Submitted by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
Heading into the New Year with oil prices above US$50, both OPEC and the U.S. shale industry are claiming victory in the latest oil war battle - and both expect to benefit from higher prices, but there can really only be one winner here.
While being capable of imagining a 'black swan' event implies its non-existence; given the level of groupthink consensus agreement that the bond bull is dead, inflation is back, central banks are maxed out, and global fiscal stimulus will save the world, we thought a look at some of the more unsusual, unpredictable expectations for 2017 was worthwhile...
Following Nomura's list of "Grey Swans", Reuters' Jamie McGeever looks across the analysts' outlooks for 2017 and finds these non-consensus wrinkles in the narrative...
Facebook has given “fact checking” website Snopes tools to snoop on private user data in the fight against the so-called ‘fake news’ problem. An unnamed Facebook employee confirmed that the social media giant now use Machine Learning Algorithms to directly target independent media outlets and anything considered “alt right” in order to suppress those stories from appearing on a users’ newsfeed. Politicalnewsupdate.com reports: The anonymous whistleblower also revealed that some Snopes.com staff members may be given behind-the-scenes access to Facebook user profiles.
With a valuation of $68 billion as of December 2016 - more than GM and Twitter combined - Uber is, according to the WSJ's Unicorn Database, the most valuable private company in the world.
And yet, despite its eye-popping valuation courtesy of a growth curve which until recently was truly unprecedented (at least until the company's sudden withdrawals from China), Uber has a big problem: an unprecedented cash burn, which if not getting worse with every passing quarter, is certainly not getting better.
In the weeks since Donad Trump was elected president, US financial stocks (and energy companies) have soared with all eyes on Dow 20k. However, across the world's capital markets, investors have lost a combined $1.2 trillion in debt and equity values, as the bond losses have outweighed stock gains dramatically (especially post-Fed). The question is - what happens next?
The drop in global debt and equity values in Q4 2016 is very reminiscent of the drop into 2015's Fed rate hike... which did not end well...