Europe’s ‘Fear Index’ Is Smashing Through The Roof Today

MIKE BIRD

OCT. 16, 2014

Europe’s “fear index,” the VSTOXX index, is going through the roof Thursday morning. The index measures volatility in European markets. It’s the “cousin” of the VIX.

It’s at a two-year high already, and still climbing. It’s up 23.72% already today, dipping above and below 35, after spending basically all of the time since Autumn 2012 below 25.

It’s smashed straight through the 30 mark and is on the climb.

Stoxx, Business Insider

Analysts at Rabobank laid it out for investors in a note this morning (emphasis theirs): 

“Markets seem to be trading as if we are now entering a QE-less world which we currently are… As we’ve argued repeatedly, that translates as ‘welcome to an asset-rich, income-poor world without the asset-rich part’.“

10 Things In Tech You Need To Know Today

JAY YAROW

 SEP. 8, 2014

Sotheby’s

Marc Newson, Bono, and Jony Ive. For now, Bono doesn’t work at Apple. For now.

Good morning! We’re looking at a pretty nice day here in New York. It’s going to be sunny and comfortable in the high seventies. Let’s look at the news.

1. Apple has added a big name in design to its staff: Marc Newson.Newson is good friends with Apple’s head of design, Jony Ive. Newson’s role at Apple is unclear. He will still work on outside projects.
2. Alibaba set its initial price range at $60-$66, which suggests it will raise $21 billion in the offering.
3. At that price, the core business of Yahoo, which owns a significant stake in Alibaba, would get an $11 billion valuation by investors. Previously, people thought the core Yahoo business was valued at $0.
4. The New York Times has a massive profile of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, who has tight control over the company.
5. The iWatch, which will be announced on Tuesday, will have its own App Store, and some developers have been given a sneak people of the iWatch so they can start making apps.
6. Reddit shut down the thread on its site that was hosting the stolen images of nude celebrities. This is unusual since Reddit is usually filled with all sorts of offensive content that doesn’t censored.
7. CenturyLink, a land-line company, is reportedly interested in buying Rackspace.
8. E-commerce site The Fancy is trying to sell itself for $1 billion.
9. Dave Morin, CEO and founder of Path, which is a smaller, more limited social network says of his attempt at a new type of network: “Did the experiment fail? Maybe.” Path is trying out different apps now.
10. If you’re more into listening to the news than reading it … try out our new podcast where we preview everything that we expect from Apple tomorrow.

10 Things In Tech You Need To Know Today

JAY YAROW

 SEP. 5, 2014

Getty / Chip Somodevilla

Goodr moning! Friday arrived pretty quickly, eh? Let’s look at the news. 

1. Big profile at Fortune of billionaire investor Peter Thiel: “Thiel contends that the amazing advances we have seen in computer science and communications have masked ominously disappointing progress in energy, transportation, biotech, disease prevention, and space travel.”
2. Tim Cook gave the WSJ an interview about the iCloud celeb nudie scandal. He says Apple is planning additional security measures to make Apple accounts more secure in the future.
3. Motorola finally released the Moto 360 smart watch, and it doesn’t sound too good. For women, “it almost looks like I grabbed a clock off the wall and strapped it to my arm.”
4. New details on the iWatch and the iPhone 6 from the New York Times. The iPhone 6 will have a special one-handed mode. The iWatch will have a flexible screen, wireless charging, a small postage sized processor, and Apple put a lot of effort into developing sensors for tracking health/fitness.
5. Vice just got $500 million selling a big chunk of its company at a $2.5 billion valuation. According to Peter Kafka at Re/code, Vice will get a cable TV network to run from A&E, which owns 6 channels.
6. Bre Pettis, the CEO of popular consumer 3D printing company Makerbot, has stepped down. He will lead an “innovation workshop” for Makerbot’s parent company Stratasys.
7. Amazon is partnering with the U.S. Postal Service to test out delivering groceries to people in San Francisco. To be clear: The postal service is going to deliver groceries for you if this works.
8. Facebook updated Slingshot and killed the thing that people hated about Slingshot, making it into a Snapchat clone. Slingshot was an app for chatting by sending photos back and forth. To open a photo, you had to send a photo. It never gained traction, now it’s pivoting.
9. Megan Smith, a former Google executive, is now officially the CTO of the United States.
10. Tesla CEO Elon Musk: “I think our stock price is kind of high right now to be totally honest.”