Wall Street Journal (February 2)
“Investors are betting the volatility that has rattled markets over the past two weeks is here to stay. Many are bracing for dramatic swings in stocks as the U.S. presidential election season ramps up and investors assess the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on global economic activity.”
Tags: Coronavirus, Election, Impact, Investors, Markets, Outbreak, Rattled, Stocks, U.S., Volatility
New York Times (January 4)
“President Trump’s decision to authorize the killing of a top Iranian military leader could be the match that sets off a regional conflagration, or it could have only marginal geopolitical impact…. But it is just the latest example of the capricious way in which the president, as commander in chief, has chosen to flex his lethal powers.”
Tags: Authorize, Capricious, Conflagration, Geopolitical, Impact, Iran, Killing, Military, Trump
Financial Times (December 2)
“Investors are becoming increasingly concerned about how climate risks will impact their portfolios.” TCI, one activist hedge fund, “has warned Airbus, Moody’s, Charter Communications and other companies to improve their pollution disclosure or it will vote against their directors and called for asset owners to fire fund managers that did not insist on climate transparency.”
Tags: Activist, Airbus, Asset owners, Charter, Climate risks, Directors, Disclosure, Fund managers, Hedge-fund, Impact, Investors, Moody's, Pollution, Portfolios, TCI, Vote
Wall Street Journal (August 11)
Though “artificial intelligence has the potential to reinvent the world, from how businesses operate to the types of jobs people hold to the way wars are fought,” the struggles of IBM’s Watson “suggest that revolution remains some way off.” Currently, “no published research shows Watson improving patient outcomes” while “more than a dozen IBM partners and clients have halted or shrunk Watson’s oncology-related projects” because of its “limited impact on patients.” Often, “the tools didn’t add much value. In some cases, Watson wasn’t accurate.”
Tags: Accurate, AI, Clients, IBM, Impact, Oncology, Partners, Patient outcomes, Potential, Revolution, Struggles, Watson
Wall Street Journal (June 21)
Investors aren’t quite sure “how to trade a trade war.” Some obvious stocks like Boeing and Caterpillar are being hit hard, but for many others there’s a lack of information on the potential impact, “partly because supply chains are so complex.” While there’s much to “suggest that trade war fears haven’t sunk in properly,” the bigger issue is that it is challenging “to price in something you don’t understand, and the implications of a trade battle are obscure, at best.” We don’t know “precisely which products will be targeted in the next round, or how long the tariffs will last.”
Tags: Boeing, Caterpillar, Complex, Fears, Impact, Implications, Investors, Obscure, Products, Supply chains, Targeted, Tariffs, Trade war
The Guardian (March 19)
“As the disastrous impact of leaving the EU becomes clearer, UK citizens should be allowed another say.” Some forecasts estimate that it will take “at least 20 years before the UK economy stabilises after Brexit.” And the London School of Economics “found that all EU countries will lose income after Brexit. The overall GDP fall in the UK is estimated at between £26bn and £55bn, depending on the negotiated settlement. In the most pessimistic scenario, the cost of Brexit could be as high as £6,400 for each household.”
Tags: Brexit, Disastrous, EU, GDP, Impact, London School of Economics, Settlement, UK
Reuters (February 21)
“The recent surge in market volatility, by some measures one of the most dramatic on record, will have zero impact on investor returns beyond a few months. Literally zero.” Investors are better to hold tight to their investments. “In fact, the turbulence that wiped $4 trillion off the value of world stocks earlier this month is already fading.”
Tags: Dramatic, Impact, Investors, Market volatility, Returns, Surge, Turbulence
Time (December 18)
“It became a hashtag, a movement, a reckoning. But it began, as great social change nearly always does, with individual acts of courage.” They have toppled titans and brought hope, yet we are only in “the beginning of this upheaval,” and have yet to learn how far its ultimate impact will reach. “For giving voice to open secrets, for moving whisper networks onto social networks, for pushing us all to stop accepting the unacceptable, the Silence Breakers are the 2017 Person of the Year.”
Tags: Courage, Hashtag, Hope, Impact, Movement, Silence breakers, Social change, Social networks, Upheaval
Washington Post (June 1)
“Even as the Trump administration’s commitment to the [Paris] climate accord wavered, the Exxon vote showed that climate concerns were gaining ground in the business world.” BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street apparently cast their “shares in opposition to Exxon management.” Their success “marked an important step for groups that have been trying to force corporations to adopt greater disclosure and transparency about the financial fallout of climate change.” Ultimately, 62.3% of shares cast were against ExxonMobil management, effectively forcing “the oil giant to report on the impact of global measures designed to keep climate change to 2 degrees centigrade.”
Tags: BlackRock, Climate, Disclosure, Exxon, Fallout, Impact, Management, Opposition, Paris accord, State Street, Transparency, Trump, Vanguard
Equities.com (May 31)
“Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, and its meteoric rise has made it a mainstay of conversation for investors, media, and technologists alike,” especially now that a coin is priced at over $2,000. “But the true impact of Bitcoin is actually far more reaching than this – it’s actually helped to birth new markets for over 800 other cryptocurrencies…. For the first time since Bitcoin was founded, it now makes up the minority of the entire cryptocurrency market at about 47.9% of all coins and assets.”
Tags: Bitcoin, Coins, Cryptocurrency, Impact, Investors, Mainstay, Media, Technologists
