09-07-2016, 11:11 PM
Strategists at Societe Generale have issued a new report detailing their forecasts for the global economy and their list of so-called "black swan" events. A "black swan" event is a metaphor used by the investment community to describe an event that comes as a surprise, such as the crash of the U.S. housing market in 2008 or the Japanese earthquake of 2011. In the French bank's latest global economic outlook, SocGen said that various issues constituted downside risks to the global growth outlook, including the "drag from U.S. and European policy uncertainty" (still the highest risk according to SocGen), a hard landing in China, a sharp market repricing and consumers opting to save, rather than spend, more.
These are the 'black swans' SocGen thinks you should worry about
Some cracks could be starting to appear in the picture of an otherwise resilient U.S. economy. An abrupt drop in the Institute for Supply Management’s services gauge on Tuesday to a six-year low is the latest in a string of unexpectedly weak data for August. Other less-than-stellar figures include an ISM factory survey showing a contraction in manufacturing; a cooling of hiring; automobile sales falling short of forecasts; and an index of consumer sentiment at a four-month low.
First Factories, Now Services Signal Cracks in U.S. Economy - Bloomberg
The U.S. stock market’s P/E ratio is telling us in no uncertain terms that stocks are hugely overvalued. Given that, I would have thought the bulls would simply ignore it. I was wrong. In fact, many of the bulls have figured out how to torture the data in order to make it appear as though the stock market’s current valuation is in line with historical averages. It’s crucial that you understand what they’re doing so you don’t get seduced by their sweet-talking rationales.
Here’s the No. 1 lie the bulls tell about the U.S. market - MarketWatch
A new drug that “wakes up” the immune system to attack cancer has extended the lives of people with metastatic pancreatic cancer and has no side-effects, raising hopes for a new and powerful tool against the most intractable form of the disease. The drug, IMM-101, is considered groundbreaking because pancreatic cancer which has spread to other parts of the body usually kills within a few months. Unlike other immunotherapy treatments, IMM-101 is not thought to have any side-effects, which have been hugely debilitating for many patients and even led to long-term disability in some cases.
New drug 'wakes up' immune system to fight one of deadliest cancers | Science | The Guardian
Huddled around their hives, beekeepers around the south-eastern US fear a new threat to their livelihood: a fine mist beaded with neurotoxin, sprayed from the sky by officials at war with mosquitos that carry the Zika virus. Earlier this week, South Carolina beekeepers found millions of dead honey bees carpeting their apiaries, killed by an insecticide. Video posted by a beekeeper to Facebook showed thousands of dead insects heaped around hives, while a few survivors struggled to move the bodies of fellow bees. “This is what’s left of Flowertown Bees,” a despondent keeper says in the video. Company co-owner Juanita Stanley told the Associated Press her farm looked “like it’s been nuked” and estimated 2.5 million bees were killed. In another Facebook post, South Carolina hobbyist Andrew Macke wrote that he had lost “thousands upon thousands of bees” and that the spraying had devastated his business. “Have we lost our mind,” he wrote, “spraying poison from the sky?”
US beekeepers fear for livelihoods as anti-Zika toxin kills 2.5m bees | Environment | The Guardian