Motors to become the largest US automaker by stock valuation.
The six 'boring' shares that have beaten Amazon (The Telegraph)
The online retailer’s share price has risen by 380pc in five years, and it is in the top 10 holdings of more than 100 funds available to UK investors, according to data service FE.
Delta will pay you up to $10,000 to give up your seat (CNN)
A company spokesperson confirmed to CNNMoney that supervisors were previously only able to offer up to $1,350, but Delta (DAL) notified them on Friday that they'll now be able to offer up to $9,950 in compensation.
Discovery Aims to Make Viewers Tourists With Costa Rica Project (Bloomberg)
Discovery Communications Inc. is licensing its name for a $1 billion eco-tourism park in Costa Rica as the media company seeks new revenue from fans of its cable networks, which include Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
Technology
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Cadillac has a secret weapon in its quest to beat Tesla at self-driving (The Verge)
In order for Cadillac to feel confident enough to introduce the industry’s first truly hands-free driving system to the public, the car company wanted to be sure it had enough data on the US highway system before it launched. How much data? Well, all of it.
Tesla is moving into the heavy vehicle market, and the first glimpse of the new Tesla Semi is due this fall. On April 13, Tesla CEO Elon Musk congratulated his team on the “amazing job” designing the forthcoming truck, while also announcing a pickup truck would be out in 18 to 24 months and a convertible roadster sometime in the future.
GOP rep. on ISP privacy rules: 'Nobody's got to use the internet' (Engadget)
The internet is a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. It's where many of us turn when we need to file our taxes, apply for jobs or search for housing. But one Republican lawmaker who voted to roll back FCC privacy regulations last month said, "Nobody's got to use the internet" when asked about his decision at a town hall meeting, displaying a staggering amount of ignorance about how the internet affects the modern world.
CRISPR Corrects Duchenne-Causing Mutations (The Scientist)
Researchers have been studying the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system as a potential therapeutic tool to modify or delete pathogenic sequences within the human genome.
How Companies Are Already Using AI (Harvard Business Review)
Every few months it seems another study warns that a big slice of the workforce is about to lose their jobs because of artificial intelligence. Four years ago, an Oxford University study predicted 47% of jobs could be automated by 2033.
How computing will change amid challenges to Moore’s Law (Tech Crunch)
he rapid inclusion of embedded sensors and internet connectivity is turning most of the appliances we use into “smart devices” that can respond to our voice commands, while generating masses of data that is in turn analyzed in edge-of-network hub computers or the cloud.
How Apple, Google, and other tech titans aim to shake up the way we treat disease (Stat News)
Silicon Valley has audacious plans for shaking up the way we diagnose — and cure — disease.
But the life sciences are far more challenging than the tech titans of this world might realize: There are countless regulatory hurdles, health care delivery obstacles, and — most of all — the challenge of untangling the extraordinarily complex biology of the human body.
CRISPR cousin SHERLOCK may be able to track down diseases, scientists say (Stat News)
If the genome-editing powerhouse CRISPR were a dog, it would be the kind you can train to retrieve everything from Frisbees to slippers to a cold beer.
Politics
House Democrat Fact-Checks Science Committee’s Climate Nonsense (The Huffington Post)
Fed up with the anti-science nonsense that now dominates hearings of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, vice ranking member Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) has launched a project to make it easier for scientists to set the record straight.
North Carolina Politician Under Fire for Comparing Abraham Lincoln to Hitler (NBC News)
State Rep. Larry Pittman made the comparison while responding to critics Wednesday who were blasting him for pushing a bill that would have restored North Carolina's ban on same-sex marriage in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Conservative and liberal watchdogs are railing against Trump over concealed White House visitor logs (Business Insider)
News of the Trump administration's move to keep White House visitor logs secret has prompted criticism from conservative and liberal groups. The administration cited "grave national-security risks and privacy concerns" on Friday as reasons to keep the logs under wraps.
Oklahoma congressman: It's 'bull crap' that constituents pay my salary (CNN)
An Oklahoma congressman is facing scrutiny after a video posted Monday showed him telling constituents at a town hall that they do not pay his salary.
In a week of reversals, Trump called reporters ‘very honorable people (The Washington Post)
Over the past week, President Trump — who campaigned as a non-interventionist, called NATO "obsolete" and the Chinese a bunch of "cheaters" — has decided to bomb Syria and Afghanistan, declared that NATO is "no longer obsolete" and determined that China should not be labeled a currency manipulator after all.
Steve Bannon: is Trump's right-hand man falling from grace? (The Guardian)
The Trump era was only two weeks old when Steve Bannon was elevated to the cover of Time magazine, lauded as the Great Manipulator and second most powerful man in the world.
Will Trump Accept Responsibility When This Shit Show Implodes? (The Burning Platform)
Donald J. Trump has taken credit for making America’s economy great again. He’s been crowing about all the jobs being created, the soaring consumer confidence and record highs in the stock market. It’s all because the Donald has inspired Americans about our glorious future.
Trump administration halts Obama-era rule aimed at curbing toxic wastewater from coal plants (The Washington Post)
The Trump administration has hit the pause button on an Obama-era regulation aimed at limiting the dumping of toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury by the nation’s power plants into public waterways.
Electric Grid Study Ordered by U.S. Energy Chief to Boost Coal (Bloomberg)
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is ordering a study of the U.S. electric grid, with an eye to examining whether policies that favor wind and solar energy are accelerating the retirement of coal and nuclear plants critical to ensuring steady, reliable power supplies.
Republicans Love Bombing, But Only When a Republican Does It (Mother Jones)
A few days ago I noted that Republican views of the economy changed dramatically when Donald Trump was elected, but Democratic views stayed pretty stable. Apparently Republicans view the economy through a partisan lens but Democrats don't.
Trump’s Policies Are Already Making Workplaces More Toxic (In These Times)
The “well-being of America and the American worker is my North Star,” President Donald Trump trumpeted at a recent White House event.
Health and Biotech
5 important ways Henrietta Lacks changed medical science (Stat News)
Henrietta Lacks’s cells have long been familiar to scientists — but it was the ethical controversy around those cells that made her famous to the wider world.
Life on the Home Planet
Did ISIS inadvertently uncover the secret to the “lost” Hanging Gardens of Babylon? (Salon)
Last week, a group of concerned archaeologists, mapping out the extent of the damage wrought by ISIS when it occupied the Iraqi city of Mosul, announced a shocking discovery.
Giving young blood to older animals raises tantalizing possibilities for people (The Washington Post)
Dracula may have been onto something. It wasn’t just blood, but the blood of youth that was the secret to staying alive for centuries. The rejuvenating effect of young blood has been demonstrated in strange, draculoid experiments first done 150 years ago.
The Most Desirable Passports On Earth Don’t Include America’s (Bloomberg)
A passport allows one to be a citizen of the world—but some think it should also work for you. As in, if you’re wealthy and well-traveled, it should be a bit like an exclusive invitation-only credit card: lots of benefits, lots of perks, lots of points.
Deadly Aleppo suicide attack kills 100 in evacuation operation (The Guardian)
A suicide car bomber has killed and injured at least 100 people and fractured a complex deal to evacuate four besieged towns in Syria, leaving thousands of people trapped in limbo.
North Korea launches missile but test ends in failure (The Guardian)
North Korea has defied Donald Trump’s demands for it to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes, launching a missile from an eastern port city on Sunday morning.
