Opening Bell: 3.3.17
Pimco's New Bond Chief Is Red Hot and Luring Billions in Cash (BBG)
The fund returned 2.75 percent since Nov. 8 compared with a 1.8 percent loss for the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. intermediate-term bond aggregate. “You had three events where markets overreacted to some degree and you were able to take advantage of some attractive valuations,” Ivascyn said at his Newport Beach, California headquarters, overlooking a yacht marina. “This year, when there’s not a whole lot of fear in the market, you sit back and be patient.”
Who’s Right: Warren Buffett or Larry Fink? (WSJ)
The previous link between valuation and corporate investment weakened from the early 2000s, and as a result corporates have invested about 10% less than they otherwise would have done. Investors who know their history might breathe a sigh of relief. Disastrous capital spending driven by the egos of power-hungry chief executives has destroyed more shareholder wealth than almost anything else, and academics have established that lower investment tends to mean better share price performance.
Goldman Irks Bankers With New Rules on Mobile Perks (BBG)
In a push to cut costs and shift employees from BlackBerry devices to personal mobile phones, the firm is imposing a new policy around the world for reimbursing data and calling expenses, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs will now chip in $10 for data charges on U.S. phone bills, 10 pounds in the U.K., 10 euros in Germany and HK$100 in Hong Kong.
Why Wall Street Matters by William D Cohan — risk in the rules (FT)
Cohan even suggests that Senator Elizabeth Warren advocates the separation of investment banking from commercial banking precisely because this would cause financial chaos on Wall Street, which would work to her political advantage. “Why else would she advocate it?” he asks. Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman responsible for the Volcker rule (which limits banks’ proprietary trading), is charged with naivety, while President Barack Obama’s support for the rule is chalked up to politics.
Elon Musk takes business advice from 10-year-old (NYP)
In the typed note, Bria suggested that Musk ran a competition for homemade adverts to promote the luxury electric car brand. She wrote: “So I think that you should run a competition on who can make the best homemade Tesla commercial and the winners will get their commercial aired. The cool part is that you still won’t be taking the time and money to advertise for yourself. Plus, this is something your fans and customers will definitely love.”
Why hedge funds don’t have a clue about how to use their quants, AI experts and data scientists (EFC)
“I’ve had billion dollar portfolio managers tell me that they were studying a data science course at night school,” said Leigh Drogen, a former hedge fund CIO who now runs big data fintech firm Estimize. “These courses weren’t even related to finance, because they don’t exist yet.” ... “Most discretionary fund managers think Python is a big snake,” adds Emmett Kilduff, a former Morgan Stanley equity capital markets banker.
Amazon Says One Engineer's Simple Mistake Brought the Internet Down (Gizmodo)
“At 9:37AM PST, an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process. Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended.” We’ve all been there. You push the wrong button and end up getting Sprite instead of Coke. But this poor guy or gal probably made an errant keystroke that crippled AWS for at least four hours. About a third of all internet traffic reportedly flows through AWS servers.
Marijuana Helped the World's Top Hedge Fund Gain 145% (BBG)
Stock and credit investments in North American marijuana producers contributed to 22 percentage points of last year’s gain for the $200 million Tribeca Global Natural Resources Fund, said Sydney-based Ben Cleary, who co-manages the pool with Craig Evans..."This will have far-reaching impacts, including lower beer sales, as Generation Y gravitate towards the ‘low carb’ alternate," Cleary said.
Sex wearable is coming to track your performance and judge you (CNET)
According to the preorder page, the ring will answer questions such as:
- What's my thrust velocity?
- How fast are my thrusts?
- How many calories did that sesh just burn?
- How many times did I just have sex?
- What's the average skin temperature of my eggplant?
- What's my girth?
- How many different positions did I just conquer?