Links for June 2017

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Cryptocurrencies, or cybercurrencies, which have been in a massive financial mania until their sudden selloff this week, have two actual applications: online gambling and money laundering. Neither is the heart of a major business model. But that’s it. And these, preposterously, are the fundamentals behind a mania that has driven these currencies up thirtyfold, so that today, in aggregate, the market for them is a staggering $100 billion. None of the defenders’ other arguments stack up.

Stay away from bitcoin — it’s complete garbage - MarketWatch

“Growth data has certainly not been too cold, supporting S&P 500 [earnings] growth of 14% in the first quarter and consensus expectations for 11% growth in both 2017 and 2018,” the investment bank wrote in a note to clients. “Nor have conditions run too hot and caused the rise in rates that we expected would constrain equity valuations this year. Instead, the economic backdrop has proven just right.” If these conditions are maintained, Goldman wrote, that could mean that technology stocks have more room to run. However, the bank sees this outcome as unlikely. “With the economy at full employment, an easy Fed risks the possibility that wage pressures build and weigh on corporate profit margins,” it wrote. “Our base case is that above-trend economic growth will eventually push inflation higher, prompt an accelerated pace of Fed tightening, and lead to higher bond yields that will reduce equity valuations.”

Goldman says stock market’s ‘Goldilocks’ environment won’t last long - MarketWatch

According to the Bank for International Settlements, that debt reached 257 percent of its gross domestic product at the end of 2016, slightly above the same measure in the United States, and significantly higher than the 184 percent for emerging economies over all. But what worries economists most is the pace at which it has mounted. At the end of 2007, China's debt stood at only 152 percent of G.D.P.

Some Global Investors See Fresh Worries in an Old Problem: China

YOUR WI-FI ROUTER, sitting in the corner of your home accumulating dust and unpatched security flaws, provides an attractive target for hackers. Including, according to a new WikiLeaks release, the CIA. On Thursday, WikiLeaks published a detailed a set of descriptions and documentation for the CIA's router-hacking toolkit. It's the latest drip in the months-long trickle of secret CIA files it's called Vault7, and it hints at how the agency leverages vulnerabilities in common routers sold by companies including D-Link and Linksys.

Latest WikiLeaks Release Shows How the CIA Hacks Your Router | WIRED

Some 70 percent of young men are ineligible for military service "because of either education — they can't read or write — or health, mostly obesity and diabetes. That's an unbelievable number," Dimon said. The number comes from a Pentagon study a few years back that said the military won't take 71 percent of males aged 17 to 24 for the reasons Dimon cited, as well as taking prescription drugs for ADHD, or having inappropriate tattoos or piercings.

Jamie Dimon: 'America has to get its act together'

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Lots of people are worrying about Big Tech. The so-called FAAMG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google) have surged in value this year, prompting bank analysts and financial commentators to ominously invoke warnings from the last dotcom bubble. With seemingly millions of pixels devoted to the subject in recent weeks, it is worth re-examining some of the more questionable arguments that fast appear to be becoming consensus.

How I learnt to stop worrying and love Big Tech

Stock markets are as calm as they've been in five decades, causing investors to crowd into funds that aim to minimize volatility. Goldman Sachs is questioning whether that is the right goal in such a calm market. "Fund managers should seek to maximize prospective risk-adjusted returns rather than minimize realized volatility," said Goldman Sachs' chief U.S. equity strategist, David Kostin. Put simply, investors are focusing too much on finding stocks that offer just low volatility and not enough on stocks that offer both low volatility and high returns.

In calm markets, focus on maximizing returns, not minimizing volatilty

These strategies are designed to profit from choppy market environments, and I have been designing proactive strategies since January 2000. One is called the “Lock and Walk,” and it has been profitable in the past during choppy markets. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The strategy is designed to respect support and resistance levels in the Nasdaq 100 NDX, -0.80%   and then to trade the ProShares UltraShort QQQ QID, +1.61%  and the ProShares Ultra QQQ QLD, -1.53%  when support and resistance levels are tested or broken. With these rules, you can do it yourself: If support is tested by QLD, target resistance to sell. If support breaks, sell QLD. If resistance is tested by QID, target support to sell. If resistance breaks, sell QID.

Use this simple strategy to profit from choppy summer trading - MarketWatch

It can be hard to be enthusiastic about your job after you've been at it for a while. Even if you once found the work exciting, it's easy to get in a rut. That doesn't necessarily mean that you need a new job. Sometimes a new perspective is enough. There are so many different things you can try to help make your old job feel a little more exciting.

10 ways to make your boring job exciting again

Arguments with your partner don't have to be devastating. In fact, couples who follow two basic rules when they argue tend to stay together longer than couples who do not, according to research from University of California, Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson and University of Washington psychology professor John Gottman.

Best way to argue with your partner according to a psychologist - Business Insider

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Albert Edwards, Societe Generale's renowned and unashamedly bearish strategist has a new prediction: central bank independence will come under threat in the coming years as citizens of the world turn on what he calls "the main culprits of their poverty" in the post-crisis years. Writing in his weekly Global Strategy note, Edwards — who has long been a critic of the ultra-loose monetary policy prevalent around the world since the financial crisis — says that while public anger and displeasure has been largely focused on the political classes in the last couple of years, central banks will be the next target once the public realises, that in his eyes at least, it is not politicians who are to blame.

Albert Edwards on central banking and populism - Business Insider

Equities are currently enjoying a “Goldilocks scenario,” Goldman wrote, noting the “unexpected mix of healthy growth and declining rates,” which has created an environment where stocks—particularly technology stocks, the strongest-performing gainer this year despite recent weakness—have done extremely well. Major U.S. indexes have rallied to a series of records while volatility dropped to multidecade lows as investors shrug off all manner of potential headwinds.

Goldman says stock market’s ‘Goldilocks’ environment won’t last long - MarketWatch

Kuka, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of industrial robotic arms, is planning to expand into the area of personal assistance robotics.  This is according to an article on FT.com, which quotes Kuka chief executive Till Reuter. Reuter told the FT that he sees potential for using Midea’s reach into the household appliances market to develop more complex, intelligent machines which can help with household tasks.

Kuka to build personal assistance robot business with Midea | Robotics & Automation News

Over the years, Gates has recommended a number of science-related books to the public. Some deal with the environment, others with the cosmos, and others with stopping tiny biological invaders. Here are some of his favorite titles.

Bill Gates' favorite books on science - Business Insider

You and I, one day we’ll die from the same thing. We’ll call it different names: cancer, diabetes, heart failure, stroke. One organ will fail, then another. Or maybe all at once. We’ll become more similar to each other than to people who continue living with your original diagnosis or mine. Dying has its own biology and symptoms. It’s a diagnosis in itself. While the weeks and days leading up to death can vary from person to person, the hours before death are similar across the vast majority of human afflictions.

The Symptoms of Dying - The New York Times

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The NYSE's Arca subsidiary submitted a request to the SEC on Tuesday to allow the listing of two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to return four times their underlying indices. While one fund will deliver quadruple the S&P 500's move on a given day — for better or for worse — the other is designed to track the Russell 2000 index of small-cap companies, according to a filing. Both will be managed by ProShares as part of the provider's QuadPro suite of offerings.

New four times leveraged ETFs present more market risk - Business Insider

Hargreaves took a deep dive into the Crypto-Currency Fund Index from Eurekahedge. The data firm uses the index to track the performance of five actively managed hedge funds with holdings in bitcoin, ethereum and other digital cash. His findings? The Eurekahedge index not only beat traditional hedge funds, it even blew bitcoin itself out of the water. Between June 2013 and April this year, the index shows eye-popping cumulative returns of 2,152.32%, versus 1,408.11% for the Bitcoin Price Index. Looked at annually, that’s a return of 125.35%, compared with 102.96%.

How to bet on bitcoin, without the crazy volatility? Here’s one idea - MarketWatch

Share repurchases have been a crucial backbone for the eight-year bull market. On several occasions during the period, the US stock market has looked devoid of any positive catalysts, relying heavily on buybacks to keep share prices afloat. This was never more true than during the S&P 500's five-quarter earnings contraction from 2015 into 2016, a period that saw the benchmark edge higher by 1.5%, driven largely by companies repurchasing their own stock.
Ultimately, it's a win-win for corporations to conduct buybacks, because it pushes share prices higher while also signaling to the market that they view their shares as undervalued. So it's unwelcome news to equity bulls that buybacks are slowing. Repurchases by S&P 500 companies totaled $133.1 billion in the first quarter, a 17.5% decrease from a year ago, according to data compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices. The slowdown is also reflected on a trailing 12-month basis, with buybacks declining 13.8% from the year that ended in March 2016. While quarterly buybacks are still higher than they were four years ago, a more tempered pace undoubtedly adds to anxiety in a market that some experts already think is overvalued.

Stock buybacks are vanishing — but it might not matter - Business Insider

Cardiff Garcia points out at FT Alphaville that the members of the Federal Open Market Committee have continuously underestimated how low the U.S. unemployment rate can go. Perhaps inflation will pick up once the effects of nearly 4 percent unemployment are felt, but if unemployment can go lower, then underestimating inflation again will result in fewer people with jobs and lower wage growth for those with them.

Is the Fed being misguided by the Phillips curve? | Equitable Growth

To be a professional cyclist, one must have guts, microbiologist Lauren Peterson says, and she doesn’t just mean that in the metaphorical sense. Peterson, herself a pro endurance mountain biker, has discovered that the most elite athletes in the sport have a certain microbiome living in their intestines that allow them to perform better, and if you don’t have it, well, there may soon be a way to get it. . . . “Call it poop doping if you must,” Peterson told Bicycling magazine last week about her research.

Move over, blood doping; cyclists might be ‘poop doping’ soon - The Washington Post

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Also encouraging for stock bulls are cash holdings that are at their highest in almost three decades. US stock investors have made a habit out of buying on any sign of weakness for almost the entire duration of the bull market, and the reservoir of capital on the sidelines makes it easy to continue doing so.

Stock buybacks are vanishing — but it might not matter - Business Insider

Just three addresses had balances of more than 100,000 bitcoins, or roughly $275 million, each, according to data from BitcoinPrivacy. In contrast, 16.8 million addresses had 0.00001 bitcoin, or about 3 cents, the data showed. "Large amounts of bitcoin are heavily concentrated in the hands of a few people. People that get in now [can] only buy fractional pieces," said Alex Sunnarborg, research analyst at CoinDesk. "I definitely think more and more retail investors have gone into it," he said. "There is definitely a lot of fear of missing out."

Bitcoin speculators are the new day traders

So, to summarize: in the past fifty years, education costs have doubled, college costs have dectupled, health insurance costs have dectupled, subway costs have at least dectupled, and housing costs have increased by about fifty percent. US health care costs about four times as much as equivalent health care in other First World countries; US subways cost about eight times as much as equivalent subways in other First World countries. I worry that people don’t appreciate how weird this is. I didn’t appreciate it for a long time. I guess I just figured that Grandpa used to talk about how back in his day movie tickets only cost a nickel; that was just the way of the world. But all of the numbers above are inflation-adjusted. These things have dectupled in cost even after you adjust for movies costing a nickel in Grandpa’s day. They have really, genuinely dectupled in cost, no economic trickery involved.

Considerations On Cost Disease | Slate Star Codex

On April 29, someone hit his employer, IDT Corporation, with two cyberweapons that had been stolen from the National Security Agency. Mr. Ben-Oni, the global chief information officer at IDT, was able to fend them off, but the attack left him distraught. In 22 years of dealing with hackers of every sort, he had never seen anything like it. Who was behind it? How did they evade all of his defenses? How many others had been attacked but did not know it? Since then, Mr. Ben-Oni has been sounding alarm bells, calling anyone who will listen at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New Jersey attorney general’s office and the top cybersecurity companies in the country to warn them about an attack that may still be invisibly striking victims undetected around the world.

A Cyberattack ‘the World Isn’t Ready For’ - The New York Times

Norway has issued a blunt threat to Brazil that if rising deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is not reversed, its billion-dollar financial assistance will fall to zero. The leaders of the two nations meet in Oslo on Friday. The oil-rich Scandinavian nation has provided $1.1bn to Brazil’s Amazon fund since 2008, tied to reductions in the rate of deforestation in the world’s greatest rainforest. The destruction of forests by timber and farming industries is a major contributor to the carbon emissions that drive climate change and Norway views protecting the Amazon as vital for the whole world.

Norway issues $1bn threat to Brazil over rising Amazon destruction | Environment | The Guardian

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has changed the way the retail world operates. He may be about to exert a similar level of pressure on the economy and expectations for future price trends at the supermarket. At a time when central banks are starting to gird against an expected rise in inflation ahead, Bezos' move to acquire Whole Foods looks to be a significant counterweight. Analysts expect Amazon to rein in the famously high prices of the upscale grocery chain — "Whole Paycheck," as it is often called — which then could have a ripple effect through the industry.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may be single-handedly killing inflation

Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, joined Alphachat to talk about his report, “The Coming Productivity Boom”, co-authored by Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics. Mandel argues that the decades-long productivity stagnation will end once companies in the “physical” industries — transportation, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, wholesale and retail trade — start investing in information technology the way that companies in the digital industries have.

Michael Mandel on the case for productivity optimism | FT Alphaville

The Mac maker has added a new section to its developer site that details a feature called Business Chat that will make its way into iMessage. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like: Apple hopes to connect businesses to customers directly within the core Messages app. Here's Apple's description: "Business Chat is a powerful new way for your customers to get answers to their questions, learn about and purchase your products, and engage with your existing support channels. Integrated into Messages and discoverable through Maps, Siri, Search, as well as your own app and website, Business Chat helps you build persistent, long-lasting relationships with your customers." This precisely targets Facebook's best hopes for monetizing its growing Messenger platform, which now boasts over 1.2 billion monthly active users (MAUs).

Apple is threatening Facebook's best hopes for monetizing messenger - Business Insider

BlueRock Therapeutics is a regenerative-medicine startup. Headquartered in Boston, its two lead programs are based in Toronto and New York City. Its approach is to develop stem cells that transform into specific adult cells that can be used to replace cells that otherwise won't grow back — like heart-muscle cells after a heart attack. The company launched in 2016 and raised $225 million from Bayer and Versant Ventures as part of a wave of new investments in regenerative medicine.

BlueRock Therapeutics' regenerative medicine to treat heart attacks - Business Insider

The United States Border Patrol stepped up safety messages, saying "it is physically impossible for the average person to carry enough water to survive." The National Weather Service also warned against walking pets outdoors, saying that at pavement temperatures above 162 degrees (consistent with air temperatures of 102), skin is instantly destroyed.

The Science Behind Arizona's Record-Setting Heat Wave - Pacific Standard

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The time is right for the European Central Bank (ECB) to start scaling back its ultra-loose monetary policy program and to begin normalizing interest rates, senior executives from two of Europe's leading regional banks told CNBC on Monday. "Right now consumers are confused, they don't understand negative interest rates, they don't understand a zero interest rate and the system becomes volatile as a result. We shouldn't have that," Wiebe Draijer, chairman at Rabobank, told CNBC on Monday.

ECB should have already started raising interest rates, Rabobank chairman says

Eurostat data has shown that only a handful of countries have managed to shrink income inequality since the crisis while it has grown sharply in places like France or Spain. Figures also show the highest level of income inequality in the bloc's periphery, like Greece, Spain and Portugal, hit hardest by the crisis. Calling convergence among euro zone members "fundamental," Draghi said the best way to fight inequality is by creating jobs, which comes from an increased investment in education, skills development and innovation. He also called on governments to consider better income and wealth redistribution policies. Defending the ECB's ultra easy monetary policy, Draghi said that super low rates create jobs, foster growth and benefit borrowers, ultimately easing inequality.

Europe's inequality highly destabilizing, ECB's Draghi says

Legendary bankruptcy expert Dr. Edward Altman cautioned that this benign credit cycle — characterized by low default rates, low yields, low spreads, and lots of liquidity — could come to an abrupt end. “It’s been a terrific market for investors for quite a long time and if anything is concerning it’s that we now are more than eight years into a benign credit cycle,” Altman, a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, told Yahoo Finance. “We’ve never had such a long benign cycle. And just that one little fact is something that we should be concerned about because if it comes to one and it could come to an end very dramatically.”

Bankruptcy guru Edward Altman sees similarities to 2007 in the credit market today [Video]

To give it greater perspective for investors, Morgan Stanley estimates the market of shared and automated transport "...representing an economic opportunity for content and data worth potentially trillions of dollars." The investment bank has put together a list of U.S.-based companies whose businesses may benefit from being exposed "to growth opportunities in the execution of a shared, autonomous, electric ecosystem."  While a fully autonomous car is still something to be thought of as a future achievement, it's no longer a pipe dream. These ten companies are likely to benefit from their exposure to autonomous, shared and electric vehicles now and well into the future.

10 Surprising Companies That May Cash in On the Autonomous Car Future - TheStreet

Thirteen years ago, two prominent U.S. economists wrote that driverless cars couldn’t execute a left turn against oncoming traffic because too many factors were involved. Six years later, Google proved it could make fully autonomous cars, threatening the livelihoods of millions of truck and taxi drivers. Throughout much of the developed world, gainful employment is seen as almost a fundamental right. But what if, in the not-too-distant future, there won’t be enough jobs to go around? That’s what some economists think will happen as robots and artificial intelligence increasingly become capable of performing human tasks. Of course, past technological upheavals created more jobs than they destroyed. But some labor experts argue that this time could be different: Technology is replacing human brains as well as brawn.

Is Your Job About To Disappear?

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Oil is less than $10 per barrel away from a level where it could begin wreaking havoc across the high-yield bond market. When crude drops below $35 a barrel, the debt-to-enterprise value ratios of high-yield energy companies typically climb above 55 percent, according to Deutsche Bank AG strategists including Oleg Malentyev. That would increase risk premiums and affect the wider high-yield market, they said.

Oil at $35 Is Tipping Point for High-Yield, Deutsche Says - Bloomberg

Don't let the calmest market in years lull you to sleep. While a gauge of volatility spanning multiple asset classes has slipped to its lowest level since 2014, a separate measure of market fragility has been climbing steadily over the past six months, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The so-called "Fragility Indicator," maintained by BAML, is designed to measure the frequency and extent to which volatility measures and credit spreads are seeing abnormally large shocks. And it's climbed roughly 50% since October. This is notable because the last three times the fragility gauge rose sharply — in the second half of 2007, first half of 2011 and second half of 2014 — it preceded drawdowns from hedge funds, according to BAML.

There are 'cracks emerging' in the calmest, most low volatility, most overcrowded market in years - Business Insider

Goldman Sachs told clients that the environment is more difficult for picking stocks of quality companies, and as a result investors should be willing to accept longer holding periods and hold fewer stocks. The Wall Street firm has revised a list of recommended stocks it calls the GS Sustain 50 to reflect the new market realities. "Quality investing faces challenges it isn't used to," Goldman's Hugo Scott-Gall wrote in a research note Sunday. Returns aren't as strong from simple buy-and-hold quality strategies, he said. "With returns on capital falling and growth lower, fewer companies are in the virtuous compounding circle."

Goldman says ‘buy and hold’ investing is broken, but this new strategy will work

And following the herd can really pay off when the market is flourishing. The more people that pile into a stock during an up-market, the further its share price will climb. It's a momentum-driven strategy that looks simple on the surface, but can backfire in spectacular fashion at the first sign of turbulence. The more crowded a trade, the more painful the fall as investors rush to the exit simultaneously, spurring a vicious unwind.

UBS: Here are the 9 most crowded stocks - Business Insider

Buffett is no stranger to Retail REITs. In 1999, Buffett likely purchased shares in Tanger as a fixed income product. Mr. Buffett, it's time to back up the truck! Most all Retail REITs got a nice boost yesterday thanks to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B). As I explained in a recent article, Net Lease REITs should get a nice boost today thanks to Warren Buffett. More specifically, Berkshire Hathaway is now a 9.8% owner in Scottsdale-based STORE Capital. Berkshire Hathaway has invested $377 million in STORE.

Mr. Buffett, It's Time For Tanger - Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. (NYSE:SKT) | Seeking Alpha

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Global debt has hit a record level in the first quarter of this year, mainly driven by emerging markets, raising questions of whether there will be another financial crisis in the near future. Data from the Institute of International Finance showed that global debt reached $217 trillion in the first quarter of this year, or 327 percent of gross domestic product.

China’s debt surpasses 300 percent of GDP, IIF says, raising doubts over Yellen’s crisis remarks

The biggest mistake Jim Cramer sees investors make is thinking they are supposed to be fully invested at all times. Heck, some money managers have even told him that they are supposed to have all their money in stocks. This is complete nonsense! Having cash on hand when a market correction occurs is the key to protecting a portfolio, Cramer says. Sometimes the market will stink, and there is nothing to do but just sit in cash. "In fact, one of the chief reasons that I outperformed pretty much every manager in the business during my 14-year run as a professional money manager is that there were substantial blocks of time when I was largely in cash,"

Cramer: The perfect hedge for when the market hits dangerous highs

Torsten Slok of Deutsche Bank charts the return on equity for US corporates, which has fallen to a new low: On the one hand, perhaps the trend shouldn’t be too surprising given the continued rally in equities, which of course has coincided with sluggish overall economic growth. On the other hand, you’d think that the impressive rise in corporate debt issuance and relative paucity of initial public offerings in the past half-decade would have offset some of the trend. (Higher leverage should push up ROE, all else equal.) This is especially the case given how much of the borrowings from that debt has been used to fund buybacks.

Snap AV: US corporate return on equity falls to new low | FT Alphaville

Because it’s just a transfer from one person to another, rent doesn’t necessarily make an economy less efficient -- it’s just often unfair. But Robert Litan and Ian Hathaway, writing in Harvard Business Review, have a more dire hypothesis. They surmised that many American entrepreneurs are no longer looking for ways to produce more useful stuff, and are instead looking for new techniques for extracting money from each other and from the government. In other words, crony capitalism may be slowly cannibalizing productive capitalism.

The Wrong Kind of Entrepreneurs Flourish in America - Bloomberg

from October to April. That’s when the city’s air is at its worst, heavy with smog, much of it caused by household stoves that burn coal, wood, and trash to generate heat. Local coal-fired power plants add to the problem. According to the World Health Organization, Krakow’s particulate-matter pollution, a mix of small particles in the air that may affect the heart and lungs, can reach six times the levels considered safe on high-smog-alert days.

Krakow’s Essential Accessory: A Smog Mask - Bloomberg

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World trade in goods and services has expanded greatly since the Second World War. But today the volume of global trading in foreign exchange is a hundred times the volume of global trade in goods and services.[1] The total value of exposures under derivative contracts amounts to between two and three times the total value of all the assets in the world.[2] And when I wrote about this process of financialisation in 2014, I highlighted the activity of a company called Spread Networks in building a telecommunications link across the Appalachian Mountains to reduce the time to transmit data between Chicago and New York from 7.3 to 6.6 ms. Since then, improvements in microwave technology have reduced the time required to something closer to the physical lower bound, which is the four milliseconds it takes for light to travel between the two cities.[3

Technological change and the future of financial intermediation - John Kay

Micron’s MU, new chief executive, Sanjay Mehrotra, cited the coming introduction of new mobile phones in the fall quarter as one of several catalysts in its outlook, which exceeded current estimates, according to FactSet. Micron said it is looking for revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter to range from $5.7 billion to $6.1 billion, up from the current consensus of $5.6 billion. “We expect increased demand ahead of anticipated flagship smartphone introductions planned for the fall,” Mehrotra told analysts Thursday on a conference call. He said upcoming features in the new mobile phones, such as multiple camera systems, augmented-reality applications and higher-resolution displays are dictating greater memory-chip densities, from four to six gigabytes.

Micron benefits from high memory prices and new phones in the fall - MarketWatch

According the BIS's annual report, the global economy faces four risks, "(i) financial cycle risks for financial stability; (ii) risks to consumption growth from household debt; (iii) risks to investment from weak productivity growth and high corporate debt; and (iv) risks from rising protectionism." From the report (emphasis is ours): These risks may appear independent, but they are not. For instance, policy tightening to contain an inflation spurt could trigger, or amplify, a financial bust in the more vulnerable countries... Indeed, an overarching issue is the global economy’s sensitivity to higher interest rates given the continued accumulation of debt in relation to GDP, complicating the policy normalisation process (Graph I.1). As another example, a withdrawal into trade protectionism could spark financial strains and make higher inflation more likely. And the emergence of systemic financial strains yet again, or simply much slower growth, could heighten the protectionist threat beyond critical levels. Of all of those risks, protectionism is the only one a government can fully control. A government can choose to engage in global free market capitalism, or it can aggressively try to distort the market by blocking competing goods and services. It can either work amicably with neighbors and allies, or it can create tension felt across the globe.

The next economic crisis could come from trade - Business Insider

Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) EPYC server processors may offer better performance for their price than Intel's (INTC) processors, Wells Fargo (WFC) Analyst David Wong said in reiterating his "outperform" rating for AMD. AMD shares closed down almost 5% Thursday but are climbing in after hours trading.  Wong said AMD's multi-chip module in the Epyc processor will likely beat out all other attempts that have so far failed to find a multi-chip approach that works.

Advanced Micro Devices New Super Chip Should Frighten Intel - TheStreet

Here’s something you don’t hear every day: there are signs of inflationary pressures in Japan. Data from the Japanese government shows consumer price inflation (CPI), excluding fresh food prices, rose by 0.4% in the 12 months to May, hitting the highest level since March 2015. The figure was in line with market expectations but higher than than the 0.3% pace recorded in April. Although a positive sign, the annual increase is still well below the 2.0% level targeted by the Bank of Japan (BoJ).

There are signs of inflationary pressures in Japan. - Business Insider