This bank says it’s time to go long robots, short human beings January 16, 2014 Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BoAML) have a new vision of the future. Their tech analysts favour "innovative hardware, the socially mobile consumer and cloud collaboration as their big 2014 themes" and see increasing use of robots. A BoAML note released today observes that as the use of robots accelerates, this technology is [...]
Say goodbye to the Bank of England’s first governor as he disappears from the £50 note this April January 16, 2014 Sir John Houblon will be disappearing from the £50 note this April. From then on, you'll only be able to get £50 notes featuring Matthew Boulton and James Watt. The pair were responsible for accelerating the progress of manufacturing steam engines during the 18th and 19th centuries. Their famous Boulton & Watt engines were responsible [...]
Which came first, the wizard or the app? January 16, 2014 For four years, Harry Potter lived only in the pages of a book. Between The Philosopher’s Stone being published in 1997 and its film adaptation coming out in 2001, the face of the bespectacled wizard existed only in the imaginations of those who had read JK Rowling’s novels (or at least seen the cover art). [...]
Lagarde has been warning of deflationary ogres – this analyst thinks the monsters are misunderstood January 16, 2014 International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde warned of "deflationary ogres" at a speech in Washington yesterday, saying that the creatures "must be fought decisively". But Societe Generale's Kit Juckes says that he "can't help thinking there are a few people who think ogres are misunderstood creatures, not that awful really." This is why the Eurozone [...]
One chart that shows how Wolf of Wall Street might be the strongest bear signal yet January 15, 2014 No, it's not because it's a bad film. It's because of this chart from Howard Linzon, or rather, the relationship between public interest in investing and market levels that it hints at. Markets seem to peak around the time that finance flicks are released. Maybe the release of Wolf of Wall Street means that we've [...]
The global economy is now at serious risk and investors aren’t prepared, says SocGen’s uber-bear January 15, 2014 If you've heard of Societe Generale's bear king Albert Edwards then you probably know that he thinks that loose monetary policy will result in uncontrollable inflation. Or as he puts it in a note published today, we will ultimately see inflation "spill like a tidal wave from the financial markets into goods, services and wages". [...]
This share surged 1,900 per cent for all the wrong reasons January 15, 2014 Penny stock Nestor saw its share price soar nearly 1,900 per cent yesterday after investors mistook it for Nest, the home automation firm acquired by Google for £3.2bn on Monday. Share price for Nestor, a US-listed company that sells automated traffic enforcement systems, closed yesterday at $0.03 a share following the dramatic spike. (Google) Confusion [...]
Fix your mortgage rate right now, says Bank of England’s Sharp January 15, 2014 Deciding between a fixed or floating rate mortgage is always a tough decision and a bit of a gamble either way. But in the clearest sign yet that interest rates are on the way up, the Bank of England’s Richard Sharp has just told MPs he would be tempted to fix right now. “We have [...]
Shoppers set to spend 17 per cent more in 2014 January 15, 2014 Online retail sales for 2013 have thumped expectations – as spending jumped by 16 per cent to £91bn compared with the previous year and now accounting for almost a quarter (21 per cent) of the total retail market. Those are from the latest online retail findings ofIMRG and Capgemini, which were revealed today at a [...]
This is the most important global bellwether that no-one sees – And it just collapsed January 15, 2014 Someone somewhere once joked that if you had to produce an economic report but wanted no one to read it, you’d probably call it something like “The Beige Book”. Appropriately, this regular update of US economic activity – the latest of which is published at 7pm tonight (GMT) – is usually about as tedious as [...]
