Links for June 2017

[admin]

First-quarter U.S. economic growth was abysmal, but don’t worry. The economy will soon bounce back. That’s the view of most economists. As a group, they think second-quarter gross domestic product growth will come in at 2.5%, compared with 0.7% in the first quarter. But what if they’re all wrong? This is a lot more likely than you may think. After all, economists in the “bounce back” camp build much of their case on the strong labor market. This does make sense, on the surface. Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, and we are at full employment. The problem is, there are several early-warning signs that the consumer is in trouble, even if most people refuse to believe it. What’s more, China’s credit tightening, the impending blowup of a housing bubble in Canada and ongoing delayed economic reform in Washington will also weigh on U.S. growth.

The contrarian investor’s best bet is coming down the pike - MarketWatch

No area of the stock market has been hotter than tech since the election, and it seems investors still haven't gotten their fill. They poured $1.8 billion into the largest exchange-traded fund tracking the sector on Tuesday, the biggest single-day inflow since September 2010. That jibes with data compiled by Bank of America Merrill Lynch last week, showing that the group is on pace to absorb the most capital since the dot-com bubble 15 years ago.

Investors pouring billions into the hottest part of the stock market - Business Insider

Yet something related to the Brexit referendum—the tumble in the value of sterling—is now causing the economy to slow. The British economy is highly dependent on consumer spending. With inflation now nearing 3%, Britons’ “real” wages (ie, adjusted for inflation) are falling. That means that the average person can now buy less in the shops.  And whereas in recent months Britons have papered over weak wage growth by borrowing, the latest figures from the Bank of England, published this morning, suggest that Britons are now taking a more cautious approach to their personal finances.

Postponed, not avoided: The Brexit slowdown is under way | The Economist

Proposed legislation currently being scrutinized by Congress poses a greater threat to the U.S. dollar's global reserve currency status than does any competing legal tender, according to ratings agency Fitch. The two pieces of draft legislation in question – the Federal Reserve Transparency Act (FRTA) and the Financial Choice Act (FCA) – are both aimed at restricting the independence of the Federal Reserve (Fed) and permitting greater political oversight of monetary policy.

Domestic politics is greatest threat to dollar’s global reign, says Fitch

Amazon.com Inc. has transformed businesses including retailing, filmmaking and data storage. But no one anticipated the bananas. It started with a brainstorm from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon should offer everyone near its headquarters—not just employees—healthy, eco-friendly snacks as a public service. After considering oranges, Amazon picked bananas, and opened its first Community Banana Stand in late 2015.

Amazon’s Latest Market Disruption: 1.7 Million Free Bananas - WSJ

[admin]

In essence, they don't see DRAM prices rolling over, simultaneously crushing the stock price. "I like this call," Cramer reasoned. Because of the sophistication of these chips, factories simply can't be built overnight. They take time to build and that's why supply hasn't come online as fast as some had expected. On the downside though, when additional supply does come online, it will likely hurt shares of Micron, he concluded.

Jim Cramer -- Pricing Should Remain Strong for Micron - TheStreet

The odd wrinkle right now is the way, on a given day, it's as if sectors take turns holding up the market. The unusual combination of high-momentum tech and boring, defensive sectors have shared leadership. Bespoke Investment Group notes the uncommon setup right now: The market is in record territory, yet the most "overbought" groups are consumer staples and utilities. On days when Treasury yields rise a bit and those "bond-proxy" sectors take a breather, the lagging bank and transportation stocks will bounce and keep the market from losing much ground, if any. Think of a basketball team whose bench players keep the game close while the stars sit out to rest.

Here's why the 'immaculate rotation' across sectors is driving the market

Stocks are near record highs, driven by surging tech shares, a sharp contrast with the bond market, where interest rates have been sinking on worries the economy just isn't getting enough juice for growth to pick up. The S&P 500 also is just a short hop to record territory, and it too tells a very different story from the Treasury market, where the belief is that the Federal Reserve may have to stop raising interest rates after its next hike in mid-June because of weak inflation or growth or both.

Bond market’s recession warning is at odds with stock market near record highs

Pimco analysts Richard Clarida, Andrew Balls, and Daniel Ivascyn cite "insecure stability" as a key factor that will affect policy decisions around the world. "Over our five-year secular horizon we believe that the global economy will be 'driving without a spare tire' as the Fed raises rates and shrinks its balance sheet," write the Pimco Analysts, "and that any pivot to fiscal policy that materializes will be unlikely by itself to boost global growth prospects in a sustainable way." They believe that any policy shifts will "coincide and collide" with the risk of recession, which they estimate to be around 70% over the next 5 years.

PIMCO: 5 key policy areas will test markets over the next 5 years - Business Insider

In 2014, for instance, the United States Health Interview Survey reported that 16% of people aged between 50 and 64 were impaired every day with chronic illness. Three decades earlier that number was 23%. In other words, as well as benefiting from longer lifespans, we are also experiencing longer “healthspans” – and the latter is proving to be even more malleable. To paraphrase and update a speech from John F Kennedy given at the first White House Conference on Ageing in 1961, life can indeed be added to years, rather than just years added to life.

BBC - Future - The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

[admin]

Few areas of the US market performed better than small-cap stocks following the presidential election. But hedge funds are betting the group's best days are finished. The Russell 2000 has surged by 17% since Donald Trump's victory — handily outpacing the S&P 500 by more than 3 percentage points — amid expectations that the more domestically focused group would be best positioned to benefit from a lower corporate tax rate. Now that investors are growing increasing skeptical that any of Trump's policies will be passed in timely fashion, those big relative gains in small-cap shares look awfully precarious. Large speculative investors agree. They hold the biggest net short position in six years on the Russell 2000, according to data compiled by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Hedge funds loading up on bets against small caps - Business Insider

Wage growth returned to Japan in April, with a revision wiping out the contraction from the month prior and suggesting the outlook for lifting inflation may be less dire than previously thought – albeit still far from ideal. Labour cash earnings growth rose to 0.5 per cent year on year in April, up from a revised reading of no growth in March (previously a contraction of 0.4 per cent) and besting a median forecast of 0.3 per cent from economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Japan wage growth returns in April

Apple shares were downgraded to sector weight from overweight by technology-focused research firm Pacific Crest in a note Sunday. Analyst Andy Hargreaves told clients to buy Alphabet shares with the money raised by selling some Apple stock. "We believe AAPL anticipates strong performance in the iPhone 8 cycle, while providing relatively little weight to risks through the cycle or the potential for iPhone sales to decline in FY19," wrote the analyst. He cited risks "around gross margins, elasticity, supply issues, or the likelihood for declines beyond the iPhone 8 cycle."

Apple gets rare downgrade by Pacific Crest to start week

It is supremely odd that the technology industry's most revered gadget maker, Apple Inc., responded Monday to a tech device first introduced by a relative gadget lightweight, Amazon.This state of affairs would have seemed impossible in late 2014, when the digital shopping company first introduced a home speaker with a voice-activated digital helper built in. Yet here we are. Apple took the covers off a home speaker called HomePod with Siri as a voice-activated butler.I'm sure HomePod will be great, at least for listening to music. Apple seems focused on making the very best home speaker, particularly for people who use the company's Apple Music service. Probably sensibly, Apple executives spent far less time trumpeting how HomePod will work with Siri, which is still too dumb for all but basic functions like setting reminders.

Apple's Golden Handcuffs - Bloomberg Gadfly

It’s been a rough year for Samsung Electronics Co. in certain respects. The South Korean company had to kill off the fire-prone Note 7 smartphone, then heir apparent Jay Y. Lee was put on trial for alleged bribery. Yet Samsung shares have soared with strong sales of semiconductors and displays. Indeed, its share have outperformed Apple Inc.’s in a stellar year for the iPhone maker.

In Year of Disaster, Samsung Shares Outperform Apple's: Chart - Bloomberg

[admin]

The days of easy money are over. And with the Federal Reserve expected to hike interest rates later this month, equity investors are seeking companies well-equipped to withstand tighter lending conditions. In other words, they want to buy stocks with strong balance sheets — ones with easy access to liquidity and minimal debt exposure. And they've already started.

Cash-rich companies are king in the stock market - Business Insider

Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc. could be sitting on a $16 billion revenue opportunity. In her annual internet trends report released Wednesday, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker pointed to a gap in the monetization of mobile users in the U.S. Time spent on mobile had increased to 28% of total media consumption time in 2016, while advertising agencies were only allocating 21% of their spending there. Meeker thinks that is a huge opportunity waiting for online advertising platforms like Facebook, Snapchat parent Snap and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

Facebook, Snap are sitting on a $16 billion opportunity - MarketWatch

The European Union is in an “existential crisis” and has to deal with “a multiplicity of accumulated problems” from both inside and outside the region, according to billionaire investor George Soros. Speaking at the Brussels Economic Forum on Thursday, the Hungarian-born financier struck a downbeat tone on the current state of the EU, warning the institution needs to completely reinvent itself.

Europe is surrounded by ‘hostile’ powers, including Trump’s U.S.: Soros - MarketWatch

The proximate cause for this push? The Waymo partnership with the No. 3 Distrupter on CNBC's annual list, Lyft, because it gives the company more access to miles driven, which is the key metric supporting Waymo's case as the dominant self-driving car. The way you measure the strength of your autonomous driving initiative is to see how often the car has to be disengaged because of issues. Waymo is far ahead of every other manufacturer, and the company's numbers are in evidence right on the California Department of Motor Vehicles website. That means it can be the prototype for all car manufacturers--and be Switzerland, if it wants to. I have been thinking that if Mark Fields, ex-CEO of Ford  (F) , had hooked up with Waymo, as Fiat Chrysler  (FCAU) is working with the company for minivans, he'd have kept his job. Now I love this report, but I take issue with one element of it--the idea that Waymo may be spun off into a separate company. I think that would be a big mistake, because the autonomous vehicle total addressable market is so much bigger than the search market is now. The latter is way too dependent on advertising--and advertising is considered a very cyclical business.

Investors Keep Getting It Wrong; Waymo Is Miles Ahead: Jim Cramer's View - Pg.7 - TheStreet

Since the early 1930s, a 30% reduction in the amount of food consumed per day has been linked to longer, more active lives in worms, flies, rats, mice, and monkeys. Across the animal kingdom, in other words, calorie restriction has proven the best remedy for the ravages of life. And it’s possible that humans have just as much to gain.

BBC - Future - The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

[admin]

While concerns about the global economy continue to plague investors, Paris-based OECD has forecast that the global economy is on course for its fastest growth in close to six years but has warned that countries need to strive to do better. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has predicted that the global economy is set to grow 3.5 percent in 2017, followed by an increase to 3.6 percent in 2018 as confidence is increasing and investment and trade are picking up from low levels.

OECD ups global growth forecast to six-year high; downgrades US

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite index hit all-time highs (again) last week and with volatility hovering near a 24-year low, Secretary of Defense James Mattis gave an underreported speech that should cause investors to rethink their complacency. In an address to a security conference in Singapore, the retired Marine Corps general who headed Central Command from 2010 to 2013 called North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear program a “clear and present danger” and an “urgent military threat.”

North Korea may be the biggest black swan of all - MarketWatch

James Comey, the British election and a diplomatic rift in the Middle East are supposedly setting up a trifecta of investor angst. But one closely followed macro strategist isn’t so sure a Treasury rally that’s driven the 10-year yield to a seven-month low is really all about investors seeking havens.

Is this the ‘last hurrah’ for bond-market bulls? - MarketWatch

Consistently profitable commodity trading is not about discovering some magic way to find profitable trades. [T]rade identification is the least important of all. In my opinion, learning the importance of managing losing trades is the single most important trading component. Consistently successful trading is founded on solid risk management. Consider an average year for PLB. Only 30% of his trades become winners. The rest either break even or lose. Yet he’s still extremely profitable. How is that possible? It’s because he keeps his losses extremely small. PLB’s major edge is in risk management. Limiting his losses ensures his winners more than make up for the losers. He consistently avoids the big mistake that would knock him out of the game. That’s how he achieves long-term success.

Macro-Ops Blog | Managing Your Losing Trades | Talkmarkets

Unfortunately, American businesses are extremely expensive. The ratio of enterprise value to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the companies in the Russell 3000 index has almost returned to its all-time high during the peak of the 1990s equity bubble: Unlike the ratio of price to earnings, the EV/EBITDA multiple is less prone to changes in accounting standards or capital structures. It simply captures the value assigned to the entire company by all types of investors and how much money that company generates from its current operations to reward those investors. By this measure, American companies have become about 23 per cent more expensive since the start of 2013.

US stocks too expensive? Consider Japan | FT Alphaville

[admin]

In fact, Cramer found that the CANDIES stocks — Chipotle, Apple, Netflix, Deckers, Intuitive Surgical, Express Scripts, and Salesforce.com — are up 281 percent on average since he formed the acronym in 2010, versus 121 percent for the S&P 500 index. The "Mad Money" host picked these particular names because they were some of the best growth stocks of the time, and oddly, they remain some of the strongest performers today.

Cramer revisits a pre-FANG acronym to see if those stocks kept growing

Can any strategy consistently beat the market? Increasingly, it doesn’t look like it. According to UBS, one of the hottest investment trends on Wall Street—one that has been touted as a way to zero in on securities with desirable characteristics for relatively cheap fees—has struggled to outperform over long periods of time. So-called “smart beta” funds, which use rules to develop portfolios with certain strategic tilts, like “value,” “low volatility,” or “momentum,” have in large part done worse than the overall market, particularly when fees are taken into account. Tally another point in the pro-indexing column, its proponents.

The track record for ‘smart beta’ ETFs provides more fuel for indexing camp - MarketWatch

The Digital Hub Initiative is the German government’s big move to strengthen connectivity and cooperation between startups in a digital age. In general, Germany has always done well in startup reports, with cities like Berlin usually getting high scores. But the international competition is fierce and there’s always room for improvement.

Europe's biggest economy uniting tech hubs to dethrone Silicon Valley - Business Insider

Older people who received transfusions of young blood plasma have shown improvements in biomarkers related to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease, New Scientist has learned. “I don’t want to say the word panacea, but here’s something about teenagers,” Jesse Karmazin, founder of startup Ambrosia, told New Scientist. “Whatever is in young blood is causing changes that appear to make the ageing process reverse.” Since August 2016, Karmazin’s company has been transfusing people aged 35 and older with plasma – the liquid component of blood – taken from people aged between 16 and 25. So far, 70 people have been treated, all of whom paid Ambrosia to be included in the study.

Human tests suggest young blood cuts cancer and Alzheimer's risk | New Scientist

Harvard medicine professor Ted Kaptchuk is at the bleeding edge of a radical new treatment in medicine: giving patients pills that don’t work. “Our patients tell us it’s nuts,” he says. “The doctors think it’s nuts. And we just do it. And we’ve been getting good results.” In medicine, placebo pills are typically used as a tool to test the effectiveness of real drugs. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, which researchers consider the gold standard for testing a drug’s effects, patients (and the doctors running the trial) don’t know who’s taking the real drug and who’s taking the placebo.

A radical new hypothesis in medicine: give patients drugs they know don’t work - Vox

[admin]

"Valuation signals are mixed and investor positioning is a significant source of near-term risk, but still attractive fundamentals and quant scores provide the offset," a group of equity strategists at the firm led by Savita Subramanian wrote in a client note. "We remain marketweight the tech sector."

Wall Street deates whether or not tech stocks are too expensive - Business Insider

Meanwhile, the bottom 99% are taking on increasing amounts of debt, causing their ratio of cash to debt to fall to 15%, the lowest level of the last decade — including the years before the Great Financial Crisis, the report said. This means that, excluding the richest 25 companies, the average U.S. company holds only 15 cents in cash for every dollar it owes.

America’s 25 richest companies control more than half of all corporate cash - MarketWatch

Your genes are partly responsible for whether you're a morning person or a night owl.  Research shows that being a morning person is associated with lots of health benefits. It's been linked to better sleep, sustained weight loss, and more happiness.

Benefits of being a morning person - Business Insider

To try to keep things ticking along, chipmakers have been tinkering with the basic design of the transistor itself. In 2012, for example, Intel, the biggest chipmaker of the lot, introduced transistors in which the gate surrounds the channel on three sides, making it better able to impose its will. Now IBM, a computing firm, has gone one better. In collaboration with Samsung, a Korean electronics giant, and GlobalFoundries, another big chipmaker, it has developed a new kind of transistor composed of three sheets of silicon, laid horizontally, which are surrounded completely by gate material. Such devices remain laboratory prototypes. But IBM’s engineers reckon they should permit Moore’s law to carry on until the mid 2020s.

A new way to extend Moore’s law

Dogs have their own innate sense of fairness and did not learn this from humans as previously believed, a new study has concluded. In fact the research suggested the opposite may be true – that dogs have learned greater acceptance of inequitable treatment as a result of their close relationship with people. In tests, wolves and dogs would both refuse to take part if they received no reward for pressing a buzzer while a partner animal got one for doing so. The same was true if they received a lower quality prize. It was thought that dogs had learned the importance of equality – seen as a sophisticated trait found in humans and some primates – during the domestication process, but the study found the wolves displayed a greater reluctance to take part once they realised what was going on.

Dogs’ innate sense of fairness being eroded by humans, study suggests | The Independent

[admin]

But what if one of the most valuable parts of the company was intangible, something that wouldn’t get a line on quarterly balance sheets? That is the investment premise behind a strategy that emphasizes the value of a company’s brand in calculating its future prospects. Brand, according to the research firm Brandometry, “is a collection of perceptions about a company, its assets, its people, and its conduct.”

A new ETF is making a bet that a company’s most prized asset isn’t in its balance sheet - MarketWatch

Goldman Sachs believes the rare combination of conditions supporting this bull market, especially the run in technology stocks, is about to end. "The unexpected mix of healthy growth and declining rates represents a Goldilocks scenario for U.S. equities," wrote David Kostin, the firm's chief U.S. equity strategist, in a note to end last week. "However, just like in the fairy tale, this perfect scenario is unlikely to last."

Goldman: fairy tale behind the tech bull market unlikely to last

A resurgence in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency use has benefited one stock in particular: graphics chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which looks poised to stretch gains to its fifth day in a row on Friday. Shares fell 4.8% to $12.28 by Friday close. "AMD has a great business model, a fabulous CEO and the right chips at the right time," TheStreet's founder and Action Alerts PLUS Portfolio Manager Jim Cramer said in an interview. "AMD has gained a lot of market share in a lot of prosaic Apple (AAPL) products, and that's a very big deal."

AMD Has Become a Very Big Deal for Several Reasons, Reveals Jim Cramer - TheStreet

Morgan Stanley's auto team, led by analyst Adam Jonas, seems to be convinced that the auto trade is officially over prompting him to slash over 11 million units from his North American SAAR forecast over the next 4 years.  Jonas attributes his controversial call to the fact that OEMs have been so aggressive in implementing policies designed to pull forward sales (e.g. longer loan terms, higher loan mix to subprime borrowers, etc.) that they've actually started to pressure used car prices to the point that they're cannibalizing new sales.

Morgan Stanley Warns Of "Unprecedented Buyer's Strike" In Autos; Slashes Car Sales Forecast | Zero Hedge

Buy low, sell high. It's a classic adage, and one that's helped stock investors reap consistent gains for the better part of seven decades. Until now. Having returned 5% on average each year from 1940 through 2007, the so-called value trade has lost 2% per year over the past decade, according to Goldman Sachs data. It's down 10% this year alone, badly lagging an S&P 500 that's climbed 8.7%. The decline of the value strategy has mirrored the rise of passive investing and quantitative trading. Total assets in performance factor-based exchange-traded funds have quadrupled in the past five years, approaching $600 billion earlier this year, while quants now manage more than $1 trillion, says Goldman.

One of history's most reliable stock-trading strategies is struggling - Business Insider

[admin]

"Indeed, the bigger story in our view is FAAMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet – a group of five stocks which have been the key drivers of both the SPX & NDX returns year-to date."

'FAAMG' is key driver of the stock market year-to-date, Goldman says - Business Insider

Tim Quast, founder and president of Denver-based market structure analytics firm Modern Networks, said the reason for the decline in tech stocks is a combination of powerful passive investing and market rules that can artificially inflate prices during rallies and deflate during selloffs. Read: What’s next for technology stocks — bloodbath or bliss? “As tech stocks performed well over the past year, passive allocation to this sector had increased. But investors concerned about high valuations began trimming allocation from May to June. When money starts to move out of a sector, it prompts tick data to move,” Quast said. “By our measures asset allocation has fallen from over 35% of daily volume in the [tech sector], to 32%. That will suddenly manifest in prices, and we saw on Friday,” he added. “Lack of buyers, rather than active sellers by big holders of tech stocks, prompted changes in the tick data, and when this change was detected, algorithms quickly moved to shorting stocks, which exacerbated price declines,” he said.

Tech slump may be the result of market structure - MarketWatch

Quantitative investing based on computer formulas and trading by machines directly are leaving the traditional stock picker in the dust and now dominating the equity markets, according to a new report from JPMorgan. "While fundamental narratives explaining the price action abound, the majority of equity investors today don't buy or sell stocks based on stock specific fundamentals," Marko Kolanovic, global head of quantitative and derivatives research at JPMorgan, said in a Tuesday note to clients.

Death of the human investor: Just 10% of trading is regular stock picking, JPMorgan estimates

Knowing something had to give, Congdon began to adjust her approach to work and restructured her day to achieve the same amount of output, without working around the clock. She decided to split her day into fewer 45-minute segments, and aimed to maximise her productivity within those strict time sessions. The key to maintaining focus and energy in shorter bursts was to apply flexibility to those segments – she could use some for exercise, some for meditation, some for work.  Getting rest within her workday helped lower stress levels and therefore achieve better results within the allotted time for working, Congdon found.

BBC - Capital - Why you should manage your energy, not your time

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning about a particularly nasty gastrointestinal illness that sounded like an infectious spore from the latest “Alien: Covenant” movie. The alert concerns a parasitic protozoa from the Cryptosporidium family (also known as “crypto&rdquo. It can cause “profuse, watery diarrhea that can last up to two to three weeks” and can lead to life-threatening wasting and “malabsorption” in people whose immune system is compromised. Cryptosporidium has emerged as the leading cause of recreational water–associated outbreaks, “particularly those associated with aquatic facilities.” That includes swimming pools, water parks, water playgrounds, hot tubs and spas.

Read this before jumping into a public swimming pool this summer - MarketWatch

[admin]

For the Greek people, the bailouts and the austerity measures implemented with them have come at a huge cost. Unemployment remains staggeringly high: 22.5% of Greeks were unemployed in March 2017. And almost half of people under the age of 25 were out of work Those who do work, earn less. The minimum monthly wage at the beginning of the crisis was €863. It has now fallen to €684 Pensioners have been hit particularly hard. Pension changes since 2010 mean 43% of pensioners now live on less than €660 a month, according to the Greek government Government spending on health was almost halved between 2010 and 2015, while the education budget was cut by 20%

Reality Check: Have the Greek bailouts worked? - BBC News

A key predictor of the health of the American economy is inching closer to signaling a recession.  The indicator in question is the US Treasury yield curve. That's a measure of the gap between short-term interest rates and long-term interest rates, and when it is steep — meaning it costs more to borrow money for the long-term — that's a good sign that means investors expect a quickly growing economy.   A flattening one suggests a slowing one. That's what's occurring now. The spread between the yield on 2-year Treasurys and 10-year Treasurys fell to just 79 basis points (or 0.79%) following Wednesday's disappointing Consumer price and retail sales data. At its current level the spread is within a few hundredths of a percentage point of being the tightest its been since 2007.

Interest rate spreads close to signaling recession - Business Insider

To combat the idea of forgoing lattes in the name of becoming a millionaire, Beth McMillan, a Ph.D. student in the computer science at the University of Oxford, decided to crunch the numbers: She found that, if instead of buying a latte, you invested 3 euros ($3.19 in U.S. dollars) for every day you bought a latte into an account that paid 6% interest for 50 years, you’d end up with 318,135.57 euros, or $337,942.69. Not bad, but not going to make you a millionaire any time soon.

Making your own caffè latte every morning could save you $337,942 over your lifetime - MarketWatch

Louis Vuitton’s Italian shoes are the very height of luxury. Its Venice workshop claims to embody “ancestral savoir-faire” in a region “revered for its fine shoe craftsmanship”. It is an image burnished by one of the biggest advertising budgets in the world. The Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) luxury group spent $4.4bn (£3.45bn) last year on marketing its portfolio of top labels, which range from Moet & Chandon champagne to Givenchy, TAG Heuer and Louis Vuitton shoes, adorned with the LV logo that is a global badge of wealth. This is, however, far from the full picture. Many of the shoes and boots it sells for between £500 and £1,800 a pair and stamped as “made in Italy” are mostly made in Transylvania, a region better known for vampires than any tradition of luxury craftsmanship. The factories are a well-kept secret, their identity closely guarded. The management says it has taken pains to ensure they do not turn up in a Google search. On the outside there is no mention of the brand

Revealed: the Romanian site where Louis Vuitton makes its Italian shoes | Business | The Guardian

A woman who sent hundreds of texts to another teenager urging him to kill himself was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Friday by a Massachusetts judge. Michelle Carter, 20, was charged with involuntary manslaughter after sending texts that the prosecution said encouraged 17-year-old Conrad Roy III to kill himself in 2014, when she was also 17.

Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter in texting suicide - Business Insider