David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Autonomies

    Palladium at Year High, Driving Precious Metals on Chinese Cars

    This article by Eddie Van Der Walt and Ranjeetha Pakiam for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Palladium is up 19 percent in the past month, the best performing commodity. Chinese vehicle sales in July gained the most in 17 months, data showed this week. A weaker dollar since late July has also spurred precious metals.

    That “highlighted a generally supportive backdrop to palladium demand, exacerbated by ongoing concerns that output from top producers Russia and South Africa may be under threat,” said Jonathan Butler, a precious metals strategist at Mitsubishi Corp. in London. “We could see a bit of profit taking from here, but the $700 level seems to have been recaptured convincingly.”

     

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    You're About to Find Out How Much Sugar is Added to Your Food

    This article by Deena Shanker for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently ordered up new nutrition labels for cereal boxes, candy bars, and every other packaged food item in the supermarket.

    Soon, they will list not just how much sugar is inside, but whether that sugar was naturally occurring, as in raisins, or added later, as on the flakes that come with them. 

    Though this additional information won’t be required until next year, health advocates predicted that such legally mandated disclosure would deliver less-sugary foods in its wake. They were right. 

    Four Twizzler strawberry twists have the same sugar content as an apple, but clearly the fruit is a better choice—in no small part because it comes with fiber and Vitamin C. The FDA decision recognized that the source of sugar matters, and that listing “Sugars” alone doesn’t reflect that. The agency decision attempts to outsmart food manufacturers that commonly call added sugar ingredients by other names, such as high fructose corn syrup, agave, and fruit juice. Current-ingredients lists and nutrition-facts panels, the FDA was saying, can be surprisingly deceptive. 

    Experts in both health and the food industry predicted that the new labels would lead to reformulated products, with those marketed as “healthy” likely to be the first to get makeovers.

    Now that manufacturers would have to show in no uncertain terms how much sugar was being added, they would cut it, just as they did with trans fats when their disclosure became required.

     

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    Bristol-Myers Plummets as Drug Misses Key Lung-Cancer Goal

    This article by Cynthia Koons for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “This is a major surprise -- possibly the biggest clinical surprise of my career,” Evercore ISI analyst Mark Schoenebaum, who recommends holding Bristol-Myers stock, wrote in a note. “Investors had high expectations for this trial.”

    The results reflected a risky but potentially lucrative bet by Bristol-Myers, highlighting a difference in strategy with Merck. By designing its study to include patients with lower levels of a key biomarker thought to predict response to the drug, Bristol-Myers was aiming at a far larger market for Opdivo. Merck’s Keytruda trial, meanwhile, focused on a smaller subset with high levels of the biomarker, called PD-L1 -- fewer patients, but a better chance of success.

    Opdivo didn’t meet its primary goal of lengthening progression-free survival in patients with previously untreated advanced non-small cell lung cancer, compared with chemotherapy, Bristol-Myers said in a statement. The New York-based company is working on completing an evaluation of the late-stage trial’s results.

    Bristol-Myers Chief Executive Officer Giovanni Caforio said the company is now focused on combination therapies, which could potentially create a better outcome for the group of patients that don’t get results on drugs like Opdivo alone.

    “We have a very broad development program in lung cancer and we are answering a number of very important questions,”

    Caforio said in a phone interview Friday. “The role of monotherapy might be limited to a very small subset of patients in the first-line setting, which makes our program now ideally suited to address the next question, which is: ‘What is the role of combination therapy?”’ That will come from a study that analysts said would likely read out in 2018.

     

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    Apple Watch Sales Fall 55% in Second Quarter, IDC Report Says

    This article by Nicole Piper for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Apple Inc. sold 1.6 million watches in the second quarter of this year, down from 3.6 million units a year earlier, IDC said. Global smartwatch sales fell 32 percent to 3.5 million units.

    While Apple held on to its position as the industry leader, with 47 percent of the market, it was the only company in the top five to see a decline. Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share more than double to 16 percent.

    “Consumers have held off on smartwatch purchases since early 2016 in anticipation of a hardware refresh, and improvements in WatchOS are not expected until later this year, effectively stalling existing Apple Watch sales," IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani wrote in the report. “Apple still maintains a significant lead in the market and unfortunately a decline for Apple leads to a decline in the entire market.”

    Apple Watch is the company’s first new hardware product since the iPad’s 2010 debut and is a key part of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s strategy to find new areas of growth as sales of the iPhone slow. Apple is expected to introduce an updated operating system and an Apple Watch 2 this fall, promising new features and better performance.

    IDC said despite Apple’s sharp drop it expects growth in 2017, as continued development appeals to a broader market.

    “Every vendor faces similar challenges related to fashion and functionality, and though we expect improvements next year, growth in the remainder of 2016 will likely be muted,” said Ubrani.

     

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    Email of the day on the Autonomies

    Where can I find the list of autonomies on the website? I can't find the complete list...

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    Did Lenovo and Google Tango just hit an AR jackpot with this Pokemon Go phenomenon?

    This article by Will Shanklin for Gizmag may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Put the two together and you have an amped-up version of Pokémon Go, where the monsters you're chasing know their environments. If people walk in front of the monsters, the people stay in the foreground; if the people walk behind them, the people go in the background. If there's a table in the middle of the room, the monster will walk around it instead of through it, and they'll also move around lampposts, signs or any other obstacles.

    You get the idea ...

    When Lenovo announced the Phab2 Pro, we thought it was an incredibly bold phone with a somewhat niche focus: things like seeing how a new couch will look in your living room, measuring objects from distance or playing with virtual pets. After Pokémon Go exploded and took over the world this week, though, this phone suddenly has the potential to go from niche to the hottest property around.

    Of course this would require developer support from Pokémon Go creators Nintendo and Niantic, Inc. It isn't a stretch to imagine such a partnership, with a common connection: Until last year, Niantic was a company living under the Google umbrella (then known as Niantic Labs), and Google also creates the Tango tech that makes this AR mapping possible inside the Phab2 Pro. Surely the lines of communication have already been open on this, no?

     

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    Google Plans to Train 2 Million Indian Developers on Android

    This article by Saritha Rai for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Google launched a program to train 2 million developers in India for its Android platform as its fires up a race with Apple Inc. for the country’s developers to create innovative mobile apps.

    The Android Skilling program will be introduced for free across hundreds of public and private universities and training schools through a specially designed, in-person program this year. The program would also be available through the government’s National Skills Development Corporation of India, the company said in a statement.

    India is expected to have the largest developer population with 4 million people by 2018, overtaking the U.S., but only a quarter are building for mobile, said Caesar Sengupta, vice president of product management at Google.

    “We believe India is uniquely placed to innovate and shape the internet experience of billions of users who are and will come online on the mobile platform,” he said in the statement.

    Google plans to make the curriculum accessible to millions for free to help make India a global leader in mobile development.

     

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    Danone To Acquire WhiteWave Foods In $10 Billion Milk Merger

    This article by Maggie McGrath for Forbes may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    It’s a match made in milk heaven: Danone, the French dairy giant behind brands like Activa, Oikos and Dannon yogurt, announced Thursday morning that it will buy Silk Soy Milk maker WhiteWave Foods in a deal worth $10 billion.

    Danone said Thursday that it will pay $56.25 per share to acquire WhiteWave, a price that marks a 24% premium to WhiteWave’s average closing price ($45.43) over the last 30 days. Including debt and other WhiteWave liabilities, the companies are valuing the deal at $12.5 billion. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, pending all customary shareholder and regulatory approvals.

    The acquisition is expected to be fully financed with debt. Danone said that it has received commitment from its banks for this debt, and that it expects to maintain a “strong” investment grade rating.

    While the companies are calling the merger a “perfect match of vision, culture, and business,” the financial benefits are even more compelling: the acquisition will serve to almost double the size of Danone’s U.S. business, taking its North American footprint from 12% of Danone’s overall portfolio to 22%. Danone also said that merging with WhiteWave will make it one of the top 15 food and beverage producers in the U.S.

    The companies are projecting $300 million in synergies by 2020, and Danone is saying that the merger will be accretive to its earnings within the first year of the deal’s closing.

     

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    U.S. Stocks Advance Amid Drug Maker Rally as Caution Subsides

    This article by Anna-Louise Jackson and Bailey Lipschultz for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    “There was a big flight to safety trade earlier and a lot of that has reversed,” said Michael Antonelli, an institutional equity sales trader and managing director at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. “You’re looking at a market that’s lacking direction right now. The primary driver for concern is what it always is -- a slow growth backdrop. We’re in a no-man’s land before the next Fed meeting and the kick-off of earnings next week.”

    American equities shook off declines in global markets, which fell as knock-on effects of Britain’s vote start to materialize. Anxiety has increased over the potential for instability to spread after at least five asset managers froze withdrawals from U.K. real-estate funds following a flurry of redemptions, while data on Wednesday showed German factory orders were unchanged in May, disappointing forecasters who had called for an increase.

    Before yesterday’s decline, the S&P 500 capped its strongest weekly rise since November, boosted by assurances that central banks are prepared to loosen monetary policy to limit the fallout from Brexit. The benchmark is trading at 16.6 times estimated earnings, a higher valuation than the MSCI All-Country World Index and above its own three-year average.

     

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