Business

Authored by Paul Wallace, op-ed via Reuters.com,

Few British budgets have mattered as much as the one that Philip Hammond will deliver to the House of Commons on Nov. 22.

The chancellor of the exchequer must shore up Theresa May’s perilously shaky government ahead of a vital Brexit summit of European leaders in mid-December. At the same time Hammond has to keep a grip on the public finances.

But the gravest challenge he faces is economic: Britain’s persistent productivity blight.

In an era where Amazon steals most of the headlines, it’s easy to forget about brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart.

But, even though the market values the Bezos e-commerce juggernaut at about twice the sum of Walmart, Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes that the blue big-box store is very formidable in other ways. For example, revenue and earnings are two areas where Walmart still reigns supreme, and the stock just hit all-time highs yesterday on an earnings beat.

Back in September, we reported on a major milestone in bitcoin’s evolution into a respectable medium of exchange for large purchases: A Dallas real estate agent had negotiated the first all-bitcoin purchase of a US home on record. Few details about the home or the identity of the buyers were released.

Earlier this summer we noted Uber's staggering 2Q cash burn of $600 million which equates to roughly $7 million in net cash outflows every single day.  The staggering, and consistently growing, cash burn figures resulted in several mutual funds announcing they would slash their valuations of the struggling rideshare company by up to 15%. 

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

To paraphrase one of the great gems of Wall Street wisdom, “Nothing infuriates a man more than the sight of other people making money.”

That’s a pretty good description of what happens during the late stage of a stock market bubble.

The bubble participants are making money (at least on a mark-to-market basis) every day.