Holiday Bell: 11.22.17

Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People (BBG)
Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers. ALSO: Uber data breach “raises huge concerns”, says UK watchdog

Tourbillon Capital, a $3.4 billion hedge fund that's been sounding the alarm about 'frothy speculation,' is suffering big losses (BI)
The firm's flagship Global Master fund is down 3.5% for the first 17 days of November, bringing performance for the year to November 17 to a loss of 10.6%. Its long-only fund was up about 10% through October, Business Insider previously reported. In an October letter to investors, Karp preached patience, saying the fund saw "a number of warning signs that point to the middle innings of frothy speculation."

Hedge Funds Face New Threat From Traditional Asset Managers (II)
“Hedge fund fees are harder to justify these days except where investors have a high degree of conviction in their ability to generate alpha,” said Johanna Kyrklund, global head of multi-asset investments at U.K.-based Schroders. “Certainly, when it comes to increasing diversification and delivering a smoother path of returns, institutional investors are looking to build alternative approaches.”

Warning Signs About Another Giant Bitcoin Exchange (NYT)
Even many people who believe in virtual currencies worry that the mixture of loose controls and booming trading at the world’s largest exchange is likely to cause trouble for all the investors piling into virtual currencies, even those who don’t go near Bitfinex. “I’m worried about the systemic risk that this centralized company poses, and I’m worried that if they go down, they will take down the space with them,” said Emin Gün Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, who has a track record of successfully predicting problems in the growing virtual currency industry. SEE ALSO: Wealth Managers Are Being Inundated With Calls About Bitcoin

Chinese Investors Eye Leverage to Juice U.S. CLO Returns (BBG)
The last time Asian investors borrowed money to invest in structured-credit products - during the run-up to the financial crisis - it didn’t work out so well. Now, a new set of buyers from China are hoping things turn out differently. Instead of snapping up packages of risky derivatives tied to U.S. home loans, they’re buying collateralized loan obligations that bundle together corporate loans to highly leveraged companies. And while such CLOs weathered the last crisis relatively well, there’s already concern that these investors are being tempted to deploy leverage to amplify their returns.

Goldman Sachs Faces Doubts About Loss Rates at New Online Lender (BBG)
Goldman’s fledgling online lender Marcus, named after the company’s founder, is targeting consumers at a time when many are bracing for a downturn after eight years of economic expansion. A recent example it gave suggests the firm expects loan losses to be lower than what some rivals are seeing, and half of what many credit-card lenders experienced the last time the economy went south.

Anonymous Activist Short Sellers Outperform (Activist Insights)
Activist short sellers who go by a pseudonym outperform those whose identity is known, according to research by Activist Insight to coincide with the launch of its short seller database, Activist Insight Shorts. Stocks targeted by anonymous short sellers declined by an average of 28% in the two years after the campaign became public versus a mere 20% decline over a comparable period for short sellers who operate in the public eye.

Chicago Booth IGM Forum: Tax Reform
Question B: If the US enacts a tax bill similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate — and assuming no other changes in tax or spending policy — the US debt-to-GDP ratio will be substantially higher a decade from now than under the status quo. [45% strongly disagree, 43% disagree, 2% uncertain. None agree.]

CEO of HQ, the Hottest App Going: If You Run This Profile, We’ll Fire Our Host (Daily Beast)
[CEO Rus] Yusupov’s objections began with the line, "Scott said that despite the attention, he's still able to walk down the street and order his favorite salad from Sweetgreen without being accosted." "He cannot say that!" Yusupov shouted. "We do not have a brand deal with Sweetgreen! Under no circumstances can he say that." When asked to confirm that Rogowski can’t say he personally enjoys eating at Sweetgreen, Yusupov said “he cannot say that," inaccurately claiming that Scott had disclosed private company information by revealing his preference for a salad chain.

Google collects Android users’ locations even when location services are disabled (Qz)
Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed. Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers—even when location services are disabled—and sending that data back to Google. The result is that Google, the unit of Alphabet behind Android, has access to data about individuals’ locations and their movements that go far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy.

Ice Apocalypse (Grist)
In the past few years, scientists have identified marine ice-cliff instability as a feedback loop that could kickstart the disintegration of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet this century — much more quickly than previously thought. Minute-by-minute, huge skyscraper-sized shards of ice cliffs would crumble into the sea, as tall as the Statue of Liberty and as deep underwater as the height of the Empire State Building. The result: a global catastrophe the likes of which we’ve never seen.

The Dam of Congressional Sexual-Harassment Claims Cracks Open (The Atlantic)
As sexual-harassment claims topple powerful men in media, movies, and elsewhere, Congress retains the potential to be the biggest arena for such revelations. That is not solely because it involves the governance of the nation and the blood sport of politics. Combine a milieu that is historically (and currently) heavily male, entitled and powerful men, a system that allows members to keep claims quiet and mostly hidden, and a business in which victims are particularly reluctant to speak out for fear of reprisal, and the result is an atmosphere that is catastrophically overrun with sexual harassment. But while many women have spoken about their own experiences in recent weeks, few names of abusers have emerged.

Sugar industry withheld evidence of sucrose's health effects nearly 50 years ago (Medical Express)
Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco reviewed internal sugar industry documents and discovered that the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) funded animal research to evaluate sucrose's effects on cardiovascular health. When the evidence seemed to indicate that sucrose might be associated with heart disease and bladder cancer, they found, the foundation terminated the project without publishing the results.

Turkey ETF Slides Ahead of Thanksgiving on Political Crisis (Nasdaq)
A Thanksgiving spread is not laid until the Turkey makes its presence felt on the table. Apart from the bird, another Turkey has been grossing investors' attention this Thanksgiving. Yes, we're talking about the country called Turkey.

This man is about to launch himself in his homemade rocket to prove the Earth is flat (WaPo)
Seeking to prove that a conspiracy of astronauts fabricated the shape of the Earth, a California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a rocket he built from scrap metal. Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Mike Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.