Links for Jul 25 2016

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When Brendon is born, set aside a lump sum of $3,000. Invest it in an ETF or a mutual fund that holds small-cap value stocks. (To learn more about this check out my podcast called The Best Small-Cap-Value ETF.) Leave the money in that asset class to grow. And grow. As soon as Brendon has taxable earned income, start contributing the money in the account to a Roth IRA in his name, keeping it invested in small-cap value. That way, at least under current tax law, it will never be taxed. Do this every year until all the money is within a Roth account. Assuming that Brendon leaves this money alone and that it continues to compound at 12%, when he is 65 years old, your one-time $3,000 investment in small-cap value will be worth about $4.75 million.

How time can turn $3,000 into $50 million - MarketWatch

It hasn't been this tough to be in the housing market since the financial crisis. To recap the problem, the supply of housing, especially in the affordable entry-level segment, is not keeping up with huge demand from first-time buyers and existing homeowners looking to upgrade.  Zillow's latest Real Estate Market Report released on Friday shows that homes are selling faster than they have at any time since 2010.

Home sales are at the fastest pace in years - Business Insider

At Infocomm in Las Vegas this week, Optoma announced a couple of new projectors – a mid-range professional model with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and one that can project a 100-inch 4K image from just two inches away from the wall. The 4K model, which doesn't have an official name yet, may not have any specifically new features, but it is the first to combine several types of technologies. It's a laser phosphor projector, meaning it's far more efficient and provides a sharper picture than a lamp-based projector, and while 4K versions of these have been around for a while – Sony's flagship LSPX-W1, for example – none have managed this on a throw ratio as tiny as Optoma's, at 0.18:1. In practical terms, as mentioned earlier, it will throw a 100 in image on a wall or screen from a mere 2 in (5 cm) away, where many in the ultra-short throw category need to be about 20 in (51 cm) from the wall for a screen that size. This projector has 3,300 lumens, supports content encoded in H.265, and runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop. It's due for release in the first quarter of 2017, and is designed for digital signage and home theater.

This projector can throw 100-inch UHD video from just 2 inches

The higher income brackets saw drastic growth in their income while the bottom 90% of us actually saw our real income decline from 1980 until 2013. The average income of the bottom 90% of us fell 5% from $33,478 to $31,652. The average household income of every other bracket rose. The average income of the next 9% rose from 42% from $126k to $178k. The average income of the bottom nine tents of the top 1% rose 94%, up to $657k. The bottom nine tenths of the top 0.1% saw its average income rise 183% to just over $3 million/year, and the average income of the top 0.01% rose a stunning 325% to nearly $25 million per year. This data is drawn from an update that Professor Emmanuel Saez released to data accompanying a paper published by himself and Thomas Piketty entitled Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-2002 (2004).

Income Growth in the United States by Bracket Between 1980 and 2013

Yates recalls that initially at Sky there was a period of experimentation, of “thinking outside the box”, followed by a decision to focus on doing the simple things properly. “They initiated warming down, which is obvious but no one [before] could be arsed to do it, post-race eating protocols, weighing the riders, checking their urine for dehydration. They did those things properly, not just every three days. Because they were a new team no one would say: ‘Sod that, I’m not doing it.’ They didn’t have to battle with the old ways.”

Team Sky show power of the pack is key to Tour de France dominance | William Fotheringham | Sport | The Guardian

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Given that depression also tends to involve lethargy and detachment, some have argued that burnout is just a stigma-free label for the same condition. In her book, Schaffner quotes one German newspaper article that claimed burnout is just a “luxury version” of depression for high-flying professionals. “Only losers become depressive,” the article continued. “Burnout is a diagnosis for winners, or, more specifically, for former winners.” In general, however, the two conditions are generally considered to be distinct. “Theorists generally agree that depression entails a loss of self-confidence, or even self-hatred or self-contempt, which is not the case for burnout, where the image of the self often remains intact,” Schaffner says.

BBC - Future - The reasons why exhaustion and burnout are so common

Again, there are generally big risks when you see huge potential upside. That said, here are 10 stocks trading under $10 in which analysts gave massive upside calls during the week of July 22.

Nokia, Groupon, Other Stocks Under $10 With Huge Upside Calls (NASDAQ: GRPN) (NYSE: NOK) - 24/7 Wall St.

Dropping your smartphone when taking a selfie could soon be less risky, says specialist glass maker Corning. It has launched its next generation of Gorilla Glass - the material used in more than 70% of smartphone screens, including on Samsung and Apple devices. Corning said Gorilla Glass 5 could survive more than 80% of drops from as high as 1.6 metres. Shattered or cracked screens are the number one cause of smartphone repairs and customer complaints globally. The new glass was tested on rough surfaces - a demo for journalists showed dummy phones being dropped from a height of 1.6 meters onto a sheet of sandpaper... As well as drops, the company said it was twice at good at resisting scratches and other damage compared to what's currently on the market.

New Gorilla Glass helps prevent phone smashes - BBC News

David Halberstam’s 1972 book, “The Best and the Brightest,” is an account of how brilliant U.S. officials with impressive credentials made such a mess of the war in Vietnam. We had a copy on the shelf at home when I was growing up, so I knew the gist long before I got around to reading it. I was therefore somewhat taken aback the first time I heard some of my ambitious peers unironically referring to themselves as “the best and the brightest.” I eventually got used to that. As Halberstam put it in a foreword to the 20th-anniversary edition of the book, the phrase “went into the language, although it is often misused, failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”

'Meritocracy' Is Just Another Way to Put You Down - Bloomberg View

The Superbook is a laptop shell with a 768p screen, keyboard, and touchpad which you can plug your Android phone into, turning it into a fully functioning laptop. Connecting an Android phone via USB cable launches the Superbook app, which opens a full desktop experience on the laptop itself, using the phone's processing power in place of internal hardware. The device was initially listed as having an eight hour battery life, but since a funding stretch goal was met, will now come with 10 hours as standard. What's more, the device will charge your phone, and should offer a full desktop experience with web browsing, word processing, and gaming capabilities. The idea is that, since smartphone hardware is becoming increasingly capable, users will never need to upgrade their laptop as long as they keep upgrading their phones.

The Superbook turns your phone into a laptop

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Hansen was describing an economy where an aging population and slowing technological progress combined to drive a higher savings rate and make investments unattractive, limiting growth. Goldman’s report warns of a “slow secular growth regime,” despite the attempted boost from years of ultra-low interest rates. “Expectations that economic growth would accelerate to 3% have been repeatedly dashed. We estimate trend growth now equals 1.75%,” Goldman’s analysts said. According to the report, U.S. GDP growth has averaged 2% during the past 15 years and is forecasted to grow roughly at the same rate for the remainder of the decade. Alongside stagnating economic growth, sales for S&P 500 companies have also stalled. S&P 500 revenue has “grown at an average annual pace of just 4% since 2009 compared with the 6% average annual growth rate since 1970 and 4% rate since 1980,” the report said. And looking ahead, the pace will not change much, as the analysts forecast sales to expand by just 2% this year and by 5-6% each year from 2017 to 2019.

Goldman Warns That Secular Growth Stocks Can't Outrun A Stagnant Economy Forever - Forbes

The Nikkei has developed two powerful breakout patterns. The first pattern is the double bottom pattern. This is created by the low near 14,865 reached in February and again in June. This is a very bullish chart pattern and it is used to set a projected upside target.

Chart: Nikkei looks poised for a breakout

Do you ever hesitate to click on a post shared by a friend on Facebook? Not because it's a boring picture of their dinner, but because you're suspicious it might not actually have been posted by them? The interconnectivity of social media means it is a perfect hunting ground for illegal activity, and increasingly people are realising that their "friend" many not actually be their friend.

Social Media: a hunting ground for cybercriminals - BBC News

An HIV-positive Malawian man, who says he is paid to have sex with children as part of initiation rites, has been arrested on the president's orders. Eric Aniva, a sex worker known in Malawi as a "hyena", was the subject of a BBC feature last week. He told the BBC that he did not mention his HIV status to those who hire him. President Peter Mutharika said the police should investigate and charge him over the cases of defilement he had seemingly confessed to.

Malawian 'hyena man' arrested for having sex with children - BBC News

While urgent-care centers have been strip-mall staples for decades, the chance to catch dinner, a movie, and a surgical procedure under the same roof is new—and coming soon to a mall near you. The reason is commerce: Mall operators are looking for tenants that trade in entertainment and services to replace the brick-and-mortar retailers slowly being strangled by Amazon.com and its online competitors. Rents, particularly at older malls, are a bargain.

The Mall of the Future Will Offer Dinner, Movies, and a Colonoscopy - Bloomberg

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So, to take full advantage of that positive shift in momentum, we're turning to the charts for a technical look at five stocks that are teetering on the edge of breakout territory this week. In case you're unfamiliar with technical analysis, here's the executive summary: technical analysis is a way for investors to quantify qualitative factors, such as investor psychology, based on a stock's price action and trends. Once the domain of cloistered trading teams on Wall Street, technicals can help top traders make consistently profitable trades and can aid fundamental investors in better planning their stock execution. Without further ado, here's a rundown of five technical setups that are showing solid upside potential right now.

These 5 Stocks Are Breaking Out This Summer - TheStreet

Apple Inc. released its highly-anticipated quarterly results after the bell yesterday, and analysts and investors seem to like what they see. The company reported fiscal third-quarter revenue that beat expectations, and while iPhone unit sales fell 15 percent from a year earlier, that exceeded the average estimate on Wall Street. Shares are trading about 7 percent higher in the pre-market, showing signs of making a bigger move higher following a tough few months.

Here's What Wall Street Is Saying About Apple's Earnings Report - Bloomberg

“People are worried about technology,” said Shiller. “It’s all of these amazing devices that are out there helping us—they’re great—but the benefits of them seem to go substantially toward a minority of wealthy people.” As a result, Shiller says advances in technology have led to “rising inequality.” The subject of whether or not technology is helping or hurting the economy is hotly debated. And here’s why it’s ironic. While there’s little doubt that technology has helped drive economic growth in the US and worldwide, some say the progression of technology has made many jobs obsolete.

Robert Shiller identifies the surprising source of the world’s problems today

Gordon argues that the digital revolution that began in the 1970s and was largely incorporated into the American economy by the 1990s only affected a small section of the economy, namely the world of entertainment and communication. Gates disagrees, writing: The digital revolution affects the very mechanism of the marketplace. How buyers and sellers find each other, how we amass information, how we can create models to simulate things before building them, how scientists collaborate across continents, how we learn new things—all of this has changed dramatically thanks to digital innovation. And Gates believes that these changes will help power some pretty amazing technological advances that will help create economic growth and improve the human race in years to come. Here are the three that Gates mentioned in discussing Gordon’s book

Bill Gates on Robert Gordon: 3 Amazing Tech Advances

A Zappos employee recently had a customer-service call that lasted 10 hours, 43 minutes, breaking an internal record at the Amazon-owned online retailer. On June 11, in Zappos' Las Vegas headquarters, Steven Weinstein answered a call from a customer who needed some help with an order of a few items. The two began to chat, and even after she was helped, she stayed on the line.

A Zappos employee had the company's longest customer-service call at 10 hours, 43 minutes

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We have a serious productivity problem with office workers and estimated that less than 50 percent of their time is spent on value-creating business activities. The younger workers are often off task, engaged on social media, on the internet, texting on phones and other unproductive activities. The Department of Labor must realize that if we are supposed to pay them overtime for work they should do during normal work this will make us have to focus on micromanaging employees and reducing compensation to reflect actual productivity of a mandated 40 hour or less workweek.

Dallas Fed on millennials and productivity - Business Insider

Robot bartenders mixing your cocktails, 360-degree views from an observational pod, and having the option of "skydiving" at sea. That's the experience promised by what Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. calls the world's smartest ship. The $1 billion Ovation of the Seas is joining the fight for market share in Asia, the world's fastest-growing cruise market, and looks to set itself apart with high-tech entertainment. Royal Caribbean took delivery of the ship in April , and it is on a 52-day voyage to its home port in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

Robot Bartenders and Virtual Skydiving: Smart Ship Cruises Into Asia - Bloomberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided a blueprint on Wednesday for what could turn into a major new business: search advertising. Facebook has had search capabilities on its social network for years, but the company has never really tried to turn it into a money-maker in the vein of Google's lucrative search-advertising business.

Mark Zuckerberg comments on making money from search - Business Insider

When it comes to living quarters for household staff, the upstairs/downstairs concept—popularized by a British TV show about an aristocratic family living in a London town house—is still very much the rule. But for today’s wealthiest families, downstairs may well mean a studio on a lower floor in a luxury apartment building. From New York to London to Dubai and Singapore, developers are offering small apartments on less desirable floors to high-end buyers, so their nannies, personal assistants and chefs have only a short elevator commute to the penthouse where they work.

‘Upstairs, downstairs’ redefined by staff quarters in today’s luxury condo towers - MarketWatch

Girls are ganging up on boys in a new cyberbullying craze called “roasting”, a digital safety expert has warned. The new bullying takes place via mobile apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook, where girls pick on a boy and vent the most offensive abuse until the victim “completely cracks”.

Girls gang up on boys in new cyberbullying craze called 'roasting', expert warns

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The documents that Justo leaked have set off a chain reaction of investigations in at least half a dozen countries, and led to what Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general, described last week as “the largest kleptocracy case” in US history. According to lawsuits filed last week by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), at least $3.5bn has been stolen from 1MDB. The purpose of the fund, which was set up by Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, in 2009, was to promote economic development in a country where the median income stands at approximately £300 per month. Instead, the DoJ alleged that stolen money from 1MDB found its way to numerous associates of Prime Minister Najib, who subsequently went on a lavish spending spree across the world. It also accused Najib of receiving $681m of cash from 1MDB – a claim he denied. Money from 1MDB, the US also claimed, helped to purchase luxury apartments in Manhattan, mansions in Los Angeles, paintings by Monet, a corporate jet, and even financed a major Hollywood movie.

1MDB: The inside story of the world’s biggest financial scandal | Randeep Ramesh | World news | The Guardian

A FEW WEEKS AGO I spoke to a trade group of construction company CEOs and CFOs. I thought their top concern would be taxes, regulations, the slow-growth economy or, perhaps, the 2016 election. Wrong. It was the lack of skilled labor. Welders, carpenters, HVAC technicians–the U.S. has far too few of them. The shortfall in welders alone runs as high as 240,000, and it will get worse. The American Welding Society predicts it will reach 340,000 by 2024. The average welder is 54 years old, compared with about age 40 for the American workforce as a whole. Young people simply aren’t going into skilled trades like welding.

This Tragic Economic Mismatch Costs Trillions and Orphans Millions - Forbes

Gold and the stock market have never quite seen eye to eye, but recently the relationship has become one of outright antagonism. That means an investor looking to hedge against a potential market drop could do much worse than picking up some gold.

If you own gold, you’re basically short stocks

Amazon's cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, didn't fail to impress again this quarter. It had $2.8 billion in revenue, up 58% year-over-year, on a healthy 25% operating margin. That puts AWS on a very impressive $11 billion revenue run rate. "We feel like we’re in the leadership position and we’re looking to expand that," Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said about AWS's growth during the press call on Thursday. Olsavsky went on to attribute the success of AWS to 3 factors:

These are the reasons why Amazon Web Services is so successful - Business Insider

Specifically, he recommends buying the 101-strike weekly calls expiring on Friday, and selling the 102-strike calls. This trade will cost a total of 24 cents per share, and return a profit of 76 cents, or 317 percent, if Apple closes the week at $102 or above. "It's a little bit of a gamble," Gordon granted, "but we have an attractive reward-to-risk ratio."

How I plan to quickly make more than 200% on Apple: Trader

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An hour's "brisk exercise" each day offsets the risks of early death linked to a desk-bound working life, scientists suggest. The analysis of data from more than a million people is part of a study of physical activity published in the Lancet to coincide with the Olympics. Watching TV was found to be worse than sitting at a desk, probably because of associated habits like snacking. Current NHS guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week. Being inactive is known to increase the risk of conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and some cancers. It has been linked to 5.3 million deaths globally a year - compared with 5.1 million linked to smoking.

Hour's activity 'offsets sedentary day' - BBC News

You might think that research upending that conclusion would immediately be celebrated as an important breakthrough. Yet when, in the late 1960s, George Akerlof wrote “The Market for Lemons”, which did just that, and later won its author a Nobel prize, the paper was rejected by three leading journals. At the time, Mr Akerlof was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley; he had only completed his PhD, at MIT, in 1966. Perhaps as a result, the American Economic Review thought his paper’s insights trivial. The Review of Economic Studies agreed. The Journal of Political Economy had almost the opposite concern: it could not stomach the paper’s implications. Mr Akerlof, now an emeritus professor at Berkeley and married to Janet Yellen, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, recalls the editor’s complaint: “If this is correct, economics would be different.”

Secrets and agents | The Economist

But it’s still limited—in resolution, how it tracks movement, and how the body responds to what it projects, among many other things. The problems are enormous and require a deeper understanding of human sensory mechanisms than currently exists. (For example, how should a pair of goggles follow the movement of the eye to allow the processor to manipulate the plane of focus?) It’s going to take billions to make it work.

Facebook’s really big plans for virtual reality

The historic surge in Apple Inc.’s stock on Wednesday is finally giving investors something other than declining iPhone sales to talk about, and could confirm what Warren Buffett may have believed several months ago, that a bottom has already been seen.

Apple’s historic stock surge could confirm what Buffett already knew - MarketWatch

Owners are under no obligation to accept the buyback offer for the value of the cars before Volkswagen’s test-rigging scheme was disclosed, plus $5,100 to $9,852 in additional compensation. If the carmaker fails to win the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval for fixes before June 30, 2019, there’s nothing to stop owners from driving the pollutant-spewing cars as long as they don’t run afoul of regulations set by individual states... The EPA and California Air Resources Board must approve any fix proposed by VW to address cars emitting as much as 40 times the allowable limit of nitrogen oxide gases. Meeting the agencies’ standards has proven elusive for the carmaker.

VW Owners Might Just Keep Driving Dirty Diesels After Settlement - Bloomberg