Coin News

US stocks closed mixed amid a lackluster session. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrial average booked small losses while the Nasdaq eked out a gain. The Dow closed above the psychologically important 20,000 level for a third straight session.

Here's the scoreboard:

• Dow: 20,091.80, -9.11 (-0.05%) 
• S&P 500: 2,294.49, -2.19 (-0.10%)
• Nasdaq: 5660.78, +5.61 (+0.10%)

1. US GDP whiffed. The first estimate for fourth-quarter GDP showed the US economy grew at an annual rate of 1.9%, according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Wall Street had expected growth of 2.2%.
2. Consumer confidence is at a 12-year high. The final January reading for University of Michigan consumer confidence came in at 98.5, its highest a dozen years. "The post-election surge in confidence was driven by a more optimistic outlook for the economy and job growth during the year ahead as well as more favorable economic prospects over the next five years," said Richard Curtin, the survey's chief economist.
3. The Mexican peso surged. The peso gained as much as 1.7%, hitting a high of 21.3806 per dollar, after President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had an hour-long phone conversation. Friday's call followed Thursday's fireworks, which saw Trump tweet about how Mexico should pay for the border wall and Peña Nieto canceling their meeting that was scheduled to take place next week. 
4. Microsoft's value tops $500 billion. The last time Microsoft was valued at more than $500 billion was in 2000, just before the tech bubble burst. Friday's gain of more than 2% lifted the company's valuation to a record high. 

Additionally:

Trump is considering a 20% border tax on Mexican imports — here's what Mexico sends to the US

TRUMP: Reagan was the best president of my lifetime, but he was 'not great' on trade

One of the most powerful women in finance on protectionism, China, Dow 20k, and 'Brexit on steroids'

REPORT: Greece could risk a 'harsh' new bailout next year

A huge drugmaker just took an unprecedented move to counter criticism about rising prices

Oil rig count jumps by 15

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

US stocks closed mixed amid a lackluster session. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrial average booked small losses while the Nasdaq eked out a gain. The Dow closed above the psychologically important 20,000 level for a third straight session.

Here's the scoreboard:

• Dow: 20,091.80, -9.11 (-0.05%) 
• S&P 500: 2,294.49, -2.19 (-0.10%)
• Nasdaq: 5660.78, +5.61 (+0.10%)

1. US GDP whiffed. The first estimate for fourth-quarter GDP showed the US economy grew at an annual rate of 1.9%, according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Wall Street had expected growth of 2.2%.
2. Consumer confidence is at a 12-year high. The final January reading for University of Michigan consumer confidence came in at 98.5, its highest a dozen years. "The post-election surge in confidence was driven by a more optimistic outlook for the economy and job growth during the year ahead as well as more favorable economic prospects over the next five years," said Richard Curtin, the survey's chief economist.
3. The Mexican peso surged. The peso gained as much as 1.7%, hitting a high of 21.3806 per dollar, after President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had an hour-long phone conversation. Friday's call followed Thursday's fireworks, which saw Trump tweet about how Mexico should pay for the border wall and Peña Nieto canceling their meeting that was scheduled to take place next week. 
4. Microsoft's value tops $500 billion. The last time Microsoft was valued at more than $500 billion was in 2000, just before the tech bubble burst. Friday's gain of more than 2% lifted the company's valuation to a record high. 

Additionally:

Trump is considering a 20% border tax on Mexican imports — here's what Mexico sends to the US

TRUMP: Reagan was the best president of my lifetime, but he was 'not great' on trade

One of the most powerful women in finance on protectionism, China, Dow 20k, and 'Brexit on steroids'

REPORT: Greece could risk a 'harsh' new bailout next year

A huge drugmaker just took an unprecedented move to counter criticism about rising prices

Oil rig count jumps by 15

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

[…]

The post The US Postal Inspection Service is Seeking Bitcoin ‘Intelligence Gathering Specialists’ appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that one possible source of funding for the proposed Mexican-American border wall could be a new 20% border tax on goods imported from Mexico.

"When you look at the plan that's taking shape now, using comprehensive tax reform as a means to tax imports from countries that we have a trade deficit from, like Mexico," Spicer said, according to a White House pool report.

We decided to take a look at the extent and nature of US imports from Mexico. According to the US Census Bureau, trade with Mexico has dramatically increased over the last three decades. In 1985, the US imported $19 billion worth of goods from Mexico. Trade value grew dramatically, especially after the implementation of NAFTA in the 1990s and 2000s, ending up at $270.6 billion in the first 11 months of 2016.

The Office of the US Trade Representative included a breakdown of the value of different types of goods imported from Mexico in 2015. Vehicles took the lead, followed by electrical machinery and machinery. Billions of dollars of agricultural goods were also imported from Mexico.

SEE ALSO: Here's every state's biggest international trading partner

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Legislators gathered this week to hold a hearing on a measure that would prohibit cannabis firms in the state of Washington from working with bitcoin.

Source

On Friday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis called for a review of the F-35 program to "determine opportunities to significantly reduce the cost" sending Lockheed Martin's stock down 3% from its pre-announcement levels.

Lockheed's stock managed to hold support at the $250 level, and has worked its way back up to about $254 a share, down about 0.4%. 

The Deputy Secretary of Defense will "oversee a review that compares the F-35C and F/A-18E/F operational capabilities and assess the extent that F/A-18E/F improvements (an advanced Super Hornet) can be made in order to provide competitive, cost effective, fighter aircraft alternative," according to a release from Mattis. 

Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, initiated in 2001, has been plagued by cost and schedule overruns as well as perceived deficiencies in the program. As of 2017, many experts contacted by Business Insider agree that the jet's problems mostly exist in the rear view, but serious problems persist within the program.

Specifically, The F-35C naval variant has struggled to achieve operational capability aboard the US's aircraft carriers. A recent report revealed that serious issues with the jet's takeoff process could derail the program until 2019. The F-35C is the most expensive variant of the three Joint Strike Fighters at about $130 million per plane. 

Meanwhile, the F-18 has been operational on US aircraft carriers for decades, and Boeing already demonstrated their ability to upgrade the plane on cost and on time with in 2001 when they introduced the Super Hornet. 

Dan Gillian, Boeing's vice president of F/A-18 and EA-18 programs, told Business Insider this month that even with the coming F-35C naval variant, US Navy still plans to field versions of the F/A-18 into the 2040s alongside F-35s. 

The Air Force's F-35A and the Marine Corps' F-35B have both achieved initial operational capability, and Lockheed has projected the cost for the Air Force's variant to reach $85 million per plane by the time full production picks up.

Shares of Lockheed Martin have been treading water between $250 and $260 as of late after a December 12th tweet by then President-elect Donald Trump stating the F-35s costs were "out of control." sent the stock into a tailspin. The all-time high of $269.90 was put in on December 5.

SEE ALSO: New footage may show the problem that's delaying the Navy's F-35

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

[…]

The post Bitfinex’s Hacked Bitcoins Are on the Move; 5% Recovery Bounty Offered appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

The US oil rig count climbed for the second week in a row, rising by 15 to 566, according to Baker Hughes.

This is the highest count since November 13, 2015.

Meanwhile, the number of active gas rigs rose by three to 145.

Last week, the US oil rig count resumed its climb, rising by 29 to 551, according to Baker Hughes.

That was the biggest one-week increase since April 2013.

SEE ALSO: What 25 major world leaders and dictators looked like when they were young

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

[…]

The post Italian Politician Links Bitcoin to Mafia Controlled Gambling Industry appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Starbucks is down 3.7% at $56.32 a share on Friday morning after announcing first-quarter results.

Results were mostly in line with Wall Street estimates, with the exception of the company's forecast for 2017 revenue growth of 8% to 10%, down from its previous estimate of a double-digit rise, Reuters reports.  The company also said that visits to its stores in the US were down.

Starbucks is struggling to deal with the amount of mobile orders coming through its stores, which is slowing down service and alienating customers. Transactions, a measure of customer traffic, dropped 2% in the most recent quarter, according to the company. 

Starbucks is also facing pressure from declining traffic to shopping malls and restaurants, as customer shopping habits change and people increasingly choose to eat at home. 

SEE ALSO: Starbucks is facing a huge crisis — and the CEO refuses to say how he's going to solve it

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Microsoft is up 1.8% at $65.40 a share on Friday morning after the company's second quarter results topped Wall Street's expectations. 

Microsoft's cloud computing business continued to post strong gains even as its traditional Windows and Office businesses showed signs of struggling.

Microsoft reported:

• Earnings per share of $0.84 on an adjusted basis, versus $0.79 expected.
• Revenue of $25.8 billion. That figure excludes Windows 10 revenue deferrals and results from the just-acquired LinkedIn, making it a clean beat on the $25.28 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.

Notably, LinkedIn contributed $228 million of revenue to the Productivity unit in the three weeks between the acquisition closing and the end of the quarter.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft beats the street, stock goes nowhere

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Microsoft is up 1.8% at $65.40 a share on Friday morning after the company's fourth-quarter results topped Wall Street's expectations. 

Microsoft's cloud computing business continued to post strong gains even as its traditional Windows and Office businesses showed signs of struggling.

Microsoft reported:

• Earnings per share of $0.84 on an adjusted basis, versus $0.79 expected.
• Revenue of $25.8 billion. That figure excludes Windows 10 revenue deferrals and results from the just-acquired LinkedIn, making it a clean beat on the $25.28 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.

Notably, LinkedIn contributed $228 million of revenue to the Productivity unit in the three weeks between the acquisition closing and the end of the quarter.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft beats the street, stock goes nowhere

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Alphabet, Google's parent company, is down 1% at $824.11 a share on Friday morning after reporting fourth-quarter earnings after Thursday's close.

Here's a look at the key numbers:

• Revenue rose 22% to $26.06 billion ($25.2 billion expected)
• Adjusted earnings of $9.36 per share ($9.67 expected)
• Paid clicks jumped 43% year over year
• Cost-per-click on Google properties fell -16% year over year
• Other Bets revenues climbed 74.7% to $262 million 

 Google’s mobile search and video ads boosted revenue in the fourth quarter, but increased spending on hardware and other new businesses, as well as a larger-than-expected tax rate, weighed on the bottom line.

In addition to the hard numbers, investors had their eyes on Alphabet's "Other Bets" —  the separate companies focused on ambitious new projects from self-driving cars to biotech.

Alphabet ended several projects and lost many top executives and leaders during the back half of 2016. The moves were designed to help cut costs from Other Bets, which have yet to generate any meaningful revenue for Alphabet.

During the earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai touched a lot on Google's main new areas of investment like hardware, cloud services, and YouTube. However, Pichai wouldn't give any hard numbers for subscribers to paid YouTube services like YouTube Red or YouTube Music, saying only it was "early days" for those products.

SEE ALSO: Google's revenue beats, but the stock is falling

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Ant Financial, owner of Chinese payment platform Alipay, has agreed to buy MoneyGram, for $880 million in the firm's first deal with a US listed company, according to Bloomberg.

The purchase will give Ant Financial access to the legacy remittance firm's massive network, which includes 2.4 billion bank and mobile accounts, boosting its presence outside China.

Ant Financial has been expanding internationally, but this is its most significant move to date.

• Ant Financial has stuck up several global partnerships with the goal of giving its Chinese users access to services when traveling. In the last year alone, partnerships have been stuck in Europe, Australia, and North America in order to expand the the acceptance of Alipay, the company’s mobile wallet. These deals have specifically targeted the large number of Chinese citizens traveling every year — 120 million Chinese citizens traveled abroad in 2015 and on average they spent $875 each, according to Bloomberg
• However, the purchase of MoneyGram will allow Ant Financial to significantly expand its global reach with international users. MoneyGram has roughly 350,000 partners in over 200 countries, where it has a local sales force and operations. Leveraging this network will give Ant Financial massive reach to push its financial service offerings by integrating its mobile platforms and services with MoneyGram’s network. This will help the company reach its goal of having 2 billion financial service users in the next 10 years, according to CNBC. 

This move could become even more profitable as Ant Financial leverages its digital network to build MoneyGram’s digital presence.

• At a time when digital remittance is increasing in popularity, MoneyGram has seen slowing growth in this segment. In Q3 2016, MoneyGram only saw digital revenue grow by 12% year-over-year (YoY), which represented 13% of all money transfer revenue. This shows growth has continued to slow, as digital revenue grew by 17% in the previous quarter and by 71% in Q3 2015 a year ago. For some context, major rival Western Union saw consumer-to-consumer (C2C) revenue from Westernunion.com grow by 28% on a constant-currency basis in Q3 2016, with transactions growing 29%. 
• However, this deal will bring MoneyGram new access to a massive digital network, which is likely to include Alipay. The mobile wallet already counts 450 million Chinese citizens as users. If Ant Financial were to incorporate MoneyGram's remittance capabilities with Alipay, MoneyGram could immediately see massive growth in its digital segment. And if the company's target of having 60% of its transaction volume coming from outside China is to come to fruition it's likely international citizens will get access to Alipay, which in turn would make MoneyGram even more profitable. 

Massive mergers such as this are sure to have a drastic effect on the payments ecosystem, which has grown exponentially in the last few years to include vendors, acquirers, merchants, processors, and more.

John Heggestuen, director of research at BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the payments ecosystem that drills into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.
• Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.
• Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

• Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.
• Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.
• Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.
• Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more.
• Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the payments ecosystem.

Join the conversation about this story »

[…]

The post Bitcoin Core Dev Recommends a 70% Reduction in Transaction Capacity after $250 Million Backlog appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

The final January reading of consumer confidence from the University of Michigan came in higher than expected.

The reading on US consumer's outlook was 98.5, better than the 98.1 expected to economists. This was also above than the initial reading of 98.1 earlier in the month.

The January print was a slight increase from December's final reading of 98.2.

Consumer confidence has surged in the wake of the US election, as improved outlooks for growth and jobs have bolstered the index.

SEE ALSO: FIAT-CHRYSLER CEO: There's 'no doubt' Trump's economic plans will be an 'overall positive for us'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

President Donald Trump said that President Ronald Reagan was his favorite president, except for one policy.

In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump said that Reagan was his favorite president to have served in his lifetime, but disagreed with him on one issue: trade.

"Well, I like Reagan," said Trump after Hannity asked which president he most admired. "I didn't like him on trade but other than trade, I liked him very much and he was OK on trade. But not great."

Trump also said Reagan was "not as strong on trade as I felt he should have been" and that he "disagreed with him on some things, primarily trade."

Reagan's record on trade is a bit mixed. In fact, Reagan first proposed a free trade agreement between the US and Mexico during his 1980 presidential run, signed off on a US-Canada deal in 1988, and inspired the idea of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

In fact, in 1989, Reagan gave an impassioned defense of free trade in a letter to Congress. From the letter (emphasis ours):

"It is the primary responsibility of governments to promote sound and stable financial markets that encourage international commerce and to reduce barriers to trade at home and abroad. Reducing these barriers will allow markets, not governments, to determine the goods that society produces. Too often policies designed to preserve jobs in one industry reduce competitiveness and employment in other industries. A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that close doors, create greater barriers, and destroy millions of jobs. We should always remember: Protectionism is destructionism. America's jobs, America's growth, America's future depend on trade—trade that is free, open, and fair."

At the same time, however, Reagan also imposed extreme tariffs against Japan — a massive trading partner with the US. Reagan restricted the number of Japanese cars that could be sold in the US, imposed a tariff on Japanese motorcycles, and even instituted a 100% tariff on Japanese electronics.

Trump has praised Reagan for his trade policies in the past, citing the Japanese tariffs.

President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry," said Trump in a speech during the campaign. "I remember. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45 percent, and his tariff to shield America’s semiconductor industry was 100 percent, and that had a big impact, folks. A big impact."

Trump has taken a decidedly more protectionist approach, promising to renegotiate NAFTA and has pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Additionally, Sean Spicer, Trump's press secretary, said the administration is considering a 20% border tax on Mexican goods that could eventually apply to all imports.

Trump has also said he is not opposed to "fair" trade deals and favors bilateral deals with individual countries over regional deals.

Many economists agree that Reagan's Japanese tariffs were at least as harmful as helpful — if not more detrimental — but it seems that Trump is mostly following that part of Reagan's trade legacy.

SEE ALSO: Trump press secretary says the administration is considering a 20% border tax on Mexican imports to help pay for the wall

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

"Who has gotten paid from China?"

That's the key question when it comes to Wall Street firms trying to make headway in China, according to Terry Duffy, the CEO of exchange giant CME Group. 

Business Insider caught up with Duffy earlier this month and discussed Donald Trump, trading, and his hometown of Chicago. 

We also asked Duffy about CME's ambitions in China. The $40 billion exchange group already has a presence in the region, and the night Donald Trump was elected, CME Group handled trading in 18 million contracts out of Asia in just a few hours. That's equivalent its typical daily volume, globally. 

Duffy said he is looking to have more salespeople in Hong Kong, in a bid to get business from mainland China. Still, he said he is cautious about over-investing in the region. Here's the relevant passage from the interview:

Turner: How is that market opening up?

Duffy: It's not. It's still closed.

Turner: But do you —

Duffy: I'm not a Chinese expert, I'll tell you that right now. It's difficult over there. They move slower. We're an impatient bunch here in the US. The Europeans are probably the second-most impatient, and [the British] are calm, and then you have the Asian community where 50 years is like tomorrow. It's like a different world. People say the markets are going open up. Yeah, they probably will someday.

I don't know when that's going to be. But when you look at what they're trying to effectuate, it looks like they're trying to bring the markets to them rather than bring their markets to the rest of the world. That's what it looks like to me right now.

Turner: I was in London when the Hong Kong exchange acquired the London Metal Exchange, which is in keeping with what you're describing.

Duffy: Bad deal.

Turner: So how does that influence your thinking about China? If that market opens up there's a huge opportunity, but you may be waiting forever.

Duffy: So you continue to invest and invest in a smart way. You don't put all your eggs in a Chinese basket and say, "Oh, geez, I hope I am going to win there someday." I think you have to participate, you have to be there, but at the same time you have to understand, because history has told us, you could be waiting 15 years.

You have to continue to be there, continue to work, but at the same time you have to be very mindful of the cost when you decide to invest in a place that's supposedly going to open up their markets, but you don't know when. So I'm very cautious.

Turner: I do think a lot of firms have invested in China in the hope that the markets would open up. They've spent a lot of money on talent and that never paid out.

Duffy: I want to know: Who has gotten paid from China? Who has made money as a European or US entity in China? The one that was going to make money was Citibank, and then 2008 happened. My point is, I don't know anyone who has gotten paid.

Turner: But you have to be there.

Duffy: But you have to have some sort of investment there. There's no question about it. They're not just some backwards country. They are a player in the global economy. They are going to be bigger and bigger as time goes on. I think that, eventually, as they continue to be a part of the global economy, their markets will be forced open whether they like it or not.

You can read the full interview here. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

The Mexican peso is higher by 1% at 21.0026 per dollar as of 9:15 a.m. ET after a tweet from President Trump stated, "Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough. Massive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border must change, NOW!"

The peso was clinging to small gains ahead of the tweet from President Trump but accelerated to its best levels of the day after Trump continued his aggressive tone towards Mexico. Friday's gains come after a wild session on Thursday that saw the peso climb as much as 1.3% following a back and forth between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. 

Early on Thursday, Trump tweeted, "The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting."

Peña Nieto responded with a tweet of his, "This morning we have informed the White House that I will not attend the meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with the @POTUS." The Mexican president has repeatedly said that Mexico will not pay for the boarder wall. 

Later on Thursday, the Trump administration said it was considering a 20% border tax on Mexican imports to pay for the wall.

The Mexican peso has fallen about 13% since Trump's election victory on November 8th.  

SEE ALSO: Trump is about to sign off on a border wall with Mexico — here's how much it could cost

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Elite US universities tend to recruit from the top of the income distribution.

A study recently released by the Equality of Opportunity Project investigates the role of college in intergenerational class mobility. Among other topics, the research team, led by Stanford University economist Raj Chetty, used income tax and college enrollment data to look at the distribution of students by parental income at what they call "Ivy Plus" schools: The eight universities of the Ivy League, along with the University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke.

The researchers found a stunning result: At these twelve colleges, 14.5% of students came from families in the top 1% of the income distribution, while just 13.5% came from the bottom 50%.

Check out the full slideshow here

SEE ALSO: A big part of the American Dream is dying

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

[…]

The post Bitcoin Wallet Xapo Receives Early Approval from Swiss Financial Regulator appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

The latest reading of durable goods orders from the Commerce Department is set to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET.

The reading for the month of December is expected to come in at 2.5% growth from the month before.

Core durable goods, excluding autos and transportation equipment, are expected to rise 0.5% m-o-m. Excluding defense goods, growth of 0.2% is expected from economists.

The reading on orders for long-lasting goods is expected to bounce back from falling by 4.6% in November, with core goods expected to stay steady at 0.5% growth m-o-m.

SEE ALSO: FIAT-CHRYSLER CEO: There's 'no doubt' Trump's economic plans will be an 'overall positive for us'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

The first estimate for the fourth quarter's GDP will be out at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Economists estimate that the fourth quarter grew by 2.2% quarter-over-quarter, according to the Bloomberg consensus.

According to the Commerce Department's third quarter estimate, the US economy grew by 3.5% in the third quarter, stronger than was previously reported.

That was the final report on third-quarter GDP until annual revisions are published in 2017.

Refresh this page for updates at 8:30 a.m. ET.

SEE ALSO: What 25 major world leaders and dictators looked like when they were young

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Business Insider recently caught up with Rebecca Patterson, the chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, to hear about her outlook for the global economy in 2017.

Bessemer Trust, a privately owned wealth and investment management firm, oversees more than $100 billion in assets.

Patterson was the former Chief Markets Strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management and former  Global Head of Foreign Exchange and Commodities for the JPMorgan Private Bank. She started her career in journalism as a reporter for Dow Jones in London.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Federal Reserve's Investor Advisory Committee and the Economic Club of New York. American Banker named her one of "The 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance" in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

In the interview, Patterson discusses protectionism, China and where she sees value. 

This is part one of a series.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tina Wadhwa: The Dow finally hit the "landmark" number of 20k on Wednesday. Is this overrated, is this relevant? Does it actually mean anything for the markets or is it just a psychological high?

Rebecca Patterson: The Dow reaching 20,000 is more psychological in my view than anything. What’s more important is what’s happening behind the scenes. Economic data in the U.S. and overseas that is generally improving, better earnings news from US companies, and growing hopes that policy will translate into even faster economic activity. Of those, I worry mainly about the policy. So much is being discounted into valuations now that it will be increasingly important that Congress and the White House show action quickly to back up the rhetoric. If legislation gets watered down or significantly delayed, or if policy focus turns more towards global trade restrictions, we could quickly see at least a short-term pullback in stocks.

Wadhwa: So this week marked President Trump’s first full week in office and he has embarked on some pretty protectionist measures. He pulled the US out of the TPP, and in a meeting with business leaders said he was going to impose a “very major border tax” on US companies that move overseas and export back into the US. There’s also his likely renegotiation of NAFTA. What is the impact of this and how do you think a more inward looking US will affect the global economy?

Patterson: We’ve been saying since well before the election that how the US economy and how the financial markets would fare under Trump would depend in part on which Trump we got — a President Trump focused on deregulation, tax reform and infrastructure or a trade focused Trump. Our view has been and continues to be that if Trump focuses relatively more on trade and getting more introspective as a country or inward looking as a country, we see a lot less upside for equities. In fact we could see quite a bit more downside risk.

Some of this I feel like is going to be a bit of a tango, we’ll take two steps forward, one step back. We may have a day where he has meetings and announcements on tax reforms and we’ll see equities rise and then we’ll have a day where he decides to have some aggressive rhetoric on trade and markets will consolidate ot sell-off. That’s largely the pattern we’ve been seeing since November 9th.

I think at the end of the day, as easy as it is to focus on the hour by hour, as there is so much news focus on this right now, you need to take a more medium to long-term view. So base case at the end of 2017, where do you think you’re going to be? We think, even though it’s not going to be happen in the first 100 days, by the end of this year we are going to get some kind of corporate tax reform. That is our base case. We think Congress is making it a priority because they know if they don’t deliver it, the mid-term elections are going to be a lot more tough for them. People expect it, and they’re going to be very disappointed if it doesn’t happen. So we do think you’re going to get some kind of tax reform, corporate, as individual is a lot more difficult.

We do think we’re going to get some deregulation, they announced Keystone. One could argue that’s less regulation around energy policy. So that’s all positive and we think that is, at the margin, going to be stimulative for the economy especially towards the end of the year and into 2018. And that will help support business confidence and hopefully actual business activity.

That said, we also do expect we are going to get some trade hits — the question to me is how aggressive is it and what actually happens. Trump had campaigned that he was going to have China called a currency manipulator on day one. And guess what, it didn’t happen. And I’m delighted it didn’t happen. To me, if that had happened, that would have been a major negative catalyst for global equity markets because a trade war with the second biggest economy in the world doesn’t end well. For anybody, including the United States. So I’m happy that didn’t happen.

Yes he announced he’s renegotiating NAFTA, but what does that look like? If it ends up being very modest changes, and it’s more of a marketing win rather than a huge economic change, then that negative for the markets isn’t that great. And Mexico probably wants this clarified as soon as possible so they can move forward. I could see them giving something to Trump so he can go back to his base and to the country and say "hey I got you a better deal, and it’s done." And if Mexico can keep 85% or 90% of NAFTA benefits, and they can put this behind them and the peso is no longer in free fall, they’re happy too and so I think he can strike a deal there and probably get it done quite quickly.

If he can do things like that and avoid the border adjustment tax or a major trade war with China, I think that negative risk around Trump is at a minimum. So that’s my hope. The problem is you just don’t know. When you look at the people he’s appointed to key positions on trade, like Navarro,  Leithauser, etc. they historically have been pretty tough on China, especially Navarro.

I think in terms of financial markets this year, policy direction is going to be very important. It’s something we all are going to have to keep following and understanding. How it evolves is going to be a major factor in how cyclical assets perform. If there is relatively more progress on tax reform and deregulation, it’s better for equities. If the trade stuff ends up being more marketing than real, I think that’s good news. What worries me is if you have a big trade effort like the border adjustment tax which ends up being stagflationary and/or a major trade issue with China. Those would be the risks I’m watching for.

Wadhwa: Markets as a whole have been rallying since Trump got elected, and there seems to be a lot of optimism for the economy right now. Do you agree with this reaction, or have we failed to price in the uncertainty you spoke about?

Patterson: I think the initial reaction to Trump was a repositioning. The consensus view going into the election, for good reason as that’s what all the polls were suggesting, was that Hillary was going to win and so people had gone in expecting an economy that was sort of the same — modest growth, equities chugging along slowly. When we got a different outcome, a lot of investors went to reposition their portfolios as quickly as possible. So we saw this huge rotation. And then once that positioning was largely done, everyone was kind of sitting on their hands waiting what to do next.

I think there is quite a bit of good news discounted in the market. Valuations are already high. Our view on equities is that we’re constructive but not euphoric. We’re neutral equities for a typical client versus our benchmark. So we’re not overweight stocks because we think the valuations are high. If Trump succeeds with tax reforms etc., then we probably also have higher wages, more inflation and the Fed tightens a little bit faster, and so we’re probably still looking at a recession during his term. At this point in the cycle, I would rather be neutral than overweight. And then within our positioning, focus on areas that should benefit if we do get the tax reform, but also think about what would we want to own if some of those risks play out.

We’re aggressively overweight US stocks. We have a tilt towards more domestically oriented names, more cyclical names, we’re quite overweight the dollar, but we haven’t abandoned the non-Trump trades, if you will. We still have a healthy amount of consumer staples in our portfolio. We still have some managed volatility strategies in our portfolio. We still have a modest degree of select non-US exposure in our portfolio, and what’s been fascinating to me is that the non-US and the non-Trump trades have outperformed. And that gets me back to the year being a tango. We’ll take a step forward and a step back. I think that’s going to be the story of the year. It’s just going to be a see-saw back and forth within the sectors.

Wadhwa: When you say non-US, are you looking towards Europe, Asia, the emerging markets? Where do you see value?

Patterson: We’re so overweight the US that mathematically we have to be underweight everything else. I’d say where we feel more strongly about the underweight is the UK. We think as the Brexit negotiations get going in earnest, you’re likely to see Sterling fall further, even from current levels. The Current Account Deficit there is enormous as a percent of GDP, and they’re going to have a hard time attracting the capital flows to offset that. We also think that as Brexit negotiations get going and people see how difficult those are, business confidence in the UK is probably going to worsen.

With Europe, we’re less nervous. I want to love Europe. It’s killing me, not to love Europe. Because you’ve got a Central Bank that’s still easing, in contrast to the US, and you have much better equity valuations compared with the US. For the first time in a while we’re actually seeing some good economic momentum. So if you look at the business confidence surveys, consumer confidence surveys, bank lending, all these things are saying, okay you’ve got some positive momentum that could help corporate earnings here, which is great. With all of that, I should be buying this and not the US, but then you get to the election calendar, and you’re stopped dead in your tracks. Because the French election in April and May, it’s Brexit on steroids. Le Pen is highly unlikely to win the election, but now we’ve seen time after time after time polls can be wrong. She’s campaigned on exiting the euro currency block, and that to us is a much bigger deal than Brexit because it would throw into question the credibility of the entire single currency for Europe. So it’s a big enough risk that despite a lot of positives for continental European equities, we’re going to stay underweight. We have some exposure, but pretty minimal, and then we’ll see how that election story plays out. We might be late into it, but if she doesn’t win and you get someone a bit more centrist in that seat in May, you could have a really nice second half of the year for Europe, all else equal. So that’s an area we’re keeping a close eye on.

In Japan, the weakening yen with the strengthening dollar, all else equal, is good for Japanese stocks. Japan is very sensitive to US growth, so if the US is doing better, that tends to be good for Japan. Again we’re keeping a close eye on all of these trade talks, because if he doesn’t like weak currencies helping foreign economies — I see Japan in the crosshairs a little bit. So again underweight there but not as a strong a view as the UK.

With emerging markets, we’re just looking for selective companies which we think are less sensitive to possible trade situations under the Trump administration.

China is the one we care most about. Mexico needs America. 25% of their GDP comes from exports to America, so they don’t have a choice. If Trump wants to deal, they have to deal. China is not nearly as reliant on exports to America as Mexico is. So if we go after China, I don’t think they are just going to sit there and take it. They’re going to retaliate in some fashion. They could threaten to lighten the amount of US Treasuries they hold or they could devalue their currency to offset any tariffs we place on them. They could also retaliate in a more indirect way. It could be militarily in the South China Sea by taking a greater stand there for example. There’s lots of things they can do.

I think it was fascinating to see President Xi at Davos talking about how China is open for business. He sees an opportunity for China to strengthen its global footprint and its leadership role in the world. We’ll see how successful he is, but certainly with the trade agreement they’re working, ARCEP, he could end up benefitting greatly from this opportunity. But do we buy Chinese stocks? If we wake up and there’s a tweet about a Chinese manipulator or a Chinese tariff, the short term reaction is going to be China equities lower and greater expectations for a weaker renminbi. Then you’ll see the spillover effects to any country that has trade relations with China. That will include Asia but also a lot of the commodity exporters like Chile. It will have a global impact. The risk is great enough that even though there’s some interesting things going on with Asia right now, we’re just keeping our exposure modest and the security selection very selective.

SEE ALSO: The chief investment officer of a $490 billion fund manager on Trump, Dow 20K, and big data

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Business Insider recently caught up with Rebecca Patterson, the chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, to hear about her outlook for the global economy in 2017.

Bessemer Trust, a privately owned wealth and investment management firm, oversees more than $100 billion in assets.

Patterson was the former Chief Markets Strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management and former  Global Head of Foreign Exchange and Commodities for the JPMorgan Private Bank. She started her career in journalism as a reporter for Dow Jones in London.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Federal Reserve's Investor Advisory Committee and the Economic Club of New York. American Banker named her one of "The 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance" in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

In the interview, Patterson discusses protectionism, China and where she sees value. 

This is part one of a series.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tina Wadhwa: The Dow finally hit the "landmark" number of 20k on Wednesday. Is this overrated, is this relevant? Does it actually mean anything for the markets or is it just a psychological high?

Rebecca Patterson: The Dow reaching 20,000 is more psychological in my view than anything. What’s more important is what’s happening behind the scenes. Economic data in the U.S. and overseas that is generally improving, better earnings news from US companies, and growing hopes that policy will translate into even faster economic activity. Of those, I worry mainly about the policy. So much is being discounted into valuations now that it will be increasingly important that Congress and the White House show action quickly to back up the rhetoric. If legislation gets watered down or significantly delayed, or if policy focus turns more towards global trade restrictions, we could quickly see at least a short-term pullback in stocks.

Wadhwa: So this week marked President Trump’s first full week in office and he has embarked on some pretty protectionist measures. He pulled the US out of the TPP, and in a meeting with business leaders said he was going to impose a “very major border tax” on US companies that move overseas and export back into the US. There’s also his likely renegotiation of NAFTA. What is the impact of this and how do you think a more inward looking US will affect the global economy?

Patterson: We’ve been saying since well before the election that how the US economy and how the financial markets would fare under Trump would depend in part on which Trump we got — a President Trump focused on deregulation, tax reform and infrastructure or a trade focused Trump. Our view has been and continues to be that if Trump focuses relatively more on trade and getting more introspective as a country or inward looking as a country, we see a lot less upside for equities. In fact we could see quite a bit more downside risk.

Some of this I feel like is going to be a bit of a tango, we’ll take two steps forward, one step back. We may have a day where he has meetings and announcements on tax reforms and we’ll see equities rise and then we’ll have a day where he decides to have some aggressive rhetoric on trade and markets will consolidate ot sell-off. That’s largely the pattern we’ve been seeing since November 9th.

I think at the end of the day, as easy as it is to focus on the hour by hour, as there is so much news focus on this right now, you need to take a more medium to long-term view. So base case at the end of 2017, where do you think you’re going to be? We think, even though it’s not going to be happen in the first 100 days, by the end of this year we are going to get some kind of corporate tax reform. That is our base case. We think Congress is making it a priority because they know if they don’t deliver it, the mid-term elections are going to be a lot more tough for them. People expect it, and they’re going to be very disappointed if it doesn’t happen. So we do think you’re going to get some kind of tax reform, corporate, as individual is a lot more difficult.

We do think we’re going to get some deregulation, they announced Keystone. One could argue that’s less regulation around energy policy. So that’s all positive and we think that is, at the margin, going to be stimulative for the economy especially towards the end of the year and into 2018. And that will help support business confidence and hopefully actual business activity.

That said, we also do expect we are going to get some trade hits — the question to me is how aggressive is it and what actually happens. Trump had campaigned that he was going to have China called a currency manipulator on day one. And guess what, it didn’t happen. And I’m delighted it didn’t happen. To me, if that had happened, that would have been a major negative catalyst for global equity markets because a trade war with the second biggest economy in the world doesn’t end well. For anybody, including the United States. So I’m happy that didn’t happen.

Yes he announced he’s renegotiating NAFTA, but what does that look like? If it ends up being very modest changes, and it’s more of a marketing win rather than a huge economic change, then that negative for the markets isn’t that great. And Mexico probably wants this clarified as soon as possible so they can move forward. I could see them giving something to Trump so he can go back to his base and to the country and say "hey I got you a better deal, and it’s done." And if Mexico can keep 85% or 90% of NAFTA benefits, and they can put this behind them and the peso is no longer in free fall, they’re happy too and so I think he can strike a deal there and probably get it done quite quickly.

If he can do things like that and avoid the border adjustment tax or a major trade war with China, I think that negative risk around Trump is at a minimum. So that’s my hope. The problem is you just don’t know. When you look at the people he’s appointed to key positions on trade, like Navarro,  Leithauser, etc. they historically have been pretty tough on China, especially Navarro.

I think in terms of financial markets this year, policy direction is going to be very important. It’s something we all are going to have to keep following and understanding. How it evolves is going to be a major factor in how cyclical assets perform. If there is relatively more progress on tax reform and deregulation, it’s better for equities. If the trade stuff ends up being more marketing than real, I think that’s good news. What worries me is if you have a big trade effort like the border adjustment tax which ends up being stagflationary and/or a major trade issue with China. Those would be the risks I’m watching for.

Wadhwa: Markets as a whole have been rallying since Trump got elected, and there seems to be a lot of optimism for the economy right now. Do you agree with this reaction, or have we failed to price in the uncertainty you spoke about?

Patterson: I think the initial reaction to Trump was a repositioning. The consensus view going into the election, for good reason as that’s what all the polls were suggesting, was that Hillary was going to win and so people had gone in expecting an economy that was sort of the same — modest growth, equities chugging along slowly. When we got a different outcome, a lot of investors went to reposition their portfolios as quickly as possible. So we saw this huge rotation. And then once that positioning was largely done, everyone was kind of sitting on their hands waiting what to do next.

I think there is quite a bit of good news discounted in the market. Valuations are already high. Our view on equities is that we’re constructive but not euphoric. We’re neutral equities for a typical client versus our benchmark. So we’re not overweight stocks because we think the valuations are high. If Trump succeeds with tax reforms etc., then we probably also have higher wages, more inflation and the Fed tightens a little bit faster, and so we’re probably still looking at a recession during his term. At this point in the cycle, I would rather be neutral than overweight. And then within our positioning, focus on areas that should benefit if we do get the tax reform, but also think about what would we want to own if some of those risks play out.

We’re aggressively overweight US stocks. We have a tilt towards more domestically oriented names, more cyclical names, we’re quite overweight the dollar, but we haven’t abandoned the non-Trump trades, if you will. We still have a healthy amount of consumer staples in our portfolio. We still have some managed volatility strategies in our portfolio. We still have a modest degree of select non-US exposure in our portfolio, and what’s been fascinating to me is that the non-US and the non-Trump trades have outperformed. And that gets me back to the year being a tango. We’ll take a step forward and a step back. I think that’s going to be the story of the year. It’s just going to be a see-saw back and forth within the sectors.

Wadhwa: When you say non-US, are you looking towards Europe, Asia, the emerging markets? Where do you see value?

Patterson: We’re so overweight the US that mathematically we have to be underweight everything else. I’d say where we feel more strongly about the underweight is the UK. We think as the Brexit negotiations get going in earnest, you’re likely to see Sterling fall further, even from current levels. The Current Account Deficit there is enormous as a percent of GDP, and they’re going to have a hard time attracting the capital flows to offset that. We also think that as Brexit negotiations get going and people see how difficult those are, business confidence in the UK is probably going to worsen.

With Europe, we’re less nervous. I want to love Europe. It’s killing me, not to love Europe. Because you’ve got a Central Bank that’s still easing, in contrast to the US, and you have much better equity valuations compared with the US. For the first time in a while we’re actually seeing some good economic momentum. So if you look at the business confidence surveys, consumer confidence surveys, bank lending, all these things are saying, okay you’ve got some positive momentum that could help corporate earnings here, which is great. With all of that, I should be buying this and not the US, but then you get to the election calendar, and you’re stopped dead in your tracks. Because the French election in April and May, it’s Brexit on steroids. Le Pen is highly unlikely to win the election, but now we’ve seen time after time after time polls can be wrong. She’s campaigned on exiting the euro currency block, and that to us is a much bigger deal than Brexit because it would throw into question the credibility of the entire single currency for Europe. So it’s a big enough risk that despite a lot of positives for continental European equities, we’re going to stay underweight. We have some exposure, but pretty minimal, and then we’ll see how that election story plays out. We might be late into it, but if she doesn’t win and you get someone a bit more centrist in that seat in May, you could have a really nice second half of the year for Europe, all else equal. So that’s an area we’re keeping a close eye on.

In Japan, the weakening yen with the strengthening dollar, all else equal, is good for Japanese stocks. Japan is very sensitive to US growth, so if the US is doing better, that tends to be good for Japan. Again we’re keeping a close eye on all of these trade talks, because if he doesn’t like weak currencies helping foreign economies — I see Japan in the crosshairs a little bit. So again underweight there but not as a strong a view as the UK.

With emerging markets, we’re just looking for selective companies which we think are less sensitive to possible trade situations under the Trump administration.

China is the one we care most about. Mexico needs America. 25% of their GDP comes from exports to America, so they don’t have a choice. If Trump wants to deal, they have to deal. China is not nearly as reliant on exports to America as Mexico is. So if we go after China, I don’t think they are just going to sit there and take it. They’re going to retaliate in some fashion. They could threaten to lighten the amount of US Treasuries they hold or they could devalue their currency to offset any tariffs we place on them. They could also retaliate in a more indirect way. It could be militarily in the South China Sea by taking a greater stand there for example. There’s lots of things they can do.

I think it was fascinating to see President Xi at Davos talking about how China is open for business. He sees an opportunity for China to strengthen its global footprint and its leadership role in the world. We’ll see how successful he is, but certainly with the trade agreement they’re working, ARCEP, he could end up benefitting greatly from this opportunity. But do we buy Chinese stocks? If we wake up and there’s a tweet about a Chinese manipulator or a Chinese tariff, the short term reaction is going to be China equities lower and greater expectations for a weaker renminbi. Then you’ll see the spillover effects to any country that has trade relations with China. That will include Asia but also a lot of the commodity exporters like Chile. It will have a global impact. The risk is great enough that even though there’s some interesting things going on with Asia right now, we’re just keeping our exposure modest and the security selection very selective.

SEE ALSO: The chief investment officer of a $490 billion fund manager on Trump, Dow 20K, and big data

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Business Insider recently caught up with Rebecca Patterson, the chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, to hear about her outlook for the global economy in 2017.

Bessemer Trust, a privately owned wealth and investment management firm, oversees more than $100 billion in assets.

Patterson was the former Chief Markets Strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management and former  Global Head of Foreign Exchange and Commodities for the JPMorgan Private Bank. She started her career in journalism as a reporter for Dow Jones in London.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Federal Reserve's Investor Advisory Committee and the Economic Club of New York. American Banker named her one of "The 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance" in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

In the interview, Patterson discusses protectionism, China and where she sees value. 

This is part one of a series.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tina Wadhwa: The Dow finally hit the "landmark" number of 20k on Wednesday. Is this overrated, is this relevant? Does it actually mean anything for the markets or is it just a psychological high?

Rebecca Patterson: The Dow reaching 20,000 is more psychological in my view than anything. What’s more important is what’s happening behind the scenes. Economic data in the U.S. and overseas that is generally improving, better earnings news from US companies, and growing hopes that policy will translate into even faster economic activity. Of those, I worry mainly about the policy. So much is being discounted into valuations now that it will be increasingly important that Congress and the White House show action quickly to back up the rhetoric. If legislation gets watered down or significantly delayed, or if policy focus turns more towards global trade restrictions, we could quickly see at least a short-term pullback in stocks.

Wadhwa: So this week marked President Trump’s first full week in office and he has embarked on some pretty protectionist measures. He pulled the US out of the TPP, and in a meeting with business leaders said he was going to impose a “very major border tax” on US companies that move overseas and export back into the US. There’s also his likely renegotiation of NAFTA. What is the impact of this and how do you think a more inward looking US will affect the global economy?

Patterson: We’ve been saying since well before the election that how the US economy and how the financial markets would fare under Trump would depend in part on which Trump we got — a President Trump focused on deregulation, tax reform and infrastructure or a trade focused Trump. Our view has been and continues to be that if Trump focuses relatively more on trade and getting more introspective as a country or inward looking as a country, we see a lot less upside for equities. In fact we could see quite a bit more downside risk.

Some of this I feel like is going to be a bit of a tango, we’ll take two steps forward, one step back. We may have a day where he has meetings and announcements on tax reforms and we’ll see equities rise and then we’ll have a day where he decides to have some aggressive rhetoric on trade and markets will consolidate ot sell-off. That’s largely the pattern we’ve been seeing since November 9th.

I think at the end of the day, as easy as it is to focus on the hour by hour, as there is so much news focus on this right now, you need to take a more medium to long-term view. So base case at the end of 2017, where do you think you’re going to be? We think, even though it’s not going to be happen in the first 100 days, by the end of this year we are going to get some kind of corporate tax reform. That is our base case. We think Congress is making it a priority because they know if they don’t deliver it, the mid-term elections are going to be a lot more tough for them. People expect it, and they’re going to be very disappointed if it doesn’t happen. So we do think you’re going to get some kind of tax reform, corporate, as individual is a lot more difficult.

We do think we’re going to get some deregulation, they announced Keystone. One could argue that’s less regulation around energy policy. So that’s all positive and we think that is, at the margin, going to be stimulative for the economy especially towards the end of the year and into 2018. And that will help support business confidence and hopefully actual business activity.

That said, we also do expect we are going to get some trade hits — the question to me is how aggressive is it and what actually happens. Trump had campaigned that he was going to have China called a currency manipulator on day one. And guess what, it didn’t happen. And I’m delighted it didn’t happen. To me, if that had happened, that would have been a major negative catalyst for global equity markets because a trade war with the second biggest economy in the world doesn’t end well. For anybody, including the United States. So I’m happy that didn’t happen.

Yes he announced he’s renegotiating NAFTA, but what does that look like? If it ends up being very modest changes, and it’s more of a marketing win rather than a huge economic change, then that negative for the markets isn’t that great. And Mexico probably wants this clarified as soon as possible so they can move forward. I could see them giving something to Trump so he can go back to his base and to the country and say "hey I got you a better deal, and it’s done." And if Mexico can keep 85% or 90% of NAFTA benefits, and they can put this behind them and the peso is no longer in free fall, they’re happy too and so I think he can strike a deal there and probably get it done quite quickly.

If he can do things like that and avoid the border adjustment tax or a major trade war with China, I think that negative risk around Trump is at a minimum. So that’s my hope. The problem is you just don’t know. When you look at the people he’s appointed to key positions on trade, like Navarro,  Leithauser, etc. they historically have been pretty tough on China, especially Navarro.

I think in terms of financial markets this year, policy direction is going to be very important. It’s something we all are going to have to keep following and understanding. How it evolves is going to be a major factor in how cyclical assets perform. If there is relatively more progress on tax reform and deregulation, it’s better for equities. If the trade stuff ends up being more marketing than real, I think that’s good news. What worries me is if you have a big trade effort like the border adjustment tax which ends up being stagflationary and/or a major trade issue with China. Those would be the risks I’m watching for.

Wadhwa: Markets as a whole have been rallying since Trump got elected, and there seems to be a lot of optimism for the economy right now. Do you agree with this reaction, or have we failed to price in the uncertainty you spoke about?

Patterson: I think the initial reaction to Trump was a repositioning. The consensus view going into the election, for good reason as that’s what all the polls were suggesting, was that Hillary was going to win and so people had gone in expecting an economy that was sort of the same — modest growth, equities chugging along slowly. When we got a different outcome, a lot of investors went to reposition their portfolios as quickly as possible. So we saw this huge rotation. And then once that positioning was largely done, everyone was kind of sitting on their hands waiting what to do next.

I think there is quite a bit of good news discounted in the market. Valuations are already high. Our view on equities is that we’re constructive but not euphoric. We’re neutral equities for a typical client versus our benchmark. So we’re not overweight stocks because we think the valuations are high. If Trump succeeds with tax reforms etc., then we probably also have higher wages, more inflation and the Fed tightens a little bit faster, and so we’re probably still looking at a recession during his term. At this point in the cycle, I would rather be neutral than overweight. And then within our positioning, focus on areas that should benefit if we do get the tax reform, but also think about what would we want to own if some of those risks play out.

We’re aggressively overweight US stocks. We have a tilt towards more domestically oriented names, more cyclical names, we’re quite overweight the dollar, but we haven’t abandoned the non-Trump trades, if you will. We still have a healthy amount of consumer staples in our portfolio. We still have some managed volatility strategies in our portfolio. We still have a modest degree of select non-US exposure in our portfolio, and what’s been fascinating to me is that the non-US and the non-Trump trades have outperformed. And that gets me back to the year being a tango. We’ll take a step forward and a step back. I think that’s going to be the story of the year. It’s just going to be a see-saw back and forth within the sectors.

Wadhwa: When you say non-US, are you looking towards Europe, Asia, the emerging markets? Where do you see value?

Patterson: We’re so overweight the US that mathematically we have to be underweight everything else. I’d say where we feel more strongly about the underweight is the UK. We think as the Brexit negotiations get going in earnest, you’re likely to see Sterling fall further, even from current levels. The Current Account Deficit there is enormous as a percent of GDP, and they’re going to have a hard time attracting the capital flows to offset that. We also think that as Brexit negotiations get going and people see how difficult those are, business confidence in the UK is probably going to worsen.

With Europe, we’re less nervous. I want to love Europe. It’s killing me, not to love Europe. Because you’ve got a Central Bank that’s still easing, in contrast to the US, and you have much better equity valuations compared with the US. For the first time in a while we’re actually seeing some good economic momentum. So if you look at the business confidence surveys, consumer confidence surveys, bank lending, all these things are saying, okay you’ve got some positive momentum that could help corporate earnings here, which is great. With all of that, I should be buying this and not the US, but then you get to the election calendar, and you’re stopped dead in your tracks. Because the French election in April and May, it’s Brexit on steroids. Le Pen is highly unlikely to win the election, but now we’ve seen time after time after time polls can be wrong. She’s campaigned on exiting the euro currency block, and that to us is a much bigger deal than Brexit because it would throw into question the credibility of the entire single currency for Europe. So it’s a big enough risk that despite a lot of positives for continental European equities, we’re going to stay underweight. We have some exposure, but pretty minimal, and then we’ll see how that election story plays out. We might be late into it, but if she doesn’t win and you get someone a bit more centrist in that seat in May, you could have a really nice second half of the year for Europe, all else equal. So that’s an area we’re keeping a close eye on.

In Japan, the weakening yen with the strengthening dollar, all else equal, is good for Japanese stocks. Japan is very sensitive to US growth, so if the US is doing better, that tends to be good for Japan. Again we’re keeping a close eye on all of these trade talks, because if he doesn’t like weak currencies helping foreign economies — I see Japan in the crosshairs a little bit. So again underweight there but not as a strong a view as the UK.

With emerging markets, we’re just looking for selective companies which we think are less sensitive to possible trade situations under the Trump administration.

China is the one we care most about. Mexico needs America. 25% of their GDP comes from exports to America, so they don’t have a choice. If Trump wants to deal, they have to deal. China is not nearly as reliant on exports to America as Mexico is. So if we go after China, I don’t think they are just going to sit there and take it. They’re going to retaliate in some fashion. They could threaten to lighten the amount of US Treasuries they hold or they could devalue their currency to offset any tariffs we place on them. They could also retaliate in a more indirect way. It could be militarily in the South China Sea by taking a greater stand there for example. There’s lots of things they can do.

I think it was fascinating to see President Xi at Davos talking about how China is open for business. He sees an opportunity for China to strengthen its global footprint and its leadership role in the world. We’ll see how successful he is, but certainly with the trade agreement they’re working, ARCEP, he could end up benefitting greatly from this opportunity. But do we buy Chinese stocks? If we wake up and there’s a tweet about a Chinese manipulator or a Chinese tariff, the short term reaction is going to be China equities lower and greater expectations for a weaker renminbi. Then you’ll see the spillover effects to any country that has trade relations with China. That will include Asia but also a lot of the commodity exporters like Chile. It will have a global impact. The risk is great enough that even though there’s some interesting things going on with Asia right now, we’re just keeping our exposure modest and the security selection very selective.

SEE ALSO: The chief investment officer of a $490 billion fund manager on Trump, Dow 20K, and big data

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how to use one of the many apps to buy and trade bitcoin

Cryptocurrency Trends To Watch Out For In 2017

Bitcoin trading volume continued to decline on 26th January, following the trend that began when major Chinese exchanges began charging trading fees.

Source

What would happen if you put three of the buzziest areas of finance — roboadvising, blockchain, and peer-to-peer lending — together?

LendingRobot Series, that's what. 

The new robo-hedge fund, which combines cloud-based automation with machine learning technology, was launched on January 26 by LendingRobot, an alternative lending roboadviser based in Seattle, Washington. It's an extention of LendingRobot, which automates management of existing peer-to-peer accounts, and has $120 million in assets.

Instead of putting money into typical assets such as stocks, bonds, and commodities, LendingRobot Series provides "accredited investors" a platform to invest in business, consumer, and real-estate loans across various peer-to-peer origination platforms, including Lending Club, Prosper, and Funding Circle. These investments can yield 8% to 10% returns, according to LendingRobot.

Investors on LendingRobot pick from one of four investment preferences or "Series," based on their appetite for risk: Short Term Aggressive, Long Term Aggressive, Short Term Conservative, and Long Term Conservative.

The firm manages all of its clients' investments using algorithms, rather than human money managers. This allows them to charge much lower fees compared to human-run funds. LendingRobot Series doesn't take a cut for performance. The fund charges a management fee of 1% and caps fund expenses at 0.59%.

And the firm uses blockchain, the technology behind the bitcoin currency, to allow investors to view their investments every week. 

"Unlike traditional hedge funds, they can see everything," LendingRobot CEO Emmanuel Marot told Business Insider. "We're not just asking them to trust us blindly," he said.

The public ledger allows the firm's clients to see all the notes in which the Series has invested, the current value of those notes, and the amount of money that has been paid back on those notes.

The ledger is published under a hash code, which prohibits LendingRobot Series from changing anything.

"We can't fudge the numbers to give investors a different impression of what's going on, because it would change the entire hashcode in the blockchain, which would invalidate it," said Marot.

When asked if he foresees traditional hedge funds implementing some of the capabilities LendingRobot Series is utilizing to stay competitive amid a number of industry pressures, Marot told Business Insider that there was no question.

"They have to change in order to adapt," he said. "If they don't, then they could potentially face the same fate as travel agencies, for instance, when companies like Expedia entered the market."

"No one fifteen years ago would have thought travel agencies were going anywhere, and now look where they are today," he added.

SEE ALSO: Here's how much people make working for a hedge fund

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How Donald Trump used bankruptcy to stay rich