The Big Picture

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• Is China or India More Financially Open?
• Mark Cuban Hates Stocks
• Markets at New Highs: Now What? (Open Thread)
• 10 Monday PM Reads
• Map: Terror Attacks in America Since 1970
• Art Cashin: Austerity Out in Europe
• Fusion Research Equity Market Review: April 29th 2013
• 10 Monday AM Reads
• The Interns Are Coming! The Interns Are Coming!
• Week in Review: Global Trend Indicators Overbought/sold Markets
• Calm Down: You Are More Likely to Be Killed By Mundane Things than Terrorism

Is China or India More Financially Open? Posted: 30 Apr 2013 02:00 AM PDT

Mark Cuban Hates Stocks Posted: 30 Apr 2013 01:00 AM PDT Mark Cuban, AXS TV co-founder, says he doesn’t think there is vulnerability in Twitter systems — but rather — the way people are using it is where the vulnerability is at. Mark Cuban on Tech Thu 25 Apr 13 | 12:45 PM ET

Markets at New Highs: Now What? (Open Thread) Posted: 29 Apr 2013 04:30 PM PDT click for updated data   Markets set new closing highs today with S&P500 hitting 1593.61. What does this mean? Are people still under-invested, over exposed to fixed income? Have to many people plowed into health care, staples and utlities? What is the next likely move from here: Summer swoon or rally continues? ~~~ What say ye?

10 Monday PM Reads Posted: 29 Apr 2013 02:00 PM PDT My afternoon train reads: • Tech Stocks Are Cheapest in Seven Years (Bloomberg) see also Placing The Current Rally In Perspective (The Fast Pitch) • What If We Never Run Out of Oil? (Atlantic) • Market's $20 Trillion Yielding 1% Shows Austerity Mistaken (Bloomberg) vs Starving the Beast (Economix) • Legal marijuana’s all-cash business and secret banking (CNNMoney) • Justice O'Connor: Maybe Bush V. Gore Was A Mistake (Talking Points Memo) • The grad student who exposed Reinhart and Rogoff: They still can't get their facts straight (Quartz) see also The mysterious powers of Microsoft Excel (BBC) • Why Publishers Love Twitter & Not Facebook (priceonomics) • Why Polluters Should Pay You To Fix Climate Change (Fast Company) • Joe Manchin is not done with gun control. Does it matter? (Washington Post) see also What if the Tsarnaevs have been the “Boston Shooters”? (The New Yorker) • 66 Behind the Scenes Pics from The Empire Strikes Back (imgur) What are you reading?   Its 2013 — and there is STILL no MS Office for iPad or Android! What its MSFT waiting for? Source: WSJ

Map: Terror Attacks in America Since 1970 Posted: 29 Apr 2013 12:30 PM PDT Click for interactive graphic: Source: Atlantic Wire

Art Cashin: Austerity Out in Europe Posted: 29 Apr 2013 09:30 AM PDT

Fusion Research Equity Market Review: April 29th 2013 Posted: 29 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT

10 Monday AM Reads Posted: 29 Apr 2013 07:00 AM PDT My Monday morning reads to start the week: • Where Is the Larger Bubble, in Stocks or Bonds? (Minyanville) • Deep thoughts on civilisation from Jeremy "Hari Seldon" Grantham (FT Alphaville) • Influential economist says Wall Street’s full of ‘crooks’ (New York Post) in related news, the Earth is round. • The great economic experiment of 2013: Ben Bernanke vs. austerity (Washington Post) see also European Leaders' Softening on Austerity May Accelerate (Bloomberg) • Nate Silver: What Big Data can’t predict (Fortune) • Why the 10-year rate of return outlook expectation doesn’t work well in present volatile market environment  (Humble Student of the Markets) • Simon Johnson: Big Banks' Tall Tales (Project Syndicate) • With Home Listings Low, Spec Building Is Back (CNBC) • The Psychology of Errors (Cook&Bynum) see also Refereeing the Reinhart-Rogoff Debate (Bloomberg) • Winners of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards (Atlantic) What are you reading?   Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore Source: Bloomberg

The Interns Are Coming! The Interns Are Coming! Posted: 29 Apr 2013 04:19 AM PDT I hear them on the trains — cracking their gum or chatting excitedly on their OMG! phones. I see them in the streets. I find them gunking up my Twitter feed. And soon, they will be in my office, looking for a place to sit, asking what the WiFi password is, and wondering how does this scanner work? and other assorted questions. The good news is we are very fortunate to be able to offer positions to several outstanding college students. We pull together two types of work specifically for them over the summer — shorter term projects that is additive to what our crack staff is working on, and longer-term research projects. The short-term work helps them get a feel for what life is like in an asset management shop week-to-week. The longer term projects let them do a deep dive into research, see their names on a published work (in the acknowledgments). I always cringe when I hear some companies think of interns as free labor — unpaid grunts that do very little of substance. If that is what you find yourself doing over the summer, you picked the wrong firm to work for.  (Too bad there isn’t a Yelp for intern programs). The best news is as I start pulling together their work assignments, I know the Summer is not far off.

Week in Review: Global Trend Indicators Overbought/sold Markets Posted: 29 Apr 2013 03:00 AM PDT The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price moves. The RSI moves between zero and 100 and is considered overbought with a reading above 70 and oversold when below 30.  Note the RSI can sustain an overbought (oversold) reading in a strong up (down) trend.   Click chart to enlarge. (click here if chart is not observable) ~~~ Global Trend Indicators ~~~ (click here if charts are not observable) Week in Review ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ (click here if chart is not observable)

Calm Down: You Are More Likely to Be Killed By Mundane Things than Terrorism Posted: 29 Apr 2013 02:00 AM PDT You're More Likely to Die from Brain-Eating Parasites, Alcoholism, Obesity, Medical Errors, Risky Sexual Behavior and Just About Everything Other than Terrorism We noted in 2011: – You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack – You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack — You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane — You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack –You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack — You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack – You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack –You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack –You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack –You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist –You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack – You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack Let's look at some details from the most recent official statistics. The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war. In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:   Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means: – You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack – You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack (Keep in mind when reading this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially understating the risk of other causes of death as compared to terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.) Wikipedia notes that obesity is a a contributing factor in 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity 5,882 to times 23,528 more likely to kill you than a terrorist. The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to avoidable medical errors is as high as 100,000. Indeed, one of the world's leading medical journals – Lancet – reported in 2011: A November, 2010, document from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that, when in hospital, one in seven beneficiaries of Medicare (the government-sponsored health-care programme for those aged 65 years and older) have complications from medical errors, which contribute to about 180 000 deaths of patients per year. That's just Medicare beneficiaries, not the entire American public. Scientific American noted in 2009: Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation. But let's use the lower – 100,000 – figure. That still means that you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism. The CDC says that some 80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So you're 4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism. Wikipedia notes that there were 32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack. CNN's Fareed Zakaria noted this week: "Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) " According to a 2011 CDC report, poisoning from prescription drugs is even more likely to kill you than a car crash. Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that – in the majority of states – your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda. The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in suicides to the downturn in the economy. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you're 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist. The CDC notes that there were 7,638 deaths from HIV and 45 from syphilis, so you're 452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism. The National Safety Council reports that more than 6,000 Americans die a year from falls … most of them involve people falling off their roof or ladder trying to clean their gutters, put up Christmas lights and the like. That means that you're 353 times more likely to fall to your death doing something idiotic than die in a terrorist attack. The agency in charge of workplace safety – the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration – reports that 4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011 within the U.S. homeland. In other words, you are 271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than terrorism. The CDC notes that 3,177 people died of "nutritional deficiencies" in 2011, which means you are 187 times more likely to starve to death in American than be killed by terrorism. Scientific American notes: You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old Toxoplasmosis is a brain-parasite. The CDC reports that more than 375 Americans die annually due to toxoplasmosis. In addition, 3 Americans died in 2011 after being exposed to a brain-eating amoeba. So you're about 22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a terrorist. There were at least 155 Americans killed by police officers in the United States in 2011. That means that you were more than 9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist. And – according to the 2011 Report on Terrorism from the National Counter Terrorism Center – Americans are just as likely to be "crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year" as they are to be killed by terrorists. Let's switch to 2008, to take advantage of another treasure trove of data. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, 33 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide in 2008 from terrorism. There were 301,579,895 Americans living on U.S. soil in 2008, so the risk of dying from terrorist attacks in 2008 was 1 in 9,138,785. This graphic from the National Safety Council – based upon 2008 data – shows the relative risks of dying from various causes: If the risk of being killed by a terrorist were added to the list, the dot would be so small that it would be hard to see. Specifically, the risk of being killed by terrorism in 2008 was 14 times smaller than being killed by fireworks. Reason provides some more examples: [The risk of being killed by terrorism] compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has just published, Background Report: 9/11, Ten Years Later [PDF]. The report notes, excluding the 9/11 atrocities, that fewer than 500 people died in the U.S. from terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2010. Terrorism pushes our emotional buttons. And politicians and the media tend to blow the risk of terrorism out of proportion. But as the figures above show, terrorism is a very unlikely cause of death.

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