Financial Markets and Economy
Traders Are Fleeing the Options Market (The Wall Street Journal)
Falling volumes and spiraling costs are pushing trading firms out of U.S. options, raising concerns about fragility in a market that investors rely on to protect portfolios.
Goldman says oil prices on the brink of ‘capitulation’ (Market Watch)
After crude-oil prices took a beating over the past week, falling to their lowest level since before OPEC-led a deal to curb output in November, analysts at Goldman Sachs say crude may reaching a “capitulation” point.
FX Traders Losing Confidence in Dollar With Few Catalysts to Buy (Bloomberg)
Dollar bulls have reason to be gloomy after the greenback ended last week little changed against a basket of peers following a three-week decline.
Investors are both bullish and skittish about share prices (The Economist)
Ten years ago this month investors were pretty confident. True, there were signs that problems in the American housing market would mean trouble for mortgage lenders.
One of the biggest pillars of the stock bull market is crumbling (Business Insider)
Since the start of the eight-year bull market, one of the most reliable drivers of stock returns has been the willingness of companies to repurchase their own shares.
Iran Will Go Along With Whatever OPEC Decides on Crude Cutbacks (Bloomberg)
Iran will go along with whatever decision OPEC makes at its meeting later this month on whether to extend oil production cuts beyond June, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said.
U.K. Consumer Spending Weakens With Sharp Slowdown in April (Bloomberg)
Its index showed spending rose an annual 0.5 percent in April, down from 1 percent in March and marking one of the slowest rates of growth in the past three years. Weaker household demand is also taking a toll on retailers.
Stocks are stuck in a 'Seinfeld market' (Business Insider)
The stock market had a lot in common with acclaimed sitcom "Seinfeld" last week. Except instead of laughing, investors simply yawned.
Warren Buffett Isn’t Retiring, But Some of His Lieutenants Are (The Wall Street Journal)
Warren Buffett is quietly installing a new set of leaders throughout Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Seven Berkshire subsidiaries that collectively employ more than 46,000 people announced CEO changes in the last year, an unusually high amount of turnover at a company that rarely has top executives depart.
Asian Stocks Climb as Global Growth Seen Intact: Markets Wrap (Bloomberg)
Asian stocks climbed outside of China, with Japanese shares rallying after a three-day holiday, amid optimism on improving global growth following Emmanuel Macron’s victory as France’s next president.
Euro gives up some gains as Macron seals French election victory (Reuters)
The euro edged away from highs hit early in the Asian session on Monday as investors took profits from its gains after centrist Emmanuel Macron's victory over the far-right Marine Le Pen in France's presidential election.
Big investors urge Trump to stick with Paris climate accord (Reuters)
Investors with more than $15 trillion of assets under management urged governments led by the United States to implement the Paris climate accord to fight climate change despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to pull out.
China's Deleveraging Bill Tops $500 Billion (Bloomberg)
How much pain can China’s leaders stomach? It’s becoming a key question for investors as the government’s stepped up campaign to rein in financial leverage ripples through markets.
Lower gold prices bolster gold demand; premiums rise in India, China (Reuters)
Gold demand in Asia rose this week, helped by a correction in prices, but traders said some buyers have held back from purchases while they wait for bullion prices to drop further.
People are raising money for routine prescriptions with sites like GoFundMe (Business Insider)
The 76-year-old Texan launched a GoFundMe page in January with the hopes of collecting enough money to cover his 90-day prescriptions. He shared the fundraiser on his Facebook page, and he started receiving small donations, a few from people he didn't know.
Puerto Ricans Face ‘Sacrifice Everywhere’ on an Insolvent Island (NY Times)
Angel González, a retired schoolteacher facing a 10 percent cut to his pension, is beginning to wonder whether his three-person household will have to cut back to one cellphone and take turns using it.
Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good Plan (Forbes)
In November, Stephen Hawking warned that humans needed to colonize another planet within 1,000 years. Now, six months later, he’s saying we have to do it within 100 years in order to avoid extinction.
Trump’s Tax Math Has a Big Problem (Bloomberg)
There’s a reason Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin keeps insisting that his boss’s tax-cut plan will fully pay for itself through faster economic growth. Budgetary politics make it hard for him to say anything else.
Buffett Confronts Search for Next Big Thing After Missed Chances (Bloomberg)
Underlying the festivities at Warren Buffett’s annual bash for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders over the weekend was a sobering fact: Finding the next big thing is hard.
China’s Booming Service Industry Can’t Keep Up With College Grads (Bloomberg)
After more than two decades in the factories of the Pearl River Delta making artificial Christmas trees, furniture, and golf clubs, Ji Jiansheng was ready to try something else.
It's Happening Again — and the Last 2 Times This Happened, the S&P 500 Fell by 57% and 19% (The Motley Fool)
Over the long run, the direction of U.S. stocks is very clear: They head higher. Historically, when factoring in dividend reinvestment, investing in stocks returns about 7% annually. That's a good enough return to allow you to double your money once a decade, and more importantly, to handily outpace inflation so that you generate real-money returns.
Saudi Arabia appears to be cutting oil exports to stem the crude decline (CNBC)
A sharp drop the number of oil barrels Saudi Arabia loaded onto tankers in April appears to deliver what the market has been awaiting: a big decline not just in crude output, but exports.
Here's what investors can learn from the greatest hitter who ever lived (Economy And Markets)
Ted Williams was arguably the best hitter in the history of baseball.
The Boston Red Sox leftfielder finished his 19-year professional career with a lifetime batting average of .344 and an on-base percentage of an incredible .482, and this despite taking time off in the prime of his career to fight in World War II and the Korean War.
Here's How to Become a Millionaire on $56,000 a Year (The Motley Fool)
When many of us think of millionaires, we picture high-powered executives cruising around town in chauffeured limousines. But you don't need to earn an extraordinarily high salary to join the ranks of the wealthy.
Sympathy For The Devil? (Peak Prosperity)
In our recent report, Banks Are Evil, we pulled no punches in making the accusation that the financial system is the root cause of injustice in today's society.
Warren's wisdom (Axios)
Warren Buffett, 86, gave a master class during Q&A yesterday at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting ("Woodstock for Capitalists"), which drew 30,000 devotees to CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
Seattle Unemployment Rate Matches All-Time 2.8% Low (Ritholtz)
I wrote a piece in December that was a bit bold for me in that I declared victory with regard to Seattle’s minimum wage experiment.
Chains are banking on this new strategy to combat the restaurant apocalypse (Business Insider)
Struggling restaurant chains are turning to a new strategy to try and appeal to customers: delivery.
In the era of GrubHub and Seamless, convenience is increasingly important in the restaurant business.
A Problem Emerges: Central Banks Injected A Record $1 Trillion In 2017… It's Not Enough (Zero Hedge)
Two weeks ago Bank of America caused a stir when it calculated that central banks (mostly the ECB & BoJ) have bought $1 trillion of financial assets just in the first four months of 2017, which amounts to $3.6 trillion annualized, "the largest CB buying on record."
College grads struggle finding substantial work (Axios)
In the wake of the great recession, the ratio of underemployed graduates to unemployed is close to the highest it has ever been, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.
"Mystery" Central Bank Buyer Revealed, Goes On Q1 Buying Spree (Zero Hedge)
In the first few months of the year, a trading desk rumor emerged that even as institutional traders dumped stocks and retail investors piled into ETFs, a "mystery" central bank was quietly bidding up risk assets by aggressively buying stocks.
At event in Beijing, Kushner family uses promises of a U.S visa to raise money (Think Progress)
At an event in Beijing on Saturday, Nicole Kushner, the sister of White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, made a hard sell to wealthy Chinese investors to pour funds into the family’s new real estate development in New Jersey, according to The Washington Post.
Buffett Talks Markets, Healthcare, IBM, And Self-Driving Cars: The Key Quotes From Berkshire's "Pilgrimage" (Zero Hedge)
With the 52nd Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting – dubbed the "Woodstock for Capitalists" which is "unique in corporate America, a celebration of the billionaire's image and success" – now in the history books, all that's left are the quotes and avuncular aphorisms.
S&P 500 Quick-View Chart Book (Bespoke)
Each weekend as part of our Bespoke Premium and Institutional research service, clients receive our S&P 500 Quick-View Chart Book which includes one-year price charts of every stock in the S&P 500.
The pitfalls of investing in art (The Economist)
If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium. If it’s the second week of May it must be Venice. At least, it is every other year. On May 13th the art world descends on the Adriatic port for the biennial global artfest that turns the city into a parallel universe of the imagination.
Obamacare Repeal Next Steps: Why Goldman Is Suddenly Far Less Optimistic (Zero Hedge)
On Friday morning, in the aftermath of Trump's surprising victory forcing the GOP Healthcare bill repealing Obamacare through the House, we noted that Goldman's DC analyst Alec Phillips responded that, somewhat paradoxically, the impact on Trump's broader economic agenda would actually be more adverse than most economist and pundits expected, stating that "the main effect of House passage is to delay the consideration of tax legislation, which looks even more likely than before to be delayed until 2018."
Bernanke Shuns Trump Tax Cuts, Admits "Lot Of Americans Left Out Of Recovery" (Zero Hedge)
Additionally, Bernanke commented, on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" that "we don't have to balance the budget every year, by any means. But we do have to worry about fiscal stability over the longer term," adding that "rising income inequality, lack of social mobility help explain why Donald Trump was elected".
Companies
Citi lists Netflix, Tesla as potential takeover targets for Apple (Reuters)
Citigroup listed seven companies as potential takeover targets for Apple Inc (AAPL.O), including Netflix (NFLX.O), Walt Disney (DIS.N) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), as a way to put its cash hoard of more than $250 billion to work.
Caterpillar's GAAP in the Machine (Bloomberg)
As the industrial earnings season winds down, one takeaway has been that even as companies start to dig themselves out of a sales slump, the quality of their earnings still matters.
Walmart is trying to crush Amazon with better deals — here's who's winning the price war (Business Insider)
Walmart is going after Amazon in a race to offer the lowest prices.
The brick-and-mortar retail giant has been on a shopping spree over the past year to ramp up its e-commerce business, acquiring Shoebuy, Moosejaw, Modcloth, and, most notably, Jet.com, for which it paid $3 billion last year.
ESPN is losing subscribers but it is still Disney’s cash machine (The Economist)
FOR a sports addict, a visit to ESPN’s 123-acre campus is like mainlining the product. In an industrial workspace connected by an array of cables and satellite dishes to live feeds from all over the world, employees of the channel crowd around monitors at 80 desks and watch games.
Will ‘Made in China’ Threaten Boeing and Airbus?: QuickTake Q&A (Bloomberg)
November 2015 was a big month for Chinese aviation. That was when the state plane manufacturer known as Comac delivered its first passenger aircraft, a 90-seat jet called the ARJ21.
Slap a Battery on a Gas Turbine and Make an Extra $1.4 Million (Bloomberg)
Edison International has found what every electric utility wants in this time of sputtering demand: a new source of revenue.
Best Birthday Ever? How In-N-Out Burger's Lynsi Snyder Turned 35 – And Became A Billionaire (Forbes)
On her 35th birthday Friday, she receives the final portion of her inheritance, pushing her ownership of the West Coast-based In-N-Out Burger restaurant empire up to 97% and making her a billionaire, worth an estimated $1.3 billion.
Technology
Flying Cars By 2020? Uber Wants You To Push Button, Get Flight (Forbes)
Uber has plenty of problems today. But that's hardly stopping the company from touting splashy goals that are still years away.
San Francisco train service plans to run solely on clean energy (Engadget)
Commuter trains are already somewhat eco-friendly by their nature (you're less likely to need a car, after all), but the San Francisco Bay Area's train system is taking things one step further.
Tesla Has a Lot More in Store Than the Model 3 (Bloomberg)
After Tesla Inc. reported earnings on Wednesday, Elon Musk cracked open the lid on his box of secrets.
While most investors focused on rising costs and execution risk as he prepares for his most important product launch, the CEO dropped a pile of hints about what new adventures may be in store for the darling of America’s electrified future.
Arcade group promises ticket and claw games will no longer be “rigged” (Ars Technica)
Anyone who's played a crane game on the boardwalk or any number of timing-based ticket-spewing "redemption games" at an arcade has probably suspected at some point that these machines are rigged against them.
Apple Macs Are No Longer Immune To Hacks…And Other Small Business Tech News This Week (Forbes)
Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
The Biggest Time Suck at the Office Might Be Your Computer (Bloomberg)
The 25-year-old researcher was sitting at his desk at an insurance firm in northern England when the internet went down. And with it went access to all of his files, which were sitting on a company server.
Drug Discovery AI Can Do in a Day What Currently Takes Months (Singularity Hub)
To create a new drug, researchers have to test tens of thousands of compounds to determine how they interact. And that’s the easy part; after a substance is found to be effective against a disease, it has to perform well in three different phases of clinical trials and be approved by regulatory bodies.
Politics
Macron wins French presidency, to sighs of relief in Europe (Reuters)
Emmanuel Macron was elected French president on Sunday with a business-friendly vision of European integration, defeating Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union.
Stephen Colbert’s Diatribe Against Trump to Be Reviewed by FCC (Bloomberg)
Comedian Stephen Colbert’s profanity-tinged tirade against President Donald Trump, aired nationally on CBS, will be reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission because of viewer complaints, said Ajit Pai, the agency’s chairman.
Bernie Sanders says France 'rejected racism and xenophobia' by voting against Marine Le Pen (Business Insider)
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday congratulated the people of France for voting against electing far-right leader Marine Le Pen as president.
One state shows the chaos Trump is wreaking on the Obamacare exchanges (Business Insider)
Republicans passed their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare through the House this week, but the Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land.
California's politics are shifting further left (Axios)
A surge of activism is rippling through California's political landscape, the L.A. Times's Melanie Mason writes in "Activist groundswell may sweep lawmakers leftward".
Russian fingerprints on the last-minute dump of campaign emails hacked from pro-business independent Emmanuel Macron, the heavy favorite in today's French presidential election.
National gut check (Axios)
Jonathan Tamari, the Washington correspondent for the Philly Inquirer, posts a first-person look at the windshear wackiness of the new media and political environment, "I tweeted a photo of the Trump rally crowd— and then things got crazy".
Bromance over: Trudeau considers banning U.S. coal (Axios)
The premier of Canada's British Columbia province wants to ban imports of U.S. thermal coal, and Justin Trudeau is "carefully and seriously" considering the idea as part of a retaliation for the U.S. tariff on Canadian lumber.
The GOP's passage of Trumpcare is one of the cruelest things the party has ever done (Slate)
The Republican Party won control of government promising help. Help for the unemployed, help for the uninsured; help for the struggling, help for the anxious. But help isn't on its agenda. The plan, instead, is cruelty.
Warren Buffett, at Berkshire Meeting, Condemns Republican Health Care Bill (NY Times)
Every year, tens of thousands of investors descend on Omaha to attend the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren E. Buffett, and hear directly from the billionaire.
GOP Congressman Raul Labrador: 'Nobody Dies Because They Don’t Have Access to Health Care' (TIME)
Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) came under fire Friday after he said that "nobody dies" from a lack of health care coverage at a town hall at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.
The late-night hosts are experts in comedy and absurdity, so, appropriately, they had a lot to say about Thursday’s vote in the House of Representatives, which inched Congress closer to repealing Obamacare.
The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked (The Guardian)
In June 2013, a young American postgraduate called Sophie was passing through London when she called up the boss of a firm where she’d previously interned.
EPA staffer tells coal industry she’s here for them (Think Progress)
At a conference at Walt Disney World this week, EPA senior policy advisor Mandy Gunasekara told coal industry executives that she wants to make sure the EPA is working for them.
€100bn Brexit bill is ‘legally impossible’ to enforce, European Commission’s own lawyers admit (The Telegraph)
The Telegraph has seen minutes of internal deliberations circulated by Brussels’s own Brexit negotiating team, which had warned against pursuing the UK for extra payments.
One state shows the chaos Trump is wreaking on the Obamacare exchanges (Business Insider)
Republicans passed their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare through the House this week, but the Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land.
Japan Needs More People (Bloomberg)
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying hard to combat his nation’s alarming demographic decline: promoting robots and other productivity-enhancing technology, bringing more women into the workforce, even opening the door a bit wider to foreigners.
Indonesia Governor’s Loss Shows Increasing Power of Islamists (NY Times)
The popular governor was the clear front-runner.<p>Despite his religion, a Christian in Muslim-majority Indonesia, Gov. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama of Jakarta held a commanding lead in the polls.
What Is A Republican For? (The Wall Street Journal)
Republicans may be close to turning their party into fake news.
“Fake news” is a phrase open to many meanings, but in my recent experience people watching the melodrama of the Trump presidency unspool aren’t sure who or what they should trust or believe these days.
Avoiding questions about Trump’s mental health is a betrayal of public trust (Columbia Journalism Review)
Juse about every week, the media invites a psychiatrist or psychologist to admonish other psychiatrists or psychologists for calling Donald Trump mentally ill.
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Trump's administration is a horrifying success (Vox)
Since November, and the election of Donald Trump, here’s the scenario that’s kept me up at night: that the Trump administration, and the Trump era in American life, would be more or less (or at least compared to expectations) okay for me and people like me.
Health and Biotech
These 50 Health Issues Count as Pre-Existing Conditions (Money)
The Republican plan to repeal and replace the the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which narrowly passed a vote in the House today, rolls back protections for people with pre-existing conditions, which could increase health care costs for an estimated 130 million Americans.
Life on the Home Planet
Talking to Yourself (Out Loud) Can Help You Learn (Harvard Business Review)
When University of Illinois psychologist Brian Ross enrolled in a computer science course, it had been a long time since he’d even taken a class. With his beard and balding dome, he stood out.
Take a look inside New York City's century-old subway system that more than 6 million riders use a day and that desperately needs an upgrade (Business Insider)
In the past 100+ years, ridership on New York City's subway system has grown to about six million daily riders, and commuters can now get on and off at 472 stations throughout the four boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.
America’s food-truck revolution stalls in some cities (The Economist)
It was in 2008 that an out-of-work chef named Roy Choi began selling $2 Korean barbecue tacos from a roaming kitchen on wheels, tweeting to customers as he drove the streets of Los Angeles. Mr Choi’s gourmet food truck has since inspired a reality-TV programme and a hit Hollywood film, and helped jumpstart a $1.2bn industry.
Inequality is getting worse, but fewer people than ever are aware of it (Salon)
Inequality in America is on the rise. Income gains since the 1980s have been concentrated at the top. The top 10 percent today take home 30 percent of all income, and control over three-quarters of all wealth. We have returned to the level of income inequality that marked the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s.
Box office report: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 blasts straight to No. 1 (Entertainment)
The Marvel sequel — which follows 2014 surprise hit Guardians of the Galaxy — proved to be a crowd-pleaser both at the domestic box office, where it pulled in an estimated $145 million, and the international one, where it’s earned an estimated $282.6 million so far.
