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John Lothian Newsletter
August 25, 2017 "Irreverent, but never irrelevant"
 
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Hits & Takes
By JLN Staff

Condolences to the family, friends and former colleagues of Yossi Beinart, who passed away late Wednesday at the age of 61. He stood down as CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange due to illness. We knew Yossi from his days as the CEO of NADEX in Chicago. He will be missed.~JJL

Most small and emerging hedge fund managers in the new AIMA/GPP Emerging Manager Survey 2017 from the Alternative Investment Management Association said they intend to add to their staff headcount in the next three years, with 84 percent planning to increase staff by 10- to 50 percent over the coming year while only 16 percent of respondents have no current plans to make any additional hires for their firm. ~JK

Morgan Slade of CloudQuant is the speaker featured today in a video from the MarketsWiki Education World of Opportunity series in New York. CloudQuant was recently featured in a commentary by John Lothian

As Hurricane Harvey prepares to hit the coast of Texas, keep an eye on all the energy action as a third of all US refining is in Harvey's path. It's going to start raining soon, anywhere from 12 to 20 inches. Events are being cancelled. It could take a week for affected refining operations to get back on track. ~SD ~JB

Someone who does not do yoga said yesterday's A Leg To Stand On link for yoga didn't work. Check out the SweatForALTSO X ASCEND event Sept. 6th in Chicago. It's a yoga/meditation event. ~JK


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Girl Scouts Complain about Competition in Scouting
By John J. Lothian - MyScoutingBlog.org
My daughter Katherine is a Boy Scout. Actually, she is a Venture Scout, which is open to boys and girls age 14 to 21. She was a Girl Scout, but quit many years ago when many girls in her "troop" lost interest. When Katherine was 16, she told me she wanted to become a Venture Scout so she could go to Japan to the World Scout Jamboree. She did and came home full of Scout spirit. She even followed up her trip to Japan with a trip to the National Jamboree this summer as a Venture Scout. In Japan there were 132 nations represented. Of the 132, 128 have boys and girls as part of the same organization and program. It was evident that the BSA in the US was behind the curve for World Scouting.
/goo.gl/HZ4tqQ|

***** See the New York Times article about this issue HERE

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AHL Founders: Mike Adam, David Harding, Marty Lueck
Top Traders Roundtable
The guests in this featured episode are the founders of AHL: Michael Adam and Marty Lueck, co-founders of Aspect Capital, and David Harding, founder and CEO of Winton Capital.
Topics discussed:The story behind AHL, Why the "empiricist" outlook at AHL gave the team an early advantage, How technology's limits pushed their ideas, The breakthroughs of AHL's early research and how it still applies today and more.
/goo.gl/FnS7dB

**Podcast on how it all started. ~JK

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As Coding Boot Camps Close, the Field Faces a Reality Check
Steve Lohr - NY Times
In the past five years, dozens of schools have popped up offering an unusual promise: Even humanities graduates can learn how to code in a few months and join the high-paying digital economy. Students and their hopeful parents shelled out as much as $26,000 seeking to jump-start a career. But the coding boot-camp field now faces a sobering moment, as two large schools have announced plans to shut down this year — despite backing by major for-profit education companies, Kaplan and the Apollo Education Group, the parent of the University of Phoenix.
nyti.ms/2xwPaqm

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Quant Trading and Superpowers - Morgan Slade
Education.MarketsWiki.com

"You have a chance, single-handedly, without anyone looking at your resume, to try and change an industry."

In this video from MarketsWiki Education's World of Opportunity event in New York, Morgan Slade, CEO of CloudQuant, discusses the difficulties most people face when trying to enter high finance. Getting your foot in the door at a large hedge fund is tough these days unless you went to an Ivy League school and graduated summa cum laude. CloudQuant is changing the game by offering institutional quality research with high frequency data for anyone, regardless of background, to apply to algorithmic trading. CloudQuant will allocate capital to strategies if it sees a high enough risk adjusted return and will operate the strategies for you. Slade says the power of quantitative trading comes from the confluence of four things: cloud computing, alternative data, machine learning and crowd researchers.
Read the rest and watch the video »


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We're Journalists, Mr. Trump, Not the Enemy
Nicholas Kristof - NY Times
Sigh. If only President Trump denounced neo-Nazis as passionately and sincerely as he castigates journalists. What could be an easier task than distancing oneself from Nazis or violent white supremacists?
/goo.gl/ZRB814

***** I may be my own worst enemy (like some others I could name), but I am not an enemy of the United States, even if I can't pass the proposed immigration test. ~JJL

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Thursday's Top Three
Thursday's top read stories were separated by just one click, leaving the top story as
BOX Trading Floor Launches. The second and third stories were tied. Marketwatch's These are the world's 10 most crowded trades in the stock market right now and Bloomberg's How Fair Is Stock Trading? The SEC May Soon Decide rounded out the top three. Have a good weekend everybody.

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John Lothian News (JLN) is the news division of John J. Lothian & Company, Inc. (JJLCO). The online media and financial services firm is staffed by derivatives industry, journalism and technology professionals.
 
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John Lothian News Editorial Staff:
 
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Lead Stories
Yossi Beinart, Former CEO of Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Dies at 61; After a long career in U.S., he was brought in to turn around the ailing bourse but had to step down due to illness
Eran Azran - Haaretz
Yossi Beinart, who served as Tel Aviv Stock Exchange CEO for three years after a long career in the United States as an expert of algorithmic trading, died late on Wednesday after a long illness. He was 61.
/goo.gl/FzZWrR

**JLN spoke with Yossi last year at the World Federation of Exchanges annual conference where he shared some interesting ideas for every exchange: [http://bit.ly/1PTgWSo|Sit down, let me tell you how this works.]]

Investors Are Wagering on a Debt-Ceiling Disaster; The proximity of the budget approval vote to the debt ceiling raises the risk that they become entangled
By James Mackintosh - WSJ
There are good ways to trade politics in developed markets: hire ex-politicians, identify long-run trends, or just assume nothing much will change. The more popular approach is to ignore politics until trouble is blindingly obvious, then panic.
/goo.gl/KGGMrW

Tropical storm Harvey springs back to life, now threatens one-third of U.S. refining capacity
Patti Domm - CNBC
The energy industry is closely watching a rapidly developing hurricane that could become the first hurricane to make landfall in Texas in nine years and dump as much as two feet of rain on the heart of the U.S. refining industry.
cnb.cx/2xwKG3g

SEC halts trading in First Bitcoin Capital, after it gained more than 6,000% in 2017
By Ciara Linnane - MarketWatch
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thurday it has temporarily suspended trading in the shares of First Bitcoin Capital Corp. BITCF, +4.68% because of concerns about the accuracy and adequacy of public information on the Canadian company.
/goo.gl/nHmb58

A Test for Trump's SEC Chief; On corporate transparency, the U.S. has some catching up to do.
By The Editors - Bloomberg
President Donald Trump's new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, will soon face a choice about how much transparency to require of companies that issue shares to the public. We hope he'll come down on the side of sunshine.
/goo.gl/ajYxZQ

Moody's ties U.S.'s top-notch rating to debt payments
Richard Leong - Reuters
Moody's Investors Service said on Thursday it would consider stripping the United States of its top-notch rating in the event of a default, not over late or skipped payments on non-debt obligations, as the federal government faces the possibility of running out of cash in coming weeks.
reut.rs/2xwDdBe

Blood on street as KCG Europe traders rush to find new jobs
Sarah Butcher - efinancialcareers
Everyone knows that there's been pain at KCG in London this summer. Following KCG Holding's acquisition by high frequency trading firm Virtu Financial, the London proprietary trading business was closed in July and people were ejected - voluntarily or otherwise. In future, Virtu has said it will retain a London office, but only for "client facing trades". Henceforth, it said the "market making business" will be based in Dublin, where Virtu has its European headquarters.
bit.ly/2xwMdGe

FCM Rankings & Concentration: Q2 2017
Tod Skarecky - Clarus Financial Technology
We have Q2 data for Clearing Brokers, showing any changes in the US clearing landscape.
/goo.gl/zgLnae

Trading in the post-MiFID II environment
Cecilia Razelli, Itiviti via Automated Trader
It's now less than six months to go before the January 3, 2018, go-live date for the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), perhaps the most wide-ranging shake-up of the European trading landscape in a generation.
/goo.gl/fVtudB

BRIEF-U.S. announces indictment of two Societe Generale managers for Libor manipulation
Reuters
U.S. Announces indictment of two french bank managers for alleged roles in libor manipulation -- statement u.S. Says defendants knowingly instructed subordinates to submit inaccurate data to make it appear that societe generale was able to borrow at more favorable rates than it actually could.
reut.rs/2xwwp6u

The Hot New Hedge Fund Flavor Is 'Quantamental'
By Ivan Levingston - Bloomberg
Fundamental and quantitative investing used to be the hedge-fund versions of oil and water: They didn't mix. Those in the fundamental camp do analysis the old-fashioned way, evaluating investments based on research and instinct, with humans calling the shots. Quantitative money managers turn to sophisticated computer algorithms that search mountains of data for hidden signals and then make rapid-fire investment decisions. A middle ground has recently emerged: "quantamental" investing, a merger of computer and human-based decision making. It's not yet clear whether the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
/goo.gl/8kZTyS

Wall Street Banks Are Sending Warning Signals; Five big ideas that made the week interesting, and the stories behind them.
By Lisa Fleisher
The rally looks like it's about to peter out, say analysts at banks like HSBC Holdings Plc, Citigroup Inc., and Morgan Stanley. They're looking at the relationships between stocks, bonds, and commodities—and they're worried people may be ignoring fundamentals. "Just like they did in the run-up to the 2007 crisis, investors are pricing assets based on the risks specific to an individual security and industry, and shrugging off broader drivers," Bloomberg's Sid Verma and Cecile Gutscher report.
/goo.gl/ZzuBxZ

Put a Lid on It - Controlled Measurement of Information Leakage in Dark Pools
Ben Polidore, Fangyi Li & Zhixian Chen via TABB Forum
In a recent poll of more than 80 buy-side professionals, 37% attributed more than half of their trading costs to information leakage. Unfortunately, information leakage is hard to measure and harder to attribute to specific venues and behaviors. The standard approach used by most brokers—ranking dark pools using a post-trade reversion, or adverse selection, benchmark—does a poor job of predicting the true costs associated with routing to a specific dark pool. ITG's study of controlled measurement of information leakage in dark pools shows that dark pools with the worst information leakage have unremarkable adverse selection scores.
/goo.gl/mbv9DR





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Exchanges, OTC & Clearing
Top news from exchanges, clearing, settlement and trade execution facilities
Nasdaq president Nelson Griggs interview
Frank Chaparro - Business Insider
Nelson Griggs knows about competing for business in a tough market. He joined Nasdaq's listing business in 2001, right after the dot-com crash. During his first full year at the company, in 2002, just 70 companies went public in the US, compared to 406 IPOs in 2000, according to data from Renaissance Capital.
read.bi/2wC1nxJ

Brazil's B3 clearinghouse merger to free $6.4 bln in guarantees
Reuters
B3 Bolsa Balcão Brasil SA's conclusion of a plan to merge all clearing-houses into one will help free up as much as 20 billion reais ($6.4 billion) worth of collateral deposited by investors, Chief Executive Officer Gilson Finkelsztain said on Thursday.
reut.rs/2xwOn8Z

London Stock Exchange approved as an APA for MiFID II reporting
London Stock Exchange Group
FCA approves London Stock Exchange as Approved Publication Arrangement (APA); APAs authorised to publish post-trade transparency reports on behalf of investment firms; Post trade reporting to be provided through TRADEcho platform; LSEG providing single connectivity solution for firms pre- and post-trade reporting requirements
London Stock Exchange plc has today received regulatory approval from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to be authorised as an APA (approved publication arrangement). The approval means that London Stock Exchange will be able to publish post-trade transparency reports on behalf of investment firms to help them meet their reporting obligations under MiFID II.
/goo.gl/qYgxTc

Fixed Income Futures: Harmonisation of Post-Trading period on regular trading days
Eurex
Effective from 28 August 2017, the Management Board of Eurex Deutschland and the Executive Board of Eurex Zürich AG (collectively: the Eurex Exchanges) decided to harmonise the Post-Trading hours on regular trading days for Fixed Income Futures. Trading hours for continuous trading, trading via Eurex T7 Entry Services (TES) for all trading days as well as Post-Trading times on the last trading day will remain unchanged.
/goo.gl/Qw1t4X




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Fintech
A roundup of today's market tech news and a look at tomorrow's disruptors
FolioDynamix and Apex Clearing Partner to Deliver Next Generation of Automated Investment Advice
BusinessWire
Leading wealth management technology solution provider FolioDynamix announced its partnership with Apex Clearing, an independent, full-service clearing firm, to usher in a new wave of customer-centric investment technology in the wake of the DOL Fiduciary Rule. The collaboration of these two leading companies in the financial services industry combines turnkey investment technology from FolioDynamix with automated and expedited account opening and verification from Apex. This is an important step forward in the effort to evolve standard robo management into a fully configurable digital experience for advisors and investors.
/goo.gl/dFrj5o

Y Combinator is investing in more startups that sell to businesses instead of "consumer" startups to mint its next great fortune
Michael J. Coren - Quartz
Y Combinator is following the money. In a shift from its origins, the storied Silicon Valley accelerator that backed Airbnb and Reddit is now funding more business-to-business (B2B) startups than consumer startups. They're not alone. Enterprise investing, once a focus for specialized venture capitalists, has found its way into the portfolios of far more venture capitalists (VC).
/goo.gl/1oHrw5

****SD: Top startup categories at Y Combinator this summer in order of most companies to least companies: B2B/enterprise, consumer, hardware, marketplace and then fintech.

Bolstering Defences: A Look at Cyber Security in the Derivatives Industry
By Lynn Strongin Dodds - Derivasource
ybersecurity is far from a new issue but the Ransomware outbreak in June whereby companies' data was held hostage and money extorted was just the latest reminder of the untold damage these attacks can wreak on individuals and organisations. While the derivatives sector was not among the roughly 2,000 global victims, clearinghouses are deemed critical infrastructure, making security an ever higher priority with regulators and participants working separately and collectively to bolster its defences
/goo.gl/okREZT




Politics
An overview of politics as it relates to the financial markets
GOP Leaders Don't Expect White House Tax-Plan Details
Sahil Kapur - Bloomberg
Republican congressional leaders don't expect to release a joint tax plan with the White House next month, and they'll rely instead on House and Senate tax-writing committees to solve the big tax questions that remain unanswered, according to two people familiar with the matter.
/bloom.bg/2wCuIYE

House Speaker Ryan says rates must be permanent in tax reform
Reuters Staff
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday rejected speculation that future tax legislation could include temporary tax cuts for businesses, saying macro-economic elements of tax reform including rates must be permanent.
reut.rs/2xwlZUD

Business groups fire warning shot over Nafta shake-up
Shawn Donnan in Washington - Financial Times
Three top US business groups have fired a warning shot at the Trump administration, threatening to drop their support for its renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement if a controversial investment protection provision is abandoned.
on.ft.com/2xwsTJk

Trump to Rally Public on Taxes as Republicans Hash Out Details
By Sahil Kapur and Margaret Talev - Bloomberg
Trump said to launch tax campaign in Missouri next week; Broad July statement from 'Big Six' seen as starting point
As the push to overhaul U.S. tax policy gears up, President Donald Trump sees his role as leading a public campaign to rally support for the effort while Republican lawmakers hash out the details.
/goo.gl/PQYL6L

Gary Cohn urges Trump team to do more to condemn neo-Nazis; Top economic official 'reluctant to leave my post' despite pressure to resign
Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Gillian Tett in New York - FT
Gary Cohn, the top White House economic official, said the Trump administration "must do better" in condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists following the violent protests in Charlottesville this month that sparked one of the biggest controversies of Donald Trump's presidency.
/goo.gl/aouW14

Global leaders commit to eradicating modern slavery
Reuters
Global business tycoons and politicians from 48 countries committed to ending human trafficking, forced labor and modern slavery on Friday at a landmark gathering of high-profile leaders in the Australian city of Perth.
/goo.gl/VDK3Q9



Regulation & Enforcement
For more regulatory, visit MarketsReformWiki, our website focused on current market reform efforts.
Canada regulators say most crypto currency offerings need oversight
Alastair Sharp - Reuters
Canadian securities regulators on Thursday said many Canadian crypto currency offerings they have studied involve the sale of securities and should abide by tough existing rules unless otherwise granted exemptions.
reut.rs/2xwqiz7

Financial deregulation: will the US really go back to a pre-crisis free-for-all?
Howard Davies
A Federal Reserve official has spoken out against the Trump administration's reform plans. It is important to hold a debate
Since a revolving door was installed at the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, it has been difficult to keep track of the comings and goings in America's corridors of power. Anything written about the Trump administration's personnel and policies may be invalid before it is published.
/goo.gl/kiyfnx

Final US position limits rule will take 'at least a year'; CFTC expected to draft a narrow list of contracts in scope
Joanna Wright - Risk.net
Both newly confirmed commissioners at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have promised to finalise position limits for commodity exposures - but even with the agency almost at full strength for the first time since 2014, the rule will take at least a year to complete, say regulatory advisers.
/goo.gl/GQmyUw

Super fees set to become more transparent and easier to understand
ASIC
From 30 September there will be significant changes to the way superannuation and managed investment funds disclose the fees and charges that affect consumers.
/goo.gl/PvkJFx

FCA grants APA status to firms ahead of MiFID II; Tradeweb, MarketAxess' Trax, Bloomberg, NEX Regulatory Reporting and TRADEcho all received APA authorisation.
By Hayley McDowell - The Trade
Several major financial services and technology firms have been granted authorisation to operate as approved publication arrangements (APAs) for reporting under MiFID II.
/goo.gl/ojPoNS

ESMA issues guidelines on portability of data between trade repositories
ESMA
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued today final guidelines on data transfer between Trade Repositories (TRs) authorised under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). There are currently seven authorised TRs operating in the European Union (EU) and data portability is essential for data quality, competition between TRs and for risk monitoring by authorities.
/goo.gl/Em4Yqr

Proposed Rule Change to Implement a New Electronic Form 211
FINRA
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. ("FINRA") is filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC" or "Commission") a proposed rule change relating to members' filing obligations under FINRA Rule 6432 (Compliance with the Information Requirements of SEA Rule 15c2-11). The proposal implements a new electronic Form 211 in place of the current paper form.
/goo.gl/79A2Nq

Planning Ahead—Have You Chosen Your Beneficiaries?
PETE CHANDLER - FINRA
It's tempting to put off until tomorrow some of the important decisions about what happens to your retirement assets when you die. But it pays to plan ahead, especially for accounts that aren't transferred by will or trust. Start here: Make sure there are designated beneficiaries for any retirement savings plans and pensions you own or may be entitled to.
/goo.gl/7pZLck

CFTC Charges South Carolina Resident Thomas Lanzana, Florida Resident Nikolay Masanko, and Their Companies Blackbox Pulse, LLC and White Cloud Mountain, LLC with Fraud, Misappropriation, and Registration Violations
CFTC
Lanzana and Masanko Allegedly Operated a Ponzi Scheme that Defrauded Off-Exchange Foreign Currency Derivatives Customers of at Least $700,000
/goo.gl/wjB9Jg

Coming September 5: Shorter Trade Settlement
By Tom Price - SIFMA
September 5, 2017, marks a major change to standard trading practices in U.S. securities markets. SIFMA's Tom Price addresses the industry's effort to shorten the settlement cycle from three days (T+3) to two (T+2):
/goo.gl/TYT879

Fee Rate Advisory #1 for Fiscal Year 2018
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that in fiscal year 2018 the fees that public companies and other issuers pay to register their securities with the Commission will be set at $124.50 per million dollars.
/goo.gl/g197ub

Hong Kong securities watchdog SFC signs MOU with police to crack down on financial crime
Enoch You - South China Morning Post
Hong Kong's securities watchdog and the city's police force have signed a memorandum of understanding for deeper cooperation in cracking down on financial crimes, according to a statement issued by the Securities and Futures Commission on Friday evening.
/goo.gl/jeBvsB








Investing & Trading
Today's top stories from equities, indices and FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities)
How Wall Street Gets Rich Off Savers
Each layer in the business charges a fee, eating into investment returns.
By Noah Smith
To borrow a joke from the movie "Shrek," money management is like a parfait -- it has a lot of layers. There's the person who recommends investments for you -- a financial adviser, a wealth manager, a pension-fund manager or a private banker. Then there are the managers of the funds they invest in, or which you invest in on their recommendation. Finally, there are brokers, dealers, exchanges and other intermediaries that handle the actual trading of the assets the fund managers buy. Each layer takes a cut from your wealth -- sometimes in the form of a commission or flat fee, but sometimes in the form of a percent of your savings.
/goo.gl/oxWa2n

ETF Firm REX Seeks SEC Approval for Bitcoin Derivatives Fund
Stan Higgins - CoinDesk
An ETF firm based in Connecticut is launching a new fund that will invest in bitcoin-based derivatives and other exchange products, public records reveal.
REX ETFs, founded in 2014, filed to create the "REX Bitcoin Strategy Fund" yesterday, according to a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
bit.ly/2wCsAjC

Live from Newport Beach. It's Smart Beta!
Feifei Li and John West - Research Affiliates
The outperformance observed before a typical smart beta index is launched virtually disappears once it's live, yet most investors are making decisions on backtest results.
Two traits common to backtests—overfitting (or data-snooping bias) and ignoring transaction costs—bias investors' live return expectations higher than may be realistic.
By expecting lower performance than backtest results show, questioning how those results were achieved, and selecting a strategy built on sound economic theory, smart beta investors can frame more realistic performance expectations.
/goo.gl/LwFcHR

Anxiety Creeping In? It's Rare for Gold and Stocks to All Be Up This Much
Amrith Ramkumar and Ira Iosebashvili - WSJ
It's unusual for a safe haven like gold to be doing so well when stock markets also keep rallying like they have in 2017.
Gold is up 12% this year through Wednesday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 10% and the S&P 500 has climbed 9.2%.
Gold has only outperformed the Dow and S&P when all three have been up at least 9% four other times in the last 40 years—1986, 2006, 2009 and 2010, according to the Journal's Market Data Group.
on.wsj.com/2xwNuND

The New Off-Court Play for NBA Stars Is Startup Equity
Ira Boudway - Bloomberg
About three years ago, in February 2014, Andre Iguodala spent an off-day during the NBA season at the offices of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park, Calif. Over the course of four hours in a conference room, the Golden State Warriors small forward heard pitches from a handful of startups in Andreessen's portfolio. One shared its plan to disrupt the hair extensions business by selling directly to salons. Another explained how a mobile platform could help the secondhand clothing market move upscale. A third showed how an on-demand business model could transform the phone-screen-repair business. "We just banged them out in one day," Iguodala says.
/bloom.bg/2wBHBCq

SoftBank's $100bn Vision Fund needs Wall St trader to come good; Ex-Deutsche Bank star at helm of tech investment vehicle is in Silicon Valley spotlight
Tom Braithwaite - FT
Rajeev Misra liked to puff cigars at Deutsche Bank. Subordinates would have to remove smoke detectors from the ceilings. In these heady days before the financial crisis, Mr Misra, as head of fixed income, recruited traders such as Greg Lippmann, later played by Ryan Gosling in The Big Short. They made gigantic bets. Losses of $100m piled up in one book in 2006, enough for those responsible to be fired at any other institution, but they were kept around and made much bigger profits.
/goo.gl/rCN125




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Banks, Brokers & Managed Funds
The latest from banks, brokers, hedge funds and managed futures
Royal Bank of Scotland emerges as another company to pull adverts from news website Breitbart
William Turvill- WSJ
Royal Bank of Scotland has emerged as one of the latest companies to pull its adverts from right-wing news website Breitbart.
/goo.gl/RPyLxv

What happened to the 'too big to fail' banks?;While some have fallen down the global league table, many are larger today
Patrick Jenkins and Ian Bott - FT Data
One of the lessons of the crisis that began in 2007 was that banks proved "too big to fail". Fears of systemic collapse pushed governments into bailing out hundreds of financial institutions around the world. So it is ironic that the world's biggest banks have got bigger, not smaller, in the decade since.
/goo.gl/FUvSKv

Goldman and Pimco Are Loading Up on Mortgage Bonds
By Claire Boston - Bloomberg
Subprime mortgage-backed securities have gained 6.9% this year; Taint of the crisis can translate to value in mortgage bonds
Some big investors are getting so antsy about corporate junk debt that once-unloved mortgage bonds look safe in comparison.
/goo.gl/E22fh5




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Regions
Stories of local interest from the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions
Caution may be creeping in to emerging markets: IIF
Marc Jones - Reuters
Investor caution may be starting to creep into emerging markets following a blistering rally so far this year, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said on Thursday.
reut.rs/2xwJPzj

Central Bank of Papua New Guinea Adopts Blockchain Technology
Jessie Willms - BitcoinMagazine
The number of countries with banks experimenting with blockchain technology is growing rapidly. The Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), north of Australia, has joined the movement with its own central Bank of Papua New Guinea running blockchain trials.
/goo.gl/UCcQ9J








Brexit
Financials stories regarding the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union
'Deep pessimism' over Brexit outcome as Nobel laureates gather in Germany
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph
The world's Nobel economists and top German officials are deeply pessimistic about Britain's prospects outside the European Union, warning that any drift towards a hard Brexit in the current global mood would be tantamount to strategic suicide.
/goo.gl/3gGLy8

Johnson Says U.K. Will Pay as Brexit-Backers Fall Into Line
By Robert Hutton , Ian Wishart , and Svenja O'Donnell - Bloomberg
Foreign Secretary had previously said EU could 'go whistle'; Also accepts multi-year transition period as U.K. departs
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson softened his Brexit stance by acknowledging Britain will have to pay to depart the European Union, joining fellow Leave campaigners in making concessions aimed at guaranteeing the divorce goes through.
/goo.gl/ZTXN1k

Britain heads back to the Brexit table, plans in hand, economy in decline
Jeremy Gaunt - Reuters
Britain's economy is beginning to feel the Brexit pinch, or perhaps given the strong performance of the rest of the world economy, it should be punch.
/goo.gl/Acq3MU








Miscellaneous
Stories that don't quite fit under the other sections
A new Department of Energy report explains why coal is dying in the US
Akshat Rathi - Quartz
In April, US energy secretary Rick Perry asked his department to produce a report on electricity markets and reliability. The routine request made some uncomfortable: Environmental groups, for instance, worried that facts might get twisted to recommend subsidizing the coal industry, which has seen a historical decline in the last few decades.
bit.ly/2wC9U3t

For New England Farmers Looking To Make Ends Meet, The Sun Provides A Harvest
WNPR News
As Kevin Sullivan slowly rumbles his pickup truck across his 60 acre farm near the Connecticut-Massachusetts border, he leans in and asks: "What's farmland?"
"You picture [a] cow," says Sullivan. Perhaps "Farmer Joe, like me." Maybe you think about my tomatoes and peppers, he adds.
But now, Sullivan and other New England farmers are turning their farms into sources of another kind of commodity - electricity. They are allowing utility companies set up solar panels on their lands, and in the process making some much needed extra money.
/goo.gl/wmktUC

Girl Scouts Accuse Boy Scouts of Recruiting Girls, Souring Century-Old Friendship
By MATTHEW HAAG
Around the time of World War I, two organizations set out to mold young Americans into resourceful and virtuous future leaders, instilling in them the admirable traits of citizenship, loyalty and courage. Members of both groups wore uniforms, explored the wilderness and swore to uphold their values.
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