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• Novartis on Friday showed that its drug, brolucizumab, worked as well as an existing drug that's used to treat age-related macular degeneration. 
• It's a condition that affects more than 2 million people in the US. 
• The hope is to get the drug approved to take on a roughly $5 billion market. 

Novartis is gearing up to shake up a huge eye-drug market. 

In data presented Friday at the American Academy of Opthamology annual conference, Novartis' drug brolucizumab showed that it wasn't any worse than Eylea, an existing drug to treat a condition called age-related macular degeneration. Novartis' drug was also better at reducing retinal thickness and retinal fluid compared to Eylea, two key factors that are key in reducing the affects of the disease. 

Age-related macular degeneration is a disease that's a leading cause of vision loss in the US in people over 50, according to the National Eye Institute. It affects more than 2 million Americans, blurring their vision and making it harder to drive, read, and recognize faces.

If approved, brolucizumab would go up against Eylea and Lucentis, two treatments for AMD that make a combined $4.7 billion in sales a year. The drugs are all injected into the eye. Novartis' drug would be given once every three months, while Eylea is injected once every eight weeks. 

Vas Narasimhan, the incoming CEO of Novartis and the current global head of drug development and chief medical officer, told Business Insider that it's the second two conclusions — regarding the reduction in retinal thickness and retinal fluid — that are the most exciting. In comparison to the patients who got Eylea, brolucizumab reduced that retinal fluid by more than 30%. 

"We only have major advances in retinal disease every so often,"  told Business Insider. 

Novartis has a long history of treating eye conditions, though lately it's been better known for its work in cancer. Narasimhan said the development of brolucizumab is part of the "next chapter of innovation at the company" for eye conditions. 

SEE ALSO: Healthcare companies are taking Amazon very seriously

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NOW WATCH: Why this New York City preschool accepts bitcoin but doesn't accept credit cards

• Modern emerging markets will celebrate their 30th birthday on December 31, 2017, the anniversary of the creation of the MSCI EM Index.
• The team at Renaissance Capital outlined the 2,400-year history of emerging market investing, in honor of the upcoming birthday.
• The "first EM crisis" the team found was in 4th century Greece.

Modern emerging markets will celebrate their 30th birthday on December 31, 2017, the anniversary of the creation of the MSCI EM Index.

The economies that we today consider to be "emerging," however, are not necessarily the ones that would've been considered emerging several centuries ago. China, for example, led its European counterparts by leaps and bounds at the start of the Renaissance.

In honor of the MSCI EM Index's upcoming birthday, Renaissance Capital's Daniel Salter, Vikram Lopez, Charles Robertson, Yvonne Mhango, and Oleg Kouzmin outlined the 2,400-year history of emerging market investing in a report to clients.

Business Insider broke down their excellent research into a short timeline:

• 4th century BC: The "first EM crisis" the RenCap team could find was 4th century Greece. 10 Greek municipalities belonging to the Attic Maritime Association defaulted on their loans from the Delos Temple. (As a reference point, Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great were alive during the fourth century.)
• 1602: The Dutch East India company is founded. It was the first joint stock company to have freely tradable shares.
• 1720: The South Sea Bubble "would make EMs infamous," writes the RenCap team. Even Isaac Newton, one of the smartest people to ever live, was not immune to the irrational frenzy of the crowd.
• 1763: Baring Bros. opens. The firm financed the Louisiana purchase in 1803.
• 1804: N.M. Rothschild & Sons opens its London office. The Rothschilds organized financing for the first attempt at a channel tunnel between France and Britain (1872), and Britain's purchase of Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal (1875).
•  1822 to 1824: Bonds were floated in London by Colombia, Chile, Peru, the Province of Buenos Aires, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Greece, and the imaginary "Poyais."
• 1825: The London Panic of 1825 triggers a bunch of sovereign defaults. Peru was first, and was swiftly followed by many others. All Latin American issuers except Brazil were in default by the end of the decade.
• Mid-1800s to early-1900s: Many "modern" EMs begin to emerge. Russia is the first EM to see trading of shares circa 1830 at the St. Petersburg bourse. It ceased to be a market economy in 1917 after the revolution. A similar story happened in China in 1949.
• 1930s: Over 40% of countries that Renaissance Capital got data on were in default by 1936. The double-whammy of the Great Depression and rise of protectionism led to a collapse in global trade triggering a series of sovereign debt defaults, they write.
• Post WWII: EMs tended to borrow only from banks and multinational organizations, in dollars or other hard currencies. 
• 1971, the collapse of Bretton Woods: US banks continue lending to EMs amid a challenging global backdrop of oil crises, inflation shocks, and recessions.
• 1979 to 1980: Paul Volcker's Federal Reserve hikes rates to 20%. "The associated dollar spike and increase in interest costs combined with the world economy entering recession in 1981 saw Mexico as first to announce that it would no longer be able to service its debt, in August 1982," the team at Renaissance Capital wrote.
• 1980s: US banks, overexposed to EMs, pull back more lending, leading to a bunch of defaults. The crisis hit Latin America most broadly, but Eastern Europe and Africa were hit, too.
• 1989: The Brady Plan, named after then-US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, plus the drop in global interest rates, eventually helps end the crisis.
• 1998: "After a decade of defaults, all major Brady restructuring were completed, and had resulted in a liquid, easily tradable market of hundreds of billions of dollars of standardized dollar bonds issued by EMs," the RenCap team wrote. "Over time, more traditional hard currency eurobonds started to be issued and Brady bonds retired."
• BONUS — 2001: RenCap doesn't add this on their list, but we wanted to round out the history with a modern episode: Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neil came up with the term "BRIC" — for Brazil, Russia, India, and China — in 2001. South Africa is later added in 2010, making the term BRICS.

"What makes an EM? There's no easy answer," the analysts at Renaissance Capital said after going through the full history.

"Things change over time: Greece today is considered an EM. But in fourth century BC when municipal defaults occurred in what we cheekily described as the 'first' EM crisis, it was one of the worlds most advanced countries."

SEE ALSO: 21 everyday phrases that come straight from Shakespeare's plays

SEE ALSO: An Ivy League professor explains chaos theory, the prisoner's dilemma, and why math isn't really boring

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NOW WATCH: $6 TRILLION INVESTMENT CHIEF: Bitcoin is a bubble

• Singles' Day is a day in China where people often treat themselves with gifts.
• It's a response to Valentine's day and is on 11/1 — the ones all symbolize single people.
• Alibaba has championed the shopping holiday and, this year, pulled in $12 billion in just the first two hours.
• Watch Alibaba's stock price live here.

In the first two hours of Singles' Day this year, Alibaba pulled in a massive $12 billion in sales, according to the company.

Singles' Day is a holiday created to serve as an alternative to Valentines Day in China. People often celebrate their independence by buying themselves gifts, and Alibaba has turned the holiday into a blowout extravaganza.

It took Alibaba's customers just 2 minutes and 1 second to buy $1 billion worth of stuff during the holiday, which starts at the midnight before November, 11 (11/11.) In the first hour, Alibaba processed 325,000 orders per second and more than 60 brands recorded sales of more than $15 million, the company said in an emailed statement.

That's absolutely massive and puts US shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to shame. Amazon's own made up "Prime Day" celebration boasted $1 billion in sales for the first time this year, a feat that took the company 30 hours of sales to achieve.

Combining the most recent Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales gives you only 43% of Alibaba's total sales during last year's Singles' Day. Last year, Alibaba shipped more than 1 billion packages and is on track to well outpace that this year.

Other retailers will be trying to replicate Alibaba's success on Singles' Day. JD.com has partnered with Tencent and Baidu to attract as many shoppers to its platform as possible. JD.com has also partnered with Walmart to help fill customer's orders.

Shares of Alibaba were relatively unchanged as the Chinese Holiday started on Friday in the US. The company moved just 0.69% higher on Friday.

Read more about how Alibaba revolutionized Singles' day.

SEE ALSO: How Alibaba turned an obscure, made-up Chinese holiday into a $17.8 billion shopping extravaganza that's bigger than Black Friday

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NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: A market warning, the big bitcoin debate and a deep dive on tech heavyweights

Stocks were little changed on Friday, while a scrapped proposal to speed up the Bitcoin network sent the cryptocurrency lower.

• Dow: 23,424.86, -37.08, (-0.16%)
• S&P 500: 2,583.04, -1.54, (-0.06%)
• Nasdaq: 6,753.81, +3.76, (+0.06%)

1. The giant Senate tax bill barely squeaked by a critical test. The Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan Congressional research service, said the Senate's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) would add $1.4957 trillion to the national debt between 2018 and 2027. Under the Senate rules, the TCJA can only add $1.5 trillion over that time period. This means that the massive plan scrapes by the limit by just about $300 million.

2. The stunning allegations against Roy Moore could throw the GOP's tax cut push into even more chaos. First and foremost, the allegations are serious in nature on their own and have raised questions about Moore's fitness for office. In addition to the seriousness of the allegations, experts and analysts say that it could cause some serious problems for the GOP's recent tax reform push.

3. Netflix slid after Disney outlined its plan to overthrow the streaming video king. Netflix's stock was down 2.07% at $189.89 a share on Friday before reversing some of its losses later in the afternoon. Its shares have a tendency to slide every time Disney talks publicly about its new service, which is expected to start in 2019 when Netflix's contract for Disney content runs out.

4. UBS says it can't find compelling reasons why gold would surge anytime soon. Reasons to be bullish have now changed, UBS strategist Joni Teves said in a note on Thursday. The dollar is likely to rally against key currencies including the Japanese yen, which, like gold, traders buy as a safe-haven asset. But against others like the euro, Teves expects the dollar to continue to weaken. 

5. The number of men behind bars in the US is mind-blogging. "The growing number of incarcerations has left more people with criminal records, making it difficult for them to reenter the workplace," Bank of America's Michelle Meyer and Anna Zhou said. "Digging into the details by demographic cohort, we find that men make up nearly 93% of all prisoners, of which one third are between the ages of 25 and 34."

6. Nike is trying a massive transformation in order to stay relevant. Nike is hoping that a new focus on innovation will help it fight back against this competition and regain its crown as king of the sneaker and sportswear markets.

7. Bitcoin dives below $7,000. The crypto-currency has been on a wild ride since a plan to help the red-hot coin scale was scraped. 

ADDITIONALLY:

UBS: The 2 biggest stock market fears are overblown.

Isaac Newton was a genius, but even he lost millions in the stock market.

21 everyday phrases that come straight from Shakespeare's plays.

SEE ALSO: An Ivy League professor explains chaos theory, the prisoner's dilemma, and why math isn't really boring

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NOW WATCH: $6 TRILLION INVESTMENT CHIEF: Bitcoin is a bubble

• The price of bitcoin, the red-hot digital coin, was trading down 7.19% on Friday afternoon at $6,618 a coin. 
• That's down from more than $1,000  from peak near $7,900 a coin, which it hit after news broke that a potential fork in the network lost support from backers. 
• Bitcoin cash soared to an all-time right of $1,009 per coin. 

Bitcoin has shed over $1,000 over the past 48 hours.

Meanwhile, bitcoin cash reached an all-time high of $1,009 per coin Friday afternoon, according to data from Markets Insider. 

Experts think bitcoin's crash and bitcoin cash's rise are related to the same thing: an upgrade to bitcoin's network being called off. 

Backers of the so-called Segwit2x proposal were considering to split from bitcoin's main blockchain network, but power-brokers behind the plan called off their support for the upgrade on Wednesday. That means the network will remain intact — at least for now. Initially, the news sent bitcoin up near $7,900 per coin.  

But by Friday afternoon, the red-hot cryptocurrency was trading down 7.19% at at $6,812 at 2:40 p.m. ET, according to data from Markets Insider. 

Segwit2x would have increased the size of the blocks underpinning the bitcoin blockchain network, which would have enabled it to potentially process more transactions. Backers thought the plan would help the digital currency scale faster.

A fork in the network would have doubled the number of coins some investors owned. Just as it did when bitcoin cash split from the main bitcoin network in August. 

Tor Bair, head of growth for Enigma, told Business Insider in an emailed statement, that folks who bumped up their holdings in anticipation of the fork might be reducing their position in bitcoin. Hence, the sell-off. 

"Some traders may have been attempting a 'dividend play' on the Segwit2X fork and purchasing bitcoin in anticipation," Blair said. "With the fork called off, these speculators are now reducing their positions."

Another expert told Business Insider backers of the Segwit2x upgrade might be switching over from bitcoin to bitcoin cash, which similarly to Segwit2x has the potential to process more transactions. 

"When you look at the trends, it does look like many Segwit2x supporters have switched to bitcoin cash. The forked currency has seen a 35% increase in a matter of days," Abhishek Pitti, CEO of Nucleus Vision, said in a statement. 

SEE ALSO: We just got a glimpse of how bitcoin futures will work

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NOW WATCH: How the iPhone X could make Apple a $1 trillion company

The price of bitcoin is down more than 9 percent after falling below the $6,500 level.

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• Hospitals are facing a shortage on medications that are used every day. 
• The situation is getting worse, the American Hospital Association said. 
• In particular, hospitals are facing shortages of commonly used IV fluids, including sodium chloride, dextrose, and nutritional solutions. 

The US has a drug shortage problem. 

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, a number of facilities that make healthcare products including intravenous fluids that are commonly used in hospitals have been knocked out of service.

That's led to shortages at hospitals around the US that are getting worse, according to the American Hospital Association, which represents thousands of hospitals and health systems.

"We are concerned that the shortages of widely-used and critical products are quickly becoming a crisis and looming threat to the public’s health," Thomas Nickels, executive vice president of government relations and public policy at the AHA, wrote to the FDA. 

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), an organization that monitors drug shortages, lists 139 compounds that are currently facing shortages.

In particular, hospitals are feeling the pain over a few commonly used IV fluids, including 50 and 100 milliliter injection bags of sodium chloride (also known as saline) at .9%, dextrose 5%, and nutritional solutions. All of these fluids are key in keeping patients hydrated and energized. 

To get around the shortage, the AHA said, hospitals are using pill versions when possible, switching to versions that can be injected with just a syringe, and prioritizing some patients over others. 

How drug shortages happen

The ASHP cites a number of reasons for the shortages. Most are related to manufacturing problems. In the cases of saline and dextrose, Baxter's facilities in Puerto Rico were hit by the hurricanes, adding to existing drug shortages.  

In other cases, some of the companies which make large portions of the drug simply stop making it, or a drug is only being produced by a single manufacturer.

And therein lies the problem: There simply are not enough companies making the drug to keep up with demand.

It's all part of a consolidation of the manufacturers who produce generic drugs.

US generic companies have had a harder time turning a profit on generic drugs while competing with companies outside the US that are able to make the same drugs at a cheaper cost.  That's caused manufacturers to home in on certain generic drugs and discontinue others that don't make as much money. And if a generic manufacturer has a shortage, there's no easy fix — you can't just pass off the job to another company while the first fixes its problems, since getting approval to take on a new drug can take years.

When it comes to this particular shortage, the AHA said in its letter that it would like the FDA to push manufacturers that make these drugs to invest in creating more supplies in the future, as well as find suppliers within the US that aren't as susceptible to natural disasters. 

SEE ALSO: Healthcare companies are taking Amazon very seriously

DON'T MISS: We're running out of prescription drugs — and the consequences could be 'disastrous'

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NOW WATCH: I spent a day trying to pay for things with bitcoin and a bar of gold

Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours. Sign up here to get the best of Business Insider delivered direct to your inbox.

A flamboyant CEO critics called the "Trump of Georgia" is engaged in a legal war with the nation's short sellers — traders who bet a stock price will fall — and searching for the analysts who wrote anonymous blog posts about his small pharmaceutical company, MiMedx Group.

His name is Parker H. "Pete" Petit. He's a self-made millionaire with a university football field named after him and ties to high-level GOP officials. Here's what you need to know about Petit's war with short sellers.

In related news, Mallinckrodt Pharma executives said at a luncheon on Thursday that at least one big payer has started putting restrictions on its $36,000-a-dose drug Acthar, a person in attendance told Business Insider. That's bad news for the company, which has seen its stock drop 30% this week. 

Elsewhere in markets news, UBS says the two biggest stock market fears are overblown.

On Wall Street, Goldman Sachs is trying to shake off its Ivy league image. 

In tech news, Alibaba is about to bring in more than Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Nvidia has "tectonic upside," according to Jefferies. Disney plans to take on Netflix with a "substantially" lower priced service. And the former CEO of J.Crew says he approached Amazon about buying his company.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: TOP STRATEGIST: Bitcoin will soar to $25,000 in 5 years

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• A 59-year-old Army veteran sued Walmart after breaking his hip after getting his foot caught in one of the store's displays.
• A jury awarded him $7.5 million on Thursday.
• Walmart plans to appeal the ruling.

Henry Walker, a 59-year-old Army veteran, might be awarded $7.5 million after he broke a hip while shopping at a Wal-Mart in Alabama, according to AL.com.

In June 2015, after picking out a watermelon from a display, Walker's foot became caught in a wooden pallet beneath the watermelons. Walker didn't realize his foot was stuck, and after he turned away from the display, he fell and broke his hip.

Walker decided to sue Walmart for being negligent toward the store's unsafe conditions, and the jury agreed with him, deciding to award him a total of $7.5 million on Thursday after looking at footage from the store's security cameras and realizing that Walker was not the only customer to get stuck in the watermelon display.

Walmart plans to appeal the ruling. "We are disappointed in the verdict and believe that the damages awarded were excessive in light of the facts in this case," a company spokesman told AL.com

SEE ALSO: Walmart will soon have robots roaming the aisles in 50 stores

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: I spent a day trying to pay for things with bitcoin and a bar of gold

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Bitcoin cash rose to a three-month high of $872.24 today, two days after a controversial hard fork of the bitcoin blockchain was suspended.

• LuLaRoe is facing another lawsuit claiming that it is a pyramid scheme.
• Two of the plaintiffs say the company incentivized recruitment and inventory purchases more than sales.
• They lost thousands of dollars and say they want to make sure other women don't do the same.

Cheryl Hayton and Tiffany Scheffer were lucky.

Each is a former salesperson for LuLaRoe, a women's clothing company that offers its merchandise through a network of sellers rather than brick-and-mortar stores or a website. While they say they left the company after losing thousands of dollars, others allegedly had it worse. 

"People borrowed money from their families, they took out their 401k money, they took out credit cards, crazy stuff," Hayton told Business Insider. "It's hard to understand: Why would somebody spend $10,000 to buy clothes that aren't selling? Why would you do that?"

The reason, Hayton and Scheffer realized, had to do with a culture that allegedly sold women on the idea of financial independence and self-fulfillment, only to encourage them to take on debt and purchase more inventory when their clothes weren't selling.

Now, Hayton and Scheffer are suing LuLaRoe in a class action lawsuit filed on Oct. 23, accusing the company of being a pyramid scheme where success came from recruiting new consultants to work beneath you. This created a chain of financial stress that could only be solved by finding more recruits, according to the lawsuit.

In a statement to Business Insider, LuLaRoe said the following: 

"LuLaRoe has grown exponentially over the last four years. Our success has made us the target of orchestrated competitive attacks and predatory litigation. We take all litigation – regardless of its lack of merit – seriously. The allegations are baseless, factually inaccurate and misinformed.  We will vigorously defend against them and are confident we will prevail."

A part-time opportunity turned into a full-time job

Scheffer joined the company in April 2016 and recruited Hayton, her mother, shortly thereafter. Each had years of experience in sales (Hayton owned an event and balloon design business, while Scheffer worked in retail and customer service), and assumed their experience with LuLaRoe would be similar.

"I wasn't trying to make thousands of millions of dollars by any stretch of the imagination," Scheffer said. "I was just hoping to have a little extra shopping money to take my niece to the zoo and buy her balloons."

"I was fairly newly retired, and thought this would be a great way to earn a little bit of money and still be able to spend time with my new grandchildren," Hayton added.

But doubts began to form when what was advertised as part-time work became a full-time job. A typical day might begin at 9 a.m. and end at midnight, as they organized and photographed inventory, advertised their offerings through social media, fulfilled orders, and spent hours on foot looking for new customers. 

"It even got to the point where they were saying, 'Go to old-age homes and take advantage of seniors, because they're willing to talk to anybody,'" Hayton alleged. "You are so desperate to make sales, literally, you are talking to everybody."

While they stopped short of attempting to manipulate retirees, Hayton and Scheffer worked tirelessly, but the results didn't match their efforts. This led to a period of reckoning for Scheffer, who struggled to accept the reality of her situation.

"I didn't want to admit that I was failing at this," she said, "and I was so convinced that it was my fault, that I wasn't working hard enough, and so I eventually, finally woke up and realized I am working hard enough and they're just not selling." 

They realized the money was in recruiting, not selling

After becoming familiar with the company's incentive structure, they realized that the bonuses LuLaRoe offered were based entirely on the amount of inventory a consultant and her recruits purchased, rather than sales. The more inventory your recruits bought, the more money you received, and the less inventory you would have to buy yourself.

This is the basis of Hayton and Scheffer's lawsuit, as they believe the company's structure only benefitted those at the top of the "pyramid" who became wealthy as a result of the inventory purchases made by the recruits beneath them. That's why, even when Hayton and Scheffer were struggling to sell the hundreds of items they'd already bought, they were encouraged to continue purchasing inventory.

"They were telling you, every time you sell your clothes, purchase more, purchase more," Hayton said. "The more you buy the more you sell. The more you buy the more you sell. And that's where a lot of women got in a lot of trouble." 

They hope other women don't have the same experience

Hayton and Scheffer eventually tired of the company, and each resigned in June. 

Both say they ultimately invested between $10,000 and $20,000, and neither came close to seeing a profit. 

Despite their frustrations, Hayton and Scheffer insist the lawsuit isn't about them. They believe they had it easier than many of the current and former consultants they've spoken with, and they want to make sure the company doesn't continue to exploit women who have dreams of financial independence.

"We're not doing it for ourselves, for our own benefit," Scheffer said. "We're doing it for all of the women who invested time and money and are struggling now because they were taken advantage of by the company and by those in charge, and who felt like failures because they weren't succeeding. And they're not failures. They worked really hard to try to make it work. But they were set up to fail from the very beginning." 

SEE ALSO: LuLaRoe consultant claims she was urged to stop paying bills and pawn her car as she went broke selling leggings

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NOW WATCH: We just got a super smart and simple explanation of what a bitcoin fork actually is

• The price of bitcoin, the red-hot digital coin, was trading down 4.47% on Friday morning at $6,812 a coin. 
• Since a plan to upgrade the coin's network was called off, its price has experienced wild swings. 

Bitcoin has been on a wild ride since a plan to help the red-hot coin scale was scraped. 

Backers of the so-called Segwit2x proposal were considering to split from bitcoin's main blockchain network, but power-brokers behind the plan called off their support for the upgrade on Wednesday. That mean's the network will remain intact — at least for now.

Initially, the news sent bitcoin up near $7,900 per coin.  Since then, however, it has tanked close to $1,100. On Friday morning bitcoin fell below $7,000, sliding to a low of $6,707.

It was trading down 4.47% at $6,812 at 10:23 AM EST, according to data from Markets Insider. 

Segwit2x would have increased the size of the blocks underpinning the bitcoin blockchain network, which would have enabled it to potentially process more transactions. Backers thought the plan would help the digital currency scale faster.

Many bitcoin enthusiasts and traders viewed the cancellation of Segwit2x as positive, because it would keep the network intact.

“When 2x was called off, it became immediately clear there’s greater consensus for a single bitcoin blockchain and therefore there is greater value retained in the bitcoin ecosystem," Ned Scott, CEO of Steemit, wrote in a statement to Business Insider after news of the cancellation. "The case was made by the immediate price increase when 2x was called off."

But on Friday, traders poured into bitcoin cash, a clone coin of bitcoin that has the potential to process much more transactions than both bitcoin and a potential Segwit2x coin. 

Bitcoin cash was trading at a record high, up 30% against the dollar to $870.90 Friday morning. 

Such volatility is commonplace in cryptocurrencies, a wild west ecosystem that lacks a matured trading infrastructure.

That may change, however, with the development of products such as futures and exchange-traded funds. Two exchange giants have said they were preparing to launch futures in the short term, and an ETF is viewed a likely followup to such a product. Here's Bank of America Merril Lynch in a note out to clients on the subject:

"We would not overstate this, as a material reduction in volatility would require there to be a large community of speculators prepared to provide liquidity to the natural owners of the various coins, but given the volatility of the coin markets, maybe there already exists a cadre of participants who would look to short coins on strong days and vice versa, which could overall reduce volatility."

SEE ALSO: We just got a glimpse of how bitcoin futures will work

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: $6 TRILLION INVESTMENT CHIEF: Bitcoin is a bubble

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• The number of Americans in prison jumped over the past few decades amid the tough-on-crime policies of the "war on drugs" era.
• The share of the male adult population of former prisoners has risen from 1.8% in 1980 to 5.8% in 2010, according to data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
• High incarceration rates are likely to have contributed to the US's decline in prime-age labor-force participation rates relative to other countries.

The United States is an outlier when it comes to putting people behind bars. It has the second-highest incarceration rate in the world as the number of Americans in prison has surged over the past few decades amid the tough-on-crime policies of the "war on drugs" era.

In a recent note to clients, Bank of America's Michelle Meyer and Anna Zhou illustrated this with a chart showing current or former prisoners and felons as a share of the adult male population in the US from the 1980s through the 2010s.

The proportions have increased substantially over the past several decades. According to data cited by Meyer and Zhou, the share of the male adult population of former prisoners has risen from 1.8% in 1980 to 5.8% in 2010. 

"The growing number of incarcerations has left more people with criminal records, making it difficult for them to reenter the workplace," they wrote. "Digging into the details by demographic cohort, we find that men mak e up nearly 93% of all prisoners, of which one third are between the ages of 25 and 34."

High incarceration rate policies have two key economic problems: They don't create alternative and better opportunities for those living in communities with high crime rates, and they don't address the question of how people should create new lives once they're out of jail.

And these high incarceration rates are likely to have contributed to the US's decline in prime-age labor-force participation rates relative to other countries.

"Incarceration policies affect participation rates directly by removing workers from the labor force for a period of time but also long-term as the stigma of incarceration can reduce demand for the labor services of the formerly incarcerated even years after their reentry into society," the Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama Administration said last year in a report on the long-term decline in the US's prime-age male labor force participation.

In fact, people who have been imprisoned are 30% less likely to find a job than their non-incarcerated counterparts, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, cited by Meyer and Zhou.

Occupational licensing rules or other restrictions on the hiring of those who have been incarcerated legally bar such individuals from a number of jobs, the CEA added. And even when there aren't legal restrictions, employers are less likely to hire someone with a criminal record. Several studies have shown that when companies receive two job applications that are identical, except that one candidate has been in prison and the other hasn't, the formerly incarcerated candidate is less likely to get an interview.

A "potentially large fraction of this group is not participating in the workforce as a result of their incarceration, likely due to both discrimination and the degeneration of employment networks, resulting in long-term employment and earnings losses," the authors of the CEA report said.

"Those who emerge from the criminal justice system suffer stigma, hiring restrictions, and potentially reduced ability to work as a result, reducing the demand for their labor."

SEE ALSO: 'It still haunts me': What it's like to get a job after prison in America

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NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: A market warning, the big bitcoin debate and a deep dive on tech heavyweights

• Disney reported earnings that fell short of expectations, sending the stock down after hours Thursday.
• But the shares were rising in early trading Friday after the company's conference call during which CEO Bob Iger said the company's streaming service will be priced "substantially below" Netflix. 
• Iger also said ESPN will offer its own streaming service next year. 
  

Shares of Disney rose more than 2% on Friday, reversing late losses from the night before after the company's management touted its plans for a new streaming service that will undercut rival Netflix on pricing. 

The gains came even though Disney reported earnings that missed analyst expectations. Shares initially fell nearly 4% in late trading Thursday, after the top and bottom line misses.

Then, on the company's earnings call, CEO Bob Iger told analysts that Disney’s standalone streaming service, which it announced back in August, will be priced “substantially below where Netflix is."

"That is in part reflective of the fact that it will have substantially less volume. It'll have a lot of high quality because of the brands and the franchises that will be on it that we've talked about. But it'll simply launch with less volume, and the price will reflect that," he said.

A similar ESPN streaming product will launch spring 2018, Iger said, fueled by Disney’s $3.75 billion acquisition of the BAMtech digital platform from Major League Baseball.

Earlier this week, CNBC reported that Disney had been in talks with 21st Century Fox about acquiring a bulk of company’s entertainment assets, but Lowell Singer, Disney’s VP of investor relations, quickly jumped in to say the company wouldn’t comment on what it called "press speculation."

Wall Street analysts have an average price target of $110.48 for the stock — 7.6% above Thursday's closing price.

Shares of Disney are up 14.26% over the past year.

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NOW WATCH: I spent a day trying to pay for things with bitcoin and a bar of gold

• Nvidia reported earnings and revenue that were both above analyst expectations, sending shares to a record high.
• Nvidia is one of the main beneficiaries of a "tectonic shift" in computing because it's graphics processing units are designed to handle artificial intelligence training better than traditional central processing units.
• Nvidia's stock has a lot more room to move higher, according to an analyst from Jefferies. 
• Watch Nvidia's stock move in real time here.

Nvidia reported earnings on Thursday that crushed Wall Street's estimates and the stock is trading at all-time highs following the results. Mark Lipacis, an analyst at Jefferies, says that shares have further to run.

The company reported earnings of $1.33 per share on revenue of $2.64 billion, easily beating the $1.07 and $2.36 billion that Wall Street was anticipating. Nvidia also reported a beat in its gaming and data center businesses, in addition to a record quarter of sales for its automobile chips. Shares are up about 3.84% at $213.20 a piece. 

"We've argued that Nvidia will be a marquee beneficiary of the 4th Tectonic Shift in Computing, where parallel processing architectures capture share from serial processing (x86) architectures in the computing market," Lipacis wrote in a note to clients titled "Tectonic Upside.

"Gaming, DC, Auto and Crypto are all parallel applications, and their healthy growth this quarter supports our thesis."

Compared to traditional central processing units that focus on one process at a time, the graphics processing units that Nvidia focuses on run a large number of calculations simultaneously which is called parallel processing. As the world starts to focus more on artificial intelligence, the parallel processing power of Nvidia's GPUs will become increasingly important to crunch through the massive amount of calculation required to train an AI system.

Nvidia tackles AI on multiple fronts, providing extremely powerful GPUs for large-scale data centers like the ones  Google and Amazon are building, as well as smaller, purpose-built chips for the automotive industry that help power autonomous driving.

Most of Nvidia's businesses will only get stronger as its chips get better, Lipacis said. Nvidia will see increasing demand for its chips as well as the now-nascent AI sector grows.

After the earnings beat, Lipacis raised his price target from $230 to $240, which is about 13% higher than Nvidia's current price.

Read more about Nvidia's earnings results.

SEE ALSO: Nvidia is rising after crushing earnings

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NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: A market warning, the big bitcoin debate and a deep dive on tech heavyweights

• FundStrat cofounder Tom Lee says, "if you build a very simple model valuing bitcoin as the square function number of users times the average transaction value. 94% of the bitcoin moves over the past four years is explained by that equation."
• This model is based on Metcalfe's law, which says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users on the network. 
• Based on this model, bitcoin has been trading at a level above the price projected by the model. FundStrat remains positive on bitcoin long-term but sees risk of a short-term correction growing. 

Tom Lee, cofounder of FundStrat Global Advisors, is bullish on bitcoin and has a unique way of valuing the cryptocurrency. His short-term valuation model is built on Metcalfe's law, and he says it can explain the vast majority of bitcoin's volatility. He explained his reasoning to Business Insider on our cryptocurrency show, "the bit."

Metcalfe's law basically says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users on the network.

For example, consider the fax machine — which is utterly useless if you are the only one who has one. The value increases exponentially as other people get fax machines. This is also true for social networks. Facebook is valuable because so many of your "friends" are on it. It'd be a boring place to surf alone. Or as Lee puts it, "if you double the number of users, you're more than doubling the utility value."

Lee contends that the same is true for bitcoin. FundStrat looked at unique addresses as a proxy for users on the bitcoin network and found the square of this value explained 63% of the variation in bitcoin prices since 2013.

Here's the portion of "the bit" that explains his thinking. You can watch the full interview with Lee here. 

Lee: Yeah, in the short-term we think bitcoin has really followed very closely the idea of acting like a social network. Meaning the more engagement there is, the greater the value rises. And in the short-term, we think bitcoin will reach at least $6,000 by mid-2018.

Silverstein: And you’re using Metcalfe’s Law, can you explain that?

Lee: Yeah, so Metcalfe's a professor. He actually came up with a theorem based on George Gilder, which is the value of a network is the square of the number of users. And so if you build a very simple model valuing bitcoin as the square function number of users times the average transaction value. 94% of the bitcoin moved over the past four years is explained by that equation.

FundStrat expanded their short-term model by adding bitcoin transaction volume per user. This linear factor explained 83% of the variation in bitcoin's price by itself.

FundStrat was able to find a formula by regressing the price of bitcoin against both unique addresses squared and transaction volume per user. This model explained 94% of the variation in the cryptocurrency price since 2013.

The following chart plots the projected price of bitcoin based on this model (light blue) against the actual price of bitcoin (dark blue dotted line). As you can see, the model is relatively good fit through mid-2017.

FundStrat can then use this model to project the future value of bitcoin. The model requires an estimate for the number of unique addresses on the bitcoin network (squared) and an estimate for the number of transactions per day. 

According to Lee, the model provides "a method to suggest a short-term range for bitcoin." Given this premium, Lee is a little more cautious in the short-term.

"Bitcoin’s longer-term technical trend remains positive," he says, "but short-term upside appears limited and the risk of a correction is growing."

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Dave Lutz, head of ETFs at JonesTrading, has an overview of today's markets.

• Global markets are mostly red Friday morning.
•  The US dollar is slipping.

Here's Lutz:

Good Morning!  US Futures continue under pressure, as peeps eyeball High yield angst, Tax and Roy Moore Headers as reasons.   Spoos are off 40bp early, with Russell and Nazzy just behind.   Wide sea of red over in Europe.   The DAX is down 15bp, with heavy weight coming from healthcare, while Rallies in Banks and Tech seems to cushion the selling pressure.   Retailers weak as a Solid report from Richemont met with Selling, and those Carmakers are under pressure.  Activity in the miners, with ArcelorMittal jumping on #s and outlook, holding that sector barely green in London, but weakness in every other sector has the FTSE down 40bp.   Volumes heavy in Germany, light in London this Friday.  In Asia, all eyes on “Single’s Day” and the whack in Japan yesterday - Nikkei closed off another 80bp.  Now 1% off the high tick set mid-session yesterday with Tech among the biggest weight - Hang Seng off small while Shanghai popped 14bp as peeps digested headers easing foreign investment in Chinese Fins - KOPSI lost 30bp, but KOSDAQ jumped 1.5% as tech proves resilient -  and Aussie off 30bp as Miners got smoked down under.  BHP and Rio off 3%.

There is some Heavy Selling in Treasuries as supply weighs and Bunds continue to be under pressure post-ECB last week – US 10YY kissed 2.38% before stalling in the overnight.   The DXY is trying to recover, but looks to be losing ground to Euro, Yen and Sterling as UK industrial output comes in hotter.    Ore up 40bp, capping a 5%+ weekly gain in China, that has a bid in Industrial metals, with Copper just in the green and Zinc popping 2% early.  Energy complex drifting around unch, caught between profit-taking and a weekend potentially full of fresh headers from Saudi – Iran – Lebanon..

Read about the 10 things you need to know today...

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NOW WATCH: $6 TRILLION INVESTMENT CHIEF: Bitcoin is a bubble

Bobby Lee, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BTCC, spoke about buying bitcoin and China's regulatory crackdown in a speech last weekend.

• Amazon received more than 200 proposals for their new headquarters as cities look to bolster their local economies.
• There are five Rust Belt cities in particular that would be a great fit for Amazon, considering economic developments over the past couple decades.

There are 238 cities and regions in the running for Amazon's new $5 billion headquarters. But there are five in particular that stand to benefit most, if selected.

These are the so-called Rust Belt cities of Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh, which meet a handful of criteria laid out by Sara Potter, a vice president and associate director of market analysis at FactSet.

First and foremost, each of those five locations have populations of 1 million or more, as well as a median home price that's below the national average, and an unemployment rate that's above it.

And with the exception of Chicago, they're all declining manufacturing hubs that could use a shot in the arm. Further, Potter finds that population growth in each of the five cities has lagged the national average since 2010.

Screening the 238-city list for these attributes, she arrives at the Rust Belt quintet outlined above.

So what is it exactly about a massive Amazon headquarters that would help catalyze growth? To get an idea, look no further than what's happened in the company's original home of Seattle over the past 15 years.

Jobs have poured into the Seattle metropolitan area since Amazon began expanding in earnest in the early 2000s, and the population has surged in tandem. Since 2010, economic growth in Seattle has handily outpaced the national average and led to an increase in housing demand, according to data compiled by FactSet. And that has, in turn, driven home prices higher.

All cities being considered for the headquarters must not wait patiently, as the winning proposal won't be revealed until next year. Ultimately, Amazon is going to make the decision that's best for itself — and it remains to be seen if they'll take the economic plights of the Rust Belt into consideration.

See the original FactSet post here

SEE ALSO: UBS: The 2 biggest stock market fears are overblown

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NOW WATCH: $6 TRILLION INVESTMENT CHIEF: Bitcoin is a bubble

After setting a new record high of $7,879 Wednesday, bitcoin's price has dropped below $6,800 today.

LONDON — Bitcoin cash, the cryptocurrency that split off from bitcoin earlier this year, jumped to an all-time high against the dollar on Friday.

Bitcoin cash is up 30% against the dollar to $870.90 as of 12.00 p.m. GMT (7.00 a.m. ET):Analysts say the surge is down to developers abandoning plans for SegWit2x, a planned upgrade to the software underpinning regular bitcoin that would have improved transaction speed on the network.

Joshua Raymond, a director at forex and CFD broker XTB, told Business Insider: "The delay to Segwit2x has damaged confidence amongst bitcoin investors concerning the much-needed resolution to speed up bitcoin's slow processing speed.

"Everyone was hoping the Segwit2x would address this but unfortunately, the delay due to a lack of consensus on the mechanics has affected confidence. Confidence on transaction speed in Bitcoin has deteriorated significantly in recent months. As Bitcoin Cash enjoys much faster transaction speeds, we have started to see a recycling of positions out of Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash as a consequence."

Bitcoin cash was created in August by "forking" the blockchain record that underpins bitcoin, creating a parallel network. Bitcoin cash allows for bigger "blocks" transaction to be processed, speeding up the network.

SegWit2x was a proposed update to bitcoin's network that would have sped up transactions. However, not enough participants agreed on the proposal and its implementation risked "forking" the network again. As a result, the project was abandoned on Wednesday.

Mati Greenspan, an analyst with trading platform eToro, said: "After the 2x hard fork was called off, BCH is now being seen as a favourite to one day replace BTC. If the Bitcoin community doesn't come to a consensus about how to scale the network soon, it may run into congestion, in which case people will need an alternative."

Bitcoin fell to a five-day low on Friday as people cycle into bitcoin cash. Bitcoin is down 3% against the dollar to $6,893.98 at 12.10 p.m. GMT (7.10 a.m. ET):

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The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, has said his department is looking into the illegal uses of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

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Proposed bitcoin scaling solution Bitcoin Classic has said it will be closing its doors, touting bitcoin cash as the best alternative.

• Even though the stock market keeps hitting new record highs, investors are continuously finding new reasons to be worried.
• UBS tries to dispel these concerns, calling for the S&P 500 to climb as much as 9% from current levels by the end of 2018.

Investors seem awfully scared, considering the stock market has been routinely hitting new record highs.

Some are fearful that the factors that have catalyzed one of history's strongest bull markets are bound to overheat. Others think that the ongoing rally is too good to be true, and that any disruption to current conditions could send stocks tumbling.

UBS doesn't agree. It sees the S&P 500 climbing as much a 9% by the end of 2018, hitting any number of new all-time highs along the way. And it wants to dispel two of the biggest concerns they hear voiced by investors.

Stocks are overvalued, and global equities are in a bubble

This is a popular argument, and its disciples cite measures such as the price-earnings ratio (P/E) for various indexes and the so-called Shiller CAPE ratio — both of which are historically stretched. Some have even gone as far as to call it a bubble.

UBS rationalizes the levels seen in these measures, arguing that the slow global growth environment causes gradually-growing corporate earnings to be discounted at low risk-free yields. And you get higher average valuation multiples as a result.

"Adjusting P/Es for the decline in risk-free yields, we find that despite ongoing multiple expansion, on an interest rate adjusted basis, valuations are within the post-crisis ranges in the US and slightly higher than those in Europe and Japan."

Central bank tightening will suck the life out of stocks

UBS readily admits that yields will feel some upward pressure as central banks remove accommodation — but it doesn't see it happening to an extreme degree. To them, the stock market will be fine as long as tightening measures are done with a soft touch.

Assuming economic growth continues to churn gradually higher, and inflation doesn't spike suddenly, central banks should have plenty of room to hike interest rates gradually and on a predetermined schedule. UBS even foresees a situation where stocks continue rising in tandem with yields.

Overall, while 9% is the firm's most optimistic forecast, it actually has six different models for the S&P 500 in 2018. As shown in the chart below, equity appreciation has four key components: CPI inflation, income (dividends, buybacks, reinvestment), real equity risk premium and the real risk-free rate.

Regardless of which mix you think is most accurate, UBS' stance is undeniable: stocks are going to continue higher, and the market's fears are overblown.

SEE ALSO: There's a new way to bet on scorching-hot FANG stocks

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NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: A market warning, the big bitcoin debate and a deep dive on tech heavyweights

• Pete Petit, the CEO of MiMedx, which makes wound-care products, is filing lawsuits against short-sellers to try to learn the identity of a pair of anonymous bloggers.
• The bloggers published reports pointing to whistleblower allegations of fraud at MiMedx and what they claim are clues of government inquiries into MiMedx.
• The company says the allegations are meritless, and that short-sellers are sharing fake information in their campaign.
• Petit's tactics may backfire, says Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business: "Suing short sellers is unlikely to scare them away. It's more likely to attract more short sellers."

A flamboyant CEO critics calls the "Trump of Georgia" is engaged in a legal war with the nation's short-sellers — traders who bet a stock price will fall — and searching for the analysts who wrote anonymous blog posts about his small pharmaceutical company, MiMedx Group.

His name is Parker H. "Pete" Petit. He's a self-made millionaire with a university football field named after him and ties to high-level GOP officials. 

Over the past few months, Petit has taken to conference calls and press releases to obsess over the idea that a "wolf pack" of "naked short sellers" is hell-bent on destroying his company. There's a section of the company's website dedicated to addressing claims and reports, and he's spending enough on legal fees that he had to acknowledge the rising expense to investors on the company's last earnings call. He wants to make sure his investors understand that short sellers have a vested interest in making his company look bad.

But of course that doesn't mean they're wrong.

One of the reports that set off this legal war was published on a site called Aurelius Value. It lists no author. It highlighted claims of "channel stuffing" — in this case, the practice of using distributors to artificially inflate sales — filed in a public whistleblower lawsuit last year. Another report, also anonymously authored, from a shop called Viceroy, suggested that the SEC is looking into the claims, something that's also claimed in another lawsuit against the company.

Not all critics of MiMedx remain anonymous, though. UBS, for example, told clients that the company's products — used to heal wounds — aren't as effective as the company says and face serious competition that investors aren't yet considering. UBS thinks the company is worth about 40% below its current stock price.

Regardless, it's the way Petit is hunting for the anonymous writers that has grabbed Wall Street's attention.

"It's unusual and it's dangerous because if you sue someone solely on the basis of finding someone else you could be countersued for abuse of process," said Erik Gordon, a lawyer turned professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "You can't sue people and put them at the expense of defending themselves in court when you have no basis for suing them other than that you're looking for someone."

Aurelius and Viceroy

Everything you read about Petit is larger than life.

He flies planes. He is friendly with Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The Georgia State University football field was named for him after he gave a $10 million gift to the university to support the athletics program. He donated $3.3 million to Georgia Tech, his alma mater, for an engineering building. He was Donald Trump's finance chair in Georgia too.

His critics have tried to make something out of his ties to Price, who was overseeing the FDA for a few months this year. It's fairly standard political brawling that's not so relevant now that Price has been sent packing.

MiMedx turns human placenta into wound-healing treatment, and, according to Piper Jaffray, it enjoys the largest share of the wound-healing market in the US at 27% of sales. Its shares were breaking records until August.

Then the short sellers began to pile in — as indicated by the blue line in the chart below.

After that, Aurelius and Viceroy showed up. They're anonymous bloggers with an unknown readership. On September 20, Aurelius, whoever he or she is, wrote a blog post titled "MiMedx: Flying Too Close To The Sun."

Aurelius went over some issues at MiMedx — namely, allegations of channel stuffing levied against the company by two former employees. The allegations weren't new. They were made in a lawsuit filed against MiMedx last December.

Channel stuffing is when a company moves a bunch of its inventory around, parking it with some unit that investors don't even know exists, and then books that hidden inventory as a sale. The former employees, Jess Kruchoski and Luke Tornquist, allege that MiMedx was doing this through a now shuttered distributor called AvKare. Allegedly, AvKare would “provide sales documentation falsely documenting the bogus VA sales.”

That is, sales to hospitals belonging to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sometimes, according to the suit, MiMedx wouldn't even use AvKare. MiMedx employees would simply ship their product, EpiFix, to VA hospitals around the country "without a purchase order from the VA or the VA even knowing about the shipment. In some cases, the shipments were even unbeknown to the representatives covering the accounts."

All this is public record, and was so for nine months before Aurelius's report. But Aurelius went a bit further:

But our research has also identified deep undisclosed entanglements between MiMedx and multiple other distributors.

Two of these distributors, CPM Medical and SLR Medical, are specifically identified in Florida court documents filed by one of MiMedx’s whistleblowers as having special undisclosed agreements along with an unidentified third having a “house account”.

The allegations (here) that MiMedx’s channel stuffing scheme extends significantly beyond the VA appear to have gone largely unnoticed by investors.

Viceroy's post — titled "MiMedx’s ... employment of kickback & bribery scheme inducers makes it uninvestable" — is pretty self-explanatory. In it, Viceroy claims evidence that the SEC may be conducting an investigation into MiMedx, something that has also been raised in legal filings.

Viceroy's evidence for this is that the SEC responded to a Freedom of Information Act request from Viceroy by claiming, as it's allowed to, that it doesn't have to release records that are being collected for "law enforcement" purposes or if the release could "interfere with enforcement proceedings."

Petit responded with a press release the very same day Aurelius published his or her report:

"The articles include several items that have virtually no basis in fact, are littered with innuendo and contain many statements that are simply not correct. This has all the markings of a concerted short seller attack by numerous entities attempting to short our stock and profit from fictitious information and innuendos."

"We believe that Viceroy Research and Aurelius Value are relying on misinformation from former MiMedx employees terminated for cause. Unfortunately, neither organization appears to have done adequate due diligence and fact-finding before publishing their so-called 'research reports.'"

Earlier in the year, he told Kaiser Health News that Kruchoski and Tornquist were "lying." He has also released letters written to one short-seller in particular, in which he claims what the sellers are doing is unlawful and unethical.

There are a few parts to that claim. One is that they're releasing bad, even false, information into the market to manipulate the stock price. In particular, Petit claims that a letter from a MiMedx employee one short seller released is actually fake.

The other claim is that short sellers are doing what's called "naked short selling" — which is selling shares you don't own, without borrowing them from someone who does own them first. It is, in fact, illegal.

Sue. Them. All.

After all that, Petit began to sue a bunch of people, and that's when people on Wall Street took notice, because it's not every day a CEO sues a lineup of hedge funds and a research group to find two anonymous bloggers.

Now, before I continue, I need to make some disclosures. Within one of the press releases railing against a short seller named Marc Cohodes, MiMedx claimed I interviewed Cohodes at a conference (I did not, but I've published his ideas before).

In response to my questions about the allegations in the whistleblower suit, Petit declined to address any of the specifics and instead took to calling me a "shill" in a colorful letter that you can find at the end of this article. I do often speak to short-sellers, and sometimes give air to their ideas when I think they're smart. I don't know who Aurelius and Viceroy are, though.

Neither does New York-based firm called Sparrow Fund Management, which was forced to respond to MiMedx's request for request for emergency discovery with a 30-page motion to dismiss that said, basically, "We're not Aurelius, and even if we were, Aurelius' speech is protected under the First Amendment."

From the motion:

The crux of MiMedx’s complaint targets a variety of statements made by named and unnamed defendants—none of which is actually Sparrow—conveying opinions about MiMedx and discussing various widely disseminated public reports.

But as Sparrow has repeatedly informed MiMedx since the filing of this lawsuit, including by sworn affidavit, MiMedx’s claims against Sparrow are wrongly premised on a simple yet dispositive defect: Sparrow is not behind the anonymous blogger “Aurelius Value.” That being the case, and with no factual allegations to support any connection between Sparrow and “Aurelius Value,” MiMedx’s case against Sparrow evaporates at the pleading stage.

MiMedx's lawsuit against investigative research firm The Capitol Forum (TCF) is a bit different.

TCF is a DC outfit known for its deep dives into potentially fraudulent companies. In August, it published a note on the channel-stuffing allegations against MiMedx. Then in September, after Aurelius and Viceroy published their pieces, Capitol Forum published the government's response to an FOIA request it filed requesting information on MiMedx and the VA.

The government responded, saying, “The records you requested are part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation and are not releasable at this time.”

MiMedx issued a press release in September saying that it was aware of a VA investigation but that it was not the target and said it had told The Capitol Forum as much.

"To the extent there has been any innuendo by The Capitol Forum or others that somehow MiMedx is a target, that is simply incorrect based on available information," the release says.

Anyway, now MiMedx is suing The Capitol Forum for libel — not in its story, but in an email to MiMedx.

"Defendants' conduct herein, and specifically, the false and malicious statement in the August 21, 2017 e-mail concerning Defendants' article of the same day and allegations of wrongful conduct against MiMedx by "customers," constituted actionable libel," says MiMedx's complaint.

'Parker the Barker'

Again, I probably wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for Cohodes, a particularly loud short seller who lives on a California chicken farm. Cohodes is one of the most infamous short sellers on Wall Street, known for bombastic language and RSVP'ing "will attend" to any fight he's invited to. He got wind of what was going on at MiMedx and started a site called PetiteParkerTheBarker.com, which documents Petit's "bullying."

On the site you can also view Cohodes' presentation at Grant's Interest Rate Observer Conference. MiMedx says I interviewed Cohodes at that conference where he said:

“I always say bet the jockey not the horse. So I look for inept and/or dishonest management who has a track record of running companies into the ground. Telling a lie or two along the way also helps. I also look for balance sheet stress and financial engineering to make the business look stronger than it truly is.”

The thing is, I wasn't at Grant's this year. And that quote is from an interview I did with Cohodes last year about two completely unrelated stocks.

So I was compelled to make some calls — including one to Sen. Isakson's office. His representative said the senator was in no way involved with a VA investigation into MiMedx, since the VA investigative unit is totally independent. His office had, however, put Petit in touch with the VA at Petit's request — something it would do for any constituent.

I also dug through the legal filings and sent a bunch of pointed questions to Petit regarding the lawsuits, the whistleblower allegations, UBS' research, and his relationships with powerful politicians.

Here's a smattering of what I sent:

• Can the company say on the record that Aurelius, Viceroy, or Capitol Forum make false statements about the company? Which statements are false?
• Can MDXG confirm that it is not under investigation by federal authorities, including the SEC as well as the VA Office of the Inspector General?
• Can the company comment on UBS research that suggests its products have a lower efficacy rate than the 90% rate the company claims?
• In one of your public disclosures, you say that I interviewed Marc Cohodes at a Grant's Interest Rate Observer Conference. I did not, and have never interviewed Cohodes publicly. Where did you get your information?

I knew we weren't going to have frank discussion when I read the first sentence of Petit's response. "First your statement that you never wrote an article about Marc Cohodes is incorrect," it said. He's right, I had written about Cohodes — but that wasn't my question.

You can read the full letter below, but here's the meaty part.

"Now I read your questions. It appears to me they have all come directly from Marc Cohodes, Aurelius, Viceroy, or others who are seeking to bring down MiMedx's stock price to gain a financial advantage for themselves. Therefore, if you publish an article addressing these questions, you are going to be acting as their "Shill". Indeed, some of your questions seemed to be aimed at obtaining information from MiMedx for this group to use in their pending litigation."

Petit suggested that I discuss this with an attorney, which I have done.

"He can call himself the Donald Trump of Georgia or the Kim Kardashian of Atlanta — anything he wants ... if you drag people into court with no basis you should expect trouble and you deserve trouble," said Gordon, who has also taught at the University of Michigan's law school.

"Short sellers lead a precarious life," he added. "What scares short sellers away is evidence that the short is going to bite them, but suing short sellers is unlikely to scare them away. It's more likely to attract more short sellers."

Well, after Cohodes and Capital Forum got involved, Citron Research, helmed by short seller Andrew Left, put out a YouTube video on the channel-stuffing allegations against the company.

A third former MiMedx employee filed a retaliation claim against the company. His name is Michael Fox, and he was a supervisor for the two first whistleblowers. He says that after they filed their claim, he refused to engage in MiMedx's fraudulent scheme. He says he went to the SEC and that the SEC then subpoenaed MiMedx. After that MiMedx withheld his wages and sued him.

MiMedx's stock has fallen 27% in less than three months.

Read Petit's full letter to me below.

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• Brexit uncertainty cited as available City jobs plunge 20% year-on-year in October.
• Number of people seeking finance jobs falls 37%, according to recruiting firm Morgan McKinley.
• "Brexit has businesses in a stranglehold," said Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services.

LONDON – The number of new available jobs listed in the the UK's financial centre fell 20% in October year-on-year to 6,300, according to a survey by recruiting firm Morgan McKinley.

The number of people seeking jobs also dropped by a huge 37% from October 2016, while month-on-month that figure is up 6%. Month-on-month new openings plummeted 14% from 7,290.

Those who did find new jobs in October got an average of an 18% pay rise.

"Brexit has businesses in a stranglehold. Try as they might to go about things as normal, we do not live in normal times," said Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services.

"The economic tug of war that Brexit kicked off means we still have no idea quite where we’ll land," Enver said.

Here is the chart of new jobs:

Prime Minister Theresa May's government is lurching towards a so-called "hard Brexit," which prioritises immigration control over membership of the European single market.

Such a move would also lead to the automatic loss of the City of London's EU financial passport. The loss of passporting rights would be devastating to the City of London. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that 5,500 UK companies rely on passporting rights, with a combined revenue of £9 billion.

Last month Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein spelled out the bank's post-Brexit plans for Europe in a Tweet.

"Just left Frankfurt," he tweeted. "Great meetings, great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I'll be spending a lot more time there. #Brexit."

Goldman Sachs currently employs 6,500 people in the UK and currently has around 200 staff in Frankfurt.

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LONDON – John Lewis has released its latest Christmas advert, featuring a monster under the bed called "Moz."

The monster hides under the bed of a child he befriends, keeping him up at night and disrupting his days. Eventually, the monster realises he has to leave to let the boy sleep and buys him a starlight as a memento to remember him by.

Watch the full ad:

The big budget two-minute short was directed by Michel Gondry, the French director known for his Oscar-winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as well as the Science of Sleep, and the Green Hornet. 

Gondry is used to telling stories in shorter formats. Before making films, Gondry produced music videos for the likes of the White Stripes, Bjork, and Daft Punk.

John Lewis' heart-warming ads have become of the most anticipated pre-Christmas rituals in recent years, with memorable recent adverts such as the Man on the Moon in 2015 and the Bear and the Hare in 2013.

Christmas is a crucial period for retailers, with many making the bulk of their sales in the run-up to December 25. This has fuelled an advertising arms race in recent years. The Advertising Association forecast on Friday that ad agencies will rake in £6 billion over the Christmas period, their largest festive haul ever.

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• JPMorgan Asset Management believes automation could increase global GDP by more than $1.1 trillion in the next 10-15 years.
• "Technology will affect economic growth rates and capital market returns in ways that are difficult to foresee," according to a report from a team of strategists headed by John Bilton, JPMAM's Head of Global Multi-Asset Strategy.
• Workforce automation has been a much discussed topic in recent months and years, with many believing that human workers in certain simpler professions will soon be replaced by robots or automated processes.

LONDON — Technological advances such as automation could increase global GDP by more than $1.1 trillion over the next 10-15 years, according to a new report from analysts at JPMorgan Asset Management seen exclusively by Business Insider.

The asset management arm of banking giant JPMorgan believes that technological advances across all areas of society could lead to big productivity gains, which in turn will likely boost economic growth.

"Technology will affect economic growth rates and capital market returns in ways that are difficult to foresee," the report, authored by a team of strategists headed by John Bilton, JPMAM's Head of Global Multi-Asset Strategy, argues.

"Workforce automation and AI have the potential to deliver significant overall productivity gains, and some nations facing growth challenges from aging populations could see an additional boost to trend growth rates."

"In the past, technological innovation transformed society and increased labor productivity in three key ways," the report states.

Those were:

1. "Replacing existing workers with machines, and thus producing at least the same output with fewer workers (e.g., refrigeration vs. the ice man);"
2. "Complementing existing workers’ jobs, boosting output per worker by automating some of their tasks (e.g., power tools);"
3. "Creating entirely new, higher productivity industries (e.g., computer software engineering), offsetting the displacement of workers by machines, or replacing altogether industries that have been made obsolete."

The extra growth delivered, the report said, would likely be in the order of around a 1%-1.5% boost to global GDP. The most recent estimates suggest that this is around $75.6 trillion, meaning that any boost would be worth in excess of $1 trillion. That's roughly equivalent to the GDP of Mexico or Australia in 2016.

Here's JPMorgan Asset Management's chart:

Workforce automation has been a much discussed topic in recent months and years, with many believing that human workers in certain simpler professions will soon be replaced by robots or automated processes.

A 2016 report from the World Economic Forum argued that automation will lead to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020.

Fears about job replacement are perhaps most acute in the financial services sector, where many relatively easy tasks such as data entry, could soon be automated, potentially causing widespread job losses.

"In our banks we have people behaving like robots doing mechanical things, tomorrow we’re going to have robots behaving like people,"  Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan said in September.

"We have to find new ways of employing people and maybe people need to find new ways of spending their time... The truthful answer is we won’t need as many people."

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