Links for 9/29

[admin]

Word that U.S. banking regulators are planning to force the biggest banks to carry yet more capital – more than agreed upon by international regulators – was great news for those already invested in the highest-quality bank stocks, namely Wells Fargo (WFC).

Bank Liquidity: Think About It Now, Not In Crisis

The improving economic picture in the U.S. and Europe will have more of an impact on global growth trends than the tepid data coming out of China and Asia. The analysts also don’t foresee a significant further slowdown in China’s growth ahead, and the release last week of positive economic data, including a surprisingly large 10 percent increase in industrial production, underscored that forecast.

Does China’s Slowdown Really Matter? Not as Much as You’d Think. | The Financialist

Tokyo is one of safest capital cities in the world, too. “People reserve their seats in Starbucks by leaving their wallet on the table,” said Chris Kirkland, a British expat who has lived in Tokyo for five years and founded the site TokyoCheapo.com. In general, residents respect personal space and privacy, and public spaces are remarkably clean.

BBC - Travel - Living in: Tokyo : Tokyo

One of our financial sector’s most striking traits is how fiercely it resists useful, disruptive entrepreneurship that routinely upends other sectors of our economy...The intense pressure to conform, to not make waves, has got to be the most depressing part of all, for a genuinely ambitious young person. It’s pretty clear that the government lacks the power to force serious change upon the financial sector

Michael Lewis Wall Street - Business Insider

The rewarding Japanese market has attracted all of the top players from the Mainland, and they are breaking new records in delivering modules to the country. For the first seven months of the year, Chinese Export Data Report (CEDR) has captured approximately 3.8GW of modules delivered to Japan by Chinese companies.

Chinese Solar Companies Deliver Record Volumes To Japan | Seeking Alpha

Billionaire investor, Bill Ackman, has one of the best investing track records in the world. When you add back fees, Ackman has returned 1,199% since starting his fund in 2004.  That compares to 119% in the S&P 500 for the same period.  That’s ten times better than the S&P 500... Ackman has 80% of his fund’s money in just three stocks.  That shows extraordinary conviction

Billionaire Bill Ackman's Concentrated Six Stock Portfolio - Yahoo Finance

Mario Draghi’s plan to channel as much as 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) into the euro region’s economy is running into a blockage: some companies in the countries hardest hit by the debt crisis don’t want the money.

Draghi’s Trillion-Euro Pump Finds Blockage in Spain: Euro Credit - Bloomberg

The monthly flow of new loans of as much as 1 million euros for as much as a year -- a type of credit typically used by small and medium-sized companies -- is still down by two-thirds in Spain from a 2007 peak, according to Bank of Spain data. The total stock of loans is almost 470 billion euros below the 2008 record of 1.87 trillion euros, the figures show.

Draghi’s Trillion-Euro Pump Finds Blockage in Spain: Euro Credit - Bloomberg

Bears who profit from price declines have sold short 8.9 million shares, or about 2.4 percent of Alibaba’s listed stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Markit, a London-based provider of financial information. The Hangzhou-based company, China’s biggest e-commerce operator, sold 368.1 million shares in the IPO. The stock fell 1.8 percent to $88.92 in New York yesterday.

Alibaba Bears Emerge to Short 8.9 Million Shares - Bloomberg

[admin]

The world's three economic superpowers - the U.S., China and Europe - are heading for a major collapse in asset values because their economic models favor consumption instead of productivity, one economist has warned.

US, China, Europe nearing 'Minsky moment': Economist

The world's three economic superpowers - the U.S., China and Europe - are heading for a major collapse in asset values because their economic models favor consumption instead of productivity, one economist has warned. "We're still not wise enough to realize that our current model is a 'Ponzi' scheme rushing toward its inevitable 'Minsky moment'," Steen Jakobsen, a chief economist at Danish investment bank Saxo Bank, said in a research note on Friday. The term "Minsky moment" refers to a phrase coined for the Asian debt crisis of the late 1990s by Pimco's Paul McCulley. Unsustainable debt will be the cause of the crash, according to Jakobsen, and will occur when the cash returns on assets become insufficient to service the debt taken on to acquire those assets in the first place. He gives no timeframe for his thesis but says that the problem of huge debts has been swept under the carpet by central bankers and policymakers and will come back as low inflation or even deflation.

US, China, Europe nearing 'Minsky moment': Economist

The smartphone easily lasted two days on a single charge with heavy use: push email arriving all day, hundreds of notifications from social media, three hours a day of browsing and 30 minutes of gaming, plus an hour of streaming music over Bluetooth.

Sony Xperia Z3 review: great battery life and quality camera | Technology | theguardian.com

Researchers in the UK have revealed a technique that could enable up to one gigabit internet speeds over existing copper connections.

Could ultrafast broadband over copper speed the rollout of gigabit internet? - TechRepublic

The reporter, Jake Bernstein, has obtained 46 hours of tape recordings, made secretly by a Federal Reserve employee, of conversations within the Fed, and between the Fed and Goldman Sachs. The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived.

The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes - Bloomberg View

For Solazyme, the agreement represents an important step as it ramps up to commercial-scale production. Originally conceived as a fuel business, Solazyme has focused on making oils for products with higher profit margins like personal care, food and petrochemicals.

Unilever to Buy Oil Derived From Algae From Solazyme - NYTimes.com

But in acquiring the Dresser-Rand Group, a Houston-based oil services company, in a $7.6 billion deal announced Sunday night, Siemens signaled an even bigger push into the booming American sector. The deal also demonstrated how much big corporate suitors are willing to pay for companies with a strong market niche.

Siemens Makes $7.6 Billion Bet on Fracking in U.S. - NYTimes.com

Right now there's only one other option if you're on the prowl for a 4K TV with full-array local dimming, and it costs $8,000. In a true-to-form Vizio tactic of slashing prices to gain market share, its 50-inch full-array will start at just $999.

Vizio P652ui 4K LED TV First Impressions Review - Reviewed.com Televisions

[admin]

Put down the 10-K filings and the stock screeners. It's time to take a break from the traditional methods of generating investment ideas. Instead, let the crowd do it for you. From hedge funds to individual investors, scores of market participants are turning to social media to figure out which stocks are worth watching. It's a concept that's known as "crowdsourcing," and it uses the masses to identify emerging trends in the market.

How to Trade the Market's Most-Active Stocks - TheStreet

In their study, Norton and Kiatpongsan asked about 55,000 people around the globe, including 1,581 participants in the U.S., how much money they thought corporate CEOs made compared with unskilled factory workers. Then they asked how much more pay they thought CEOs should make. The median American guessed that executives out-earned factory workers roughly 30-to-1—exponentially lower than the highest actual estimate of 354-to-1. They believed the ideal ratio would be about 7-to-1.

Americans Have No Idea How Bad Inequality Is - Business Insider

A Credit Suisse report found that, overall, companies with a market cap greater than US$ 10 billion that have at least one woman on the board of directors outperformed those that had no women at all by 26% for large caps over the six years leading up to 2011.

Stocks With Female Directors Outperform - Business Insider

"Paul McGinley has completely out-thought his opposite number Tom Watson. While the US have looked tired and ineffective in both afternoon sessions, Europe have been a fresh and vital force. "McGinley has employed an intelligent and inspired plan and his man-management has been spot on. By contrast Watson has made tactical errors. "Benching Phil Mickelson, when the team's unofficial 'leader' was desperate to play, made little sense when so many of the Americans were clearly exhausted in a second successive foursomes rout. "The respective captains have named predictable batting orders, but it is difficult to see Europe squandering their deserved and commanding advantage."

BBC Sport - Ryder Cup 2014: Europe take 10-6 lead over United States

Halfway across the globe, in the "sunshine state" of Queensland, Australia, electrical engineer David Smyth says the war waged by some governments and utilities against distributed energy, the term used for power generated by solar panels, is already lost.

Old Energy Is Doing Everything It Can To Stop The Rise Of Solar - Business Insider

[admin]

Fed up with forgetting names? It's downright embarrassing when we forget names of people we know we shouldn't. It makes us feel stupid, especially when they remember our name.

How Wealthy People Remember Names - Business Insider

Stocks may have had a very volatile week, but investors and traders are still looking for opportunities in overlooked or undervalued companies. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst reports and boutique research reports each day, which translates to hundreds of reports each week. Some of these reports cover stocks to buy and others cover stocks to sell.

Stocks Under $10 With Massive Upside Calls Include Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Eldorado Gold (NYSE: EGO) - 24/7 Wall St.

The Federal Reserve mustn’t “fall behind the curve” as it weighs when to start raising interest rates, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said, citing strengthening U.S. growth and building wage-price pressures.

Fisher Says Fed Must Weigh Wage Pressures in Setting Rate Policy - Bloomberg

Martine Rothblatt is an idealist and the CEO of a very successful biotech firm focused on treatments for so-called "orphan diseases" - those illnesses that affect too few to be of interest to big pharma.

Biotech's future: The government is key - Yahoo Finance

The percentage of Americans rating overall healthcare as fair or poor has risen from 49% in 1998 to 61% in 2014. Yet the portion saying they're satisfied with their own plan has ticked up from 87% to 88% during the same time.

Why you hate Obamacare but love your own health plan - Yahoo Finance

Fisher, Plosser and the other hawks say inflation is becoming our greatest economic worry. They want the Fed to raise interest rates soon to keep the unemployment rate from dropping too far and to prevent American workers from getting a raise.

The Fed would be crazy to worry about runaway wages

Whenever the market goes through periods of turbulence it's a natural reaction for investors to turn to the consumer staples sector. The companies that conduct business in this sector are those that create products that individuals are very unlikely to cut out of budgets regardless of their situation.

When The Market Gets Rough Turn To This ETF (XLP,PG,KO,PM)

[admin]

Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels constitute the fastest growing renewable energy technology in the world since 2000. Global capacity has exploded from 1.5 gigawatts at the turn of the century to 136 gigawatts currently, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

Old Energy Is Doing Everything It Can To Stop The Rise Of Solar - Business Insider

British workers face a "lost decade" of real wage growth, financial services firm EY warned on Monday, with the "squeezed middle" and young people set to feel the brunt.

UK workers face ‘lost decade’ of wage growth

But as it happens, Northwest Bio’s stock, after a brief upward spike, ended the week down 11 percent below where it was the day before the news from Britain crossed the ticker. And therein lies an eye-opening tale of how hedge funds and their Wall Street allies stifle innovation and damage the economy in their relentless pursuit of short-term trading profits.

Northwest Biotherapeutics stock woes highlight the harm of short sales - The Washington Post

Over the past year the PCE index has risen 1.5%, down from 1.6% in the prior month and a two-year peak of 1.7% in May. With inflation cooling off a bit, the Federal Reserve can wait longer before it raises short-term interest rates for the first time since 2008.

Consumer spending bounces back as summer ends - MarketWatch

The Federal Reserve should be "exceptionally patient" in removing monetary policy accommodation, delaying interest-rate hikes until it is confident the U.S. economy can withstand them and only raising rates slowly once it starts, a top Fed official said on Monday.

Fed's Evans repeats call for patience in raising U.S. interest rates - Yahoo Finance

The real job creators are not CEOs or corporations or wealthy investors. The job creators are members of America’s vast middle class and the poor, whose purchases cause businesses to expand and invest.

Robert Reich (Raising Most People's Wages)

The truth is that the quiescence of interest and inflation rates was predicted by everyone who understood the obvious — that we had entered a liquidity trap — and thought through the implications. I explained it more than five years ago. When central banks have pushed policy rates as low as they can, and the economy is still depressed, what that tells you is that the economy is awash in excess desired savings that have nowhere to go.

Nobody Could Have Predicted, Bill Gross Edition - NYTimes.com

[admin]

Leadership is everything in the Ryder Cup. Yes, it comes down to the players to sink the putts, but for that to happen effectively their mood, motivation and readiness has to be at the highest level. And it is the captain who can make sure this is the case.

BBC Sport - Ryder Cup 2014: How captain Paul McGinley out-thought USA

The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index. The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago.

BBC News - World wildlife populations halved in 40 years - report

The Russian leader initially lived up to expectations as he reduced taxes and pushed entry into the World Trade Organization. Markets rallied and foreign investors poured in, driving the Micex Index of stocks up 12-fold in Putin’s first two terms, before the financial crisis hit in 2008. The ruble rose 12 percent in the same period.

What Putin Wrought Has World Asking What Russia Might Have Been - Bloomberg

The U.S. dollar index (New York Board of Trade (Futures): =USD) has climbed around 7 percent this year, with the Fed now nearly completing the tapering of its asset purchases, with markets widely expecting interest rate increases to begin sometime next year. Some analysts are concerned this will spur a repeat of the "taper tantrum," when concerns about the Fed's move to begin tapering caused a brutal selloff in emerging market assets earlier this year and last year.

Why a strong dollar is scarier than taper tantrum - Yahoo Finance

The unrest in Hong Kong is "disturbing" but it shouldn't cause investors to sell China stocks, noted stock market bull Jeremy Siegel told CNBC on Monday.

Don't sell China on Hong Kong unrest: Jeremy Siegel

The same day in February that forces loyal to Vladimir Putin swept into Crimea, drawing international outrage that has since isolated Russia and diminished the ruble, China’s yuan surpassed the Swiss franc as the seventh most-used currency in the world.

Putin Reserve Rubles Vanish in Crimea Grab  - Bloomberg

an economic retreat for Putin. After proclaiming in 2007 that the ruble was poised to become a haven for global investors, the Russian leader has watched it fade, a victim of his nation’s stagnating economy since the land grab in Ukraine. Now so much money is leaving Russia that its central bank is considering temporary capital controls, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Putin Reserve Rubles Vanish in Crimea Grab  - Bloomberg

The ruble’s share of global trading dropped to 0.4 percent from 0.6 percent since 2012, falling five places to rank 18th most-traded in the world,

Putin Reserve Rubles Vanish in Crimea Grab  - Bloomberg

As fourth quarter kicks off, there's one market in Asia that has investors excited: Japan. The world's third largest economy may be struggling to shake off the drag from the sales tax hike that took effect in April, but a weakening yen, improving corporate profits and attractive valuations will likely power gains in equities in the coming months, say strategists.

This market will steal the show in fourth quarter

Advanced economies face "permanently weak demand" warned the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday, which argued "the time may be right for an infrastructure push".

Rich countries risk ‘permanently weak’ demand: IMF

"Back then, markets were poor at correctly pricing low-probability, high-impact tail risks. They still are."

'Dr. Doom' Roubini reveals his black swan scenarios