Succinct Summations for Week’s Events April 8 2016 (plus Pain Management)

It's that time for the weekly big picture according to "The Big Picture."  The week's bonus includes an article on legal ways to hide income per The New York Times and a very instructive chart explaining pain management (investment pain that is) per the (not always wonderful) changes going on in China during the past few years.  (The graphic will not transfer to this blog so you'll have to click on the link to see it.)  Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Succinct Summations for Week’s Events April 8 2016

April 8, 2016 4:30pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summations for the week ending April 8th 2016

Positives:

1. ISM Non-manufacturing index came in at 54.5, up from 53.4 previously.
2. New jobless claims fell to 267k, down from 276k previously.
3. The MBA mortgage composite index rose 2.7% w/o/w.
4. Bloomberg’s consumer comfort index held steady at 42.6.
5. PMI services index came in at 51.3, a modest expansion.

Negatives:

1. Factory orders fell 1.7%, down sharply from the 1.6% rise previously.
2. Job openings fell to 5.445M, down from 5.541M previously.
3. S. stocks fell for the second time in the last three weeks.
4. Auto inventories fell 1%, the largest monthly decline since September 2013.

10 Sunday Reads 4/10/16 - The Big Picture

10 Sunday Reads

April 10, 2016 7:30am by Barry Ritholtz

My easy-like Sunday morning reads:

• Social Media: The Cornerstone of Financial Firms in the 21st Century (CFA Institute)
• Are Private Equity Returns Overstated? (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• Millennial Employees Confound Big Banks (WSJ)
• Need to Hide Some Income? You Don’t Have to Go to Panama (NYT)
• The US government has a $20.4 trillion retirement problem (Business Insider)
• Keeping the sea lanes open: a cost–benefit analysis (Inside Story)
• Nate Silver ably defends his original Trump thesis: Trump’s New Magic Number Is 40 Percent Of The Vote (FiveThirtyEight)
• Is Rule 34 actually true?: An investigation into the Internet’s most risqué law (Washington Post)
• Your Healthy Lifestyle Won’t Necessarily Make You Healthier (Wired)
• Premium Smartphones Are Booming (Bloomberg)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Keith Ross, chief executive officer of PDQ Enterprises, which operates a dark pool, and former CEO of high-frequency trading company Getco.