Good morning New York,
FT ALPHAVILLE
Alphachat: Those fracking robots edition: Cardiff and Izzy talk robots with Illah Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics at The Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, about why it's the next decade of robotics, rather than improbable dystopian/ utopian distant futures, that we need to worry about.
When you're rattled by collateral, do the Fed taper talk: Izzy picks up on Tim Duy's observation that the Fed is striving to change the mix but not the level of outright accommodation and wonders to what degree that is the result of the repo dysfunctions that are being in the underlying QE assets.
Welcome to Chapter 9, Detroit: Joseph points us in the direction of the City of Detroit's Chapter 9 filing, and the list of derelict buildings and brownfield sites owned by the city.
A shadow banking map: A new piece of artwork from the New York Fed or a map of shadow banking credit flows?
Art as the sophisticated man's Bitcoin: Izzy ponders the similarities between the art market and the parallel currency movement, and wonders to what degree art dealers are like central bankers.
NEWS
A record bankruptcy for Detroit: The filing by the automobile capital and onetime music powerhouse—which has liabilities of more than $18 billion—is the country's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy case. (Wall Street Journal) (Financial Times)
Earnings sand buyback plans boost Morgan Stanley: The New York securities firm reported net income of $980m, up 66 per cent from the same quarter a year ago. Its per-share earnings of 41 cents were better than the 29 cents posted a year ago, when a downgrade to Morgan Stanley's credit rating led to a slump in trading revenue. (Wall Street Journal)
LVMH China watch sales decline offset by overseas buying: The world's largest luxury-goods maker, says its sales of jewelry and watches have dropped in mainland China and are being offset by Chinese nationals buying overseas. (Bloomberg)
Alexei Navalny freed pending appeal: The Russian opposition figure was freed from jail pending appeal Friday, in a surprise move a day after he was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison. (Wall Street Journal)
OECD unveils global crackdown on tax arbitrage by multinationals: Plans for a global crackdown on tax arbitrage marking "a turning point in the history of international co-operation on taxation" were unveiled on Friday at the meeting of G20 finance ministers in Moscow. (Financial Times)
Nokia's turnaround has long way to go: The mobile device unit continued its under performance in the most recent financial period, dealing Chief Executive Stephen Elop another quarterly loss and pushing the Finnish handset maker to rely more heavily on a wireless networks business that was until recently a drag on its bottom line. (Wall Street Journal)
Google's profit up but search-ad prices drop 6%: Deceleration in the growth of Google's main business of selling search advertising reignited concerns about the impact of mobile devices and the Web giant's push into lower-margin businesses. The results were lower than what Wall Street was expecting, sending the company's shares lower in after-hours trading. (Wall Street Journal) (Bloomberg)
Microsoft profit misses estimates amid surface writedown: The software giant reported fourth-quarter profit that missed analysts' projections by the biggest margin in at least a decade as demand weakens for personal computers running Windows. The shares fell in extended trading. (Bloomberg)
ECB extends range of collateral it accepts to include more ABS: After a review of its risk control framework, the ECB said it would in future accept ABS with a lower credit rating and at a lower haircut – a writedown of the asset's value to reflect its riskiness – than it had done previously. (Financial Times)
WTI, Brent spread converges: US crude oil rallied to a 16-month high on further evidence of strong demand from oil refiners, pushing its discount to the Brent international benchmark to the lowest in almost three years. (Financial Times) (Bloomberg)
Markets: A fresh record closing high for US stocks failed to feed through into Asian and European markets, with Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 falling on a wild day of trading ahead of elections, and European markets paying closer attention to soft earnings than record index levels. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index swung a wild 540 points as investors position themselves ahead of Sunday's upper house elections. The benchmark index climbed nearly 1 per cent in the first minutes of trading, placing it within 50 points of the 15,000 mark – a level last reached on May 22, just before chairman Ben Bernanke made the first mention of scaling back the Federal Reserve's huge stimulus programme. But after a five-session winning streak, traders began taking profits and there was large-scale selling in the futures market. Stocks rapidly sold off, with the index falling more than 3 per cent in a quarter of an hour, and closed down 1.5 per cent. (Financial Times)
