Innovation Update
Weekend Reading
Paul Kedrosky
06/10/07 - 02:47 PM EDT
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Good Sunday, and welcome to Weekend Reading. As always, here are some articles and papers worth reading. First, however, a look back at the week that just finished, and a look forward to the week ahead.
The major U.S. indices lost ground last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.8%, the S&P 500 lost 1.9% and the Nasdaq ended the week off 1.5%. The chief culprit? Increased inflation worries, as well as the yield on U.S. Treasuries hitting an increasingly attractive 5%. While things turned around somewhat on Friday as investors realized that they had overdone things more than a little, by then the damage had been done.
Looking forward to next week, it's hard not to image things climbing higher. Such a move would be partly a response to last week's selloff, but also as a result of increasing market sentiment that while consumers are mostly tapped out, businesses are more than picking up the slack with exports booming, the trade deficit shrinking, and things generally looked positive for export-facing companies.
Turning to economic indicators, the big item to watch out for is inflation data due Friday. That CPI data will be preceded on Thursday by data on wholesale prices. Finally, we will also see data Friday on U.S. consumer sentiment for June, and that is expected to be down slightly.
- Iran forecasts oil to hit $80 a barrel this year. (Reuters)
- Consumer spending forecast to slow this year. (Reuters)
- CFOs are gloomy about the U.S. economy this year. (CFO)
- Hedge funds are increasingly correlated to the broader markets. (New York Times)
- Some $120 trillion in sovereign wealth funds could derail globalization. (Bloomberg)
- Christmas '07 toy outlook is big on plush-plus-online. (NY Post)
- Refinery utilization rates have recently been lower than normal for this time of year. (EIA)
- Barron's picks Victoria's Secret (Limited Brands(LTD Quote), Cisco(CSCO Quote) and Wyndham(WYN Quote). (Barron's)
- CFOs and hedge fund activists in uneasy relationship. (CFO)
- People will need to save more as reforms cut pensions. (OECD)
- Prices in real estate foreclosure auctions no better than traditional sales. (NY Times)
- Two interesting new books on the economics of sushi. (NY Times)
- Apple's(AAPL Quote) Worldwide Developer Conference is Monday, and the iPhone sales manual has been leaked. (InformationWeek)
- How CNBC's stock-picking contest went awry. (BusinessWeek)
- Banks sell the riskiest CDO components to pension funds. (PDF: Bloomberg)
- Research: The interval of observation is crucial in analyzing stocks (SSRN)
- Genentech(DNA Quote) is under pressure in its core cancer market. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- General Electric's(GE Quote) green gamble. (Globe & Mail)
- U.K. pension fund schemes are selling en masse. (Telegraph)
- Wyeth's(WYE Quote) anti-Alzheimer's research gets very positive mention. (NY Times)
- Stock market bubbles and bubble echoes. (NY Times/Hulbert)
- Whole Foods(WFMI Quote) is about to get a SoCal boost as rest of industry set to strike. (Reuters)
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