Business

Authored by Aleni Pittalis via Platts' The Barrel blog,

Approximately 90% of the world’s trade travels by sea and one would expect the industry’s supply chain to be the height of modernity by adopting disruptive technology and strategies. However, this could not be further from the truth. While online trading platforms are under development, the traditionalism of the industry prevails with various parties involved in each voyage, typically communicating via trade managers.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

According to Dallas Fed's Kaplan, America has an over abundance of jobs and needs to attract wanton amount of migrants in order to fill the insatiable demand for cheap labor, aka 'skills gap.'

While on one hand, Kaplan ceded to the notion that globalization was a primary reason for price deflation and stagnant growth, he also blamed America's aging demographics for lackluster growth.

There is no end to the list of 'real world' problems underlying cuirrent equity market price levels and velocities (slumping 'hard' economic data, record high valuations, global thermonuclear war, Washington uncertainty, Fed balance sheet normalization to name a few). However, as former fund manager Richard Breslow points out, "equities continue to have friends in high places." In other words, there's a lot more to fight than just 'The Fed'.

Via Bloomberg,

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

Stock valuations are the discounted values of future earnings. Future earnings depend on future revenue, which may diminish whenever the future includes a recession. So, broad economic conditions are a big factor to watch in stock valuation.

Broad economic conditions depend ultimately on the consumer’s ability and willingness to spend money. And July’s retail sales report gave us a peek at that.

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

U.S. shale has taken a lot of headline space recently as the biggest headwind for oil prices and the highest stumbling block for OPEC’s efforts to prop them up by cutting production. Yet, there may be another factor that could bring down oil prices as soon as next year...

China.