On Monday November 24th 2014 NewLink Genetics (NLNK) had announced that it had entered into a partnership agreement with Merck (MRK) to co-develop an experimental vaccine for Ebola known as rVSV-EBOV. Under the terms of the agreement Merck will pay an upfront payment to NewLink for $50 million dollars plus additional money from royalty on the Ebola candidate once…
Payward Inc, one of the leading Bitcoin exchanges stated that it will assist the recently collapsed Mt. Gox, on investigating the loss of hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins and manage the process of paying back its creditors. This arrangement was approved by a Tokyo bankruptcy court. It is important to state that Mt. Gox was…
Spot the difference… Tick for tick lower with crude… at WTI tests as low as $67.75 The last time we were here, chatter of intervention saved the Ruble but since then the central bank has suggested it would let the currency float freer… and seriously devaluaing since the peak in oil… Or as Shinzo Abe…
It has become common for journalists and analysts refer to the Minsky Moment. Most recently, there have been numerous references to China having reached such a moment, which as far as I can tell, is used to mean some kind of peak in what the writer believes is an over-extended market. In this Cool Video, a leading…
Shares of offshore drilling contractor, SeaDrill Limited (SDRL – Snapshot Report), plunged 23% to touch a 52-week low of $15.93 as the company’s board of directors decided to suspend dividend payments. Offshore drilling market softness owing to drastic decline in oil prices for most of the third quarter, along with falling day rates and heightened competition due to oversupply…
Gold has been pretty flat this week compared to last week. That is a remarkable performance after the strong spike of last Friday, however, when the Chinese central bank announced that it is going to lower interest rates. The more expansive policy of the European Central Bank also caused a spark. Mario Draghi announced that…
If you ever needed proof that the financial press has been completely indoctrinated in the cult of Keynesian central banking consider the attached Bloomberg note on the recent tiny decline in Chinese industrial company profits. Without breaking for anything more than a comma, its hapless Hong Kong stringer, one Malcolm Scott, conjoined the fact of less profits with the imperative…
The sell-side is worried… SocGen’s head of oil research Mike Wittner warns “this will reverberate for years”… (via Bloomberg) OPEC decision to keep output target is “unambiguously bearish,” “We are entering a new era for oil prices, where the market itself will manage supply, no longer Saudi Arabia and OPEC” “It’s huge,” he says by phone…
Econintersect: The Chicago Business Barometer declined 5.4 points after increasing 5.7 points last month, driven by a large decline in new orders. The market expected the index between 62.0 and 65.0 (consensus 63.2) versus the actual at 60.8. A number below 50 indicates contraction. From the authors of the index: The Barometer‘s decline reversed nearly all…
When the tech and real estate bubbles burst, many of my friends lost 40-50% of their retirement portfolios almost overnight. Whether you’re at the tail end of the baby boomer generation or already retired, lopping 40-50%—or more—off the value of your nest egg would be catastrophic. Which begs the question: is a similar downturn looming? Take…
