The latest thing investors have noticed is missing from the S&P 500 is sales.
In an afternoon email on Wednesday, Rich Barry at the New York Stock Exchange said the new worry among traders on the floor was the lack of revenue being generated by America's largest companies.
S&P 500 revenue for the third quarter is tracking for a 3.3% decline, which would mark the third straight quarter of declines. Third-quarter earnings reports are expected to start rolling in next month.
Revenue in the fourth quarter is also now expected to show a 1.4% decline.
And this three-quarter string of sales drops is now being called a "revenue recession," with Barry noting that this will mark the first time since 2009 that S&P 500 revenues have declined for three straight quarters.
Barry wrote that the decline in revenue was "why most traders do not believe that just coming in at 0% [earnings] growth will be enough to sustain prices."
"The revenue declines have now become a major issue, and without some improvement there it's going to be tough justifying prices of 16 or 17 times earnings," he wrote. The S&P 500 iscurrently trading at around 19 times trailing earnings.
Now, many will be quick to note that revenue has largely been affected by the strength of the US dollar, which means sales in currencies that have weakened against the dollar are worth less when converted back into dollars for US-based companies.
FRED
But the softness in sales, it seems, is the latest in a string of news in recent days and weeks that argues against buying stocks or risk assets.
Earlier this week, Business Insider's Sam Ro noted that earnings had been ugly across the board, highlighting that operational profits — which exclude the one-time items and write-offs that weigh on most companies' quarterly earnings — look about as ugly as they ever have outside a recession.
Societe Generale
In the spring, some strategists on Wall Street were calling for an "earnings recession," and 2015 is starting to look like the first year since the financial crisis when US corporate profitability falls on a year-over-year basis.
Deutsche Bank's David Bianco wrote in an email to Business insider, "It's amazing how forgiving the general commentary has been on profits and even the broad economy."
But as we've written in recent days, the mood on markets seems to be turning. Bad news is being taken as bad news, and the uptrend in markets appears, by at least some measures, to be broken.
And so we can worry about China, about earnings, about revenue, or about the Fed, but it seems that there has been a mood shift in markets, and people are now looking for more reasons to sell or do nothing than to buy more stocks.
- BUSINESSINSIDER.COM -
Alessandro Michele has changed what the Gucci loafer means. At the beginning of 2015, before Michele’s promotion from accessories to the design hot seat, the shoe was an international symbol for smooth, establishment sophistication and a certain type of expensive-restaurant sex appeal. After two seasons of Michele’s Gucci, the loafer – backless and fur-soled for autumn, raised on a pearl-studded heel for spring – stands for surrealism, androgyny and an avant-garde kind of luxury.
The reinvention of Gucci has been the fashion industry storyof the year so far. A label that arguably stagnated under designer Frida Giannini, retreating from the sex-and-rock’n’roll image it had had under Tom Ford without finding a new direction, has invented an aesthetic – dubbed the glam Gucci geek, or the glitter geek – that is now setting the fashion agenda. As a result, Michele’s second major Gucci womenswear collection was the most high-stakes show on the Milan fashion schedule this week. Having written a gripping opening to his new Gucci story, the question now becomes whether Michele can sustain the momentum.
This season, the show venue moved from the theatre in central Milan which was favoured by both Giannini and Ford to a disused railway depot. Disused railway depot is, of course, fashion week shorthand for raw and edgy, a message underlined by the pouring rain that clattered on to the corrugated iron roof. The designer sent out a message that contrasted with the slick old-Gucci aesthetic in another way. Where once upon a time a Gucci invite could be replied upon to be a slab of expensively embossed gold paper or a scrap of white leather, this season it was a delicate pink mesh envelope, hand embroidered with tiny red roses.
There is no faulting Michele on the grandness of his vision for Gucci. These were not just clothes, he explained on notes handed out before the catwalk show began, but “psycho-geographic maps capable of recording the urban unconscious”. His vision for the show was based on two concepts, both of which are about the relationship between physical geography and maps, on the one hand, and the internal landscape of thought and emotion on the other.
First, the Situationist concept of a derivé. This is an unplanned walk through urban landscape, the route determined by the walkers’ instinctive reactions to their surroundings, with new experiences and the discovery of both landscape and oneself as the objective. Second, Madeleine de Scudéry’s 1654 Carte de Tendre, a drawn map of a female emotion that shows how the road to tenderness winds via the village of love letters, and maps how a small detour could lead to a sad end in the lake of indifference. To Michele, clothes are “an atlas of emotions”. He said backstage that he had “tried to map what was in my head”.
Michele’s background as an accessory designer came through in a new higher profile for handbags and shoes. Photograph: Daniel Dal Zennaro/EPA
The collection built on last season’s ideas. Frump-length skirts came in disco-dolly fabrics; spectacles and plaits gave a nerdy edge to printed silk dresses. A green trouser suit was worn with a pink pussy-bow blouse, berets and neck ties and brightly coloured suitcases leant an eccentric glamour.
The establishment of a core aesthetic is commercially essential, because the brand is currently designing new stores and packaging to fit Michele’s vision, and these will need to chime with collections some years in the future. (The Milan flagship, the first to be redesigned, is losing the wood panelling and gold hardware in favour of marble and velvet.) Michele’s background as an accessory designer came through in a new higher profile for handbags and shoes, with colourful and playful takes on the house classics.
If Gucci is to set the fashion pace, newness each season is essential. This season there was just enough – more heels, more sheer fabrics, more femininity. The aesthetic moved away from androgyny to something more female. (De Scudéry’s Carte de Tendre is considered something of an iconic feminist document, its public exploration of the complexity of a woman’s inner life being ahead of its time in the 17th century.) The backless, high-heeled loafers and racing-striped handbags have enough mainstream appeal to bring the Gucci customer along on Michele’s ride. For one more season, at least, he is leading the pack.
- THEGUARDIAN.COM -
When it comes to recording accurate performance data for elite athletes, GPS technology can't keep up, a Griffith researcher claims.
Instead SABEL Labs has developed SABEL Sense, an alternative to GPS for tracking running speeds and distances and which is set to be a game changer in the sports performance and wearable technology industries.
SABEL Sense is timely, as sporting organisations in particular consider their options. The AFL recently announced it had switched its GPS provider.
SABEL Labs project manager and research fellow Dr Jono Neville developed a model which presents accelerometers as a viable alternative to GPS in the quest for improved athlete assessment techniques.
His research, titled 'A model for comparing over-ground running speed and accelerometer derived step rate in elite level athletes', is detailed in Sensors Journal, which is currently published online and will be in print next month.
Dr Neville said while Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are an important tool for workload management, the devices have limitations when it comes to changes in speed and direction and when they are used indoors, due to their reliance on external satellites.
He said he compared inertial sensor data with GPS data, collected simultaneously from Brisbane Lions AFL players during 2009, to create a model which was highly accurate for running speeds.
"There is a driving need for emerging technology like this in the sports performance industry," the microelectronic engineer said.
"When it comes to frequent and rapid changes in speed and distance, GPS just doesn't cut it, although it's still the most widely used technology.
"We have found a data processing technique which allows us to extract data from an athlete and create an individualised model. "
Dr Neville said his technology will be key in monitoring training and game workloads.
"This will assist in preventing things such as over-training, which is a major concern for elite athletes, to reduce risk of injury."
Dr Neville said individualised models are created automatically using SABEL Sense technology which can then be used to track speeds and distances.
- PHYS.ORG -
Scoe drops off a smooth West Coast banger produced by Fallen Angel & Jesus. This one is sure to keep your headed nodding all day.
The track is basically a remake of Scoe's "Thank You" which features just Kendrick Lamar from his 2014 Tha Influence album. Nonetheless, still dope.
Check out this leak off The Game's upcoming double album "The Documentary 2," the Bangladesh-produced track, "El Chapo" featuring Skrillex.
She's been enjoying an endless stream of holidays this year.
But on her latest mammoth break to Los Angeles, Tamara Ecclestone took some some time out from the finer things to get back to work as she posed for some steamy swimwear shots on Tuesday.
Showcasing her ample assets and enviably toned bikini body, the 31-year-old Formula One heiress pouted, preened and flashed sultry looks poolside at a luxury hotel in the city.
Country singer Willie Nelson has received Wall Street backing for his 'premium cannabis lifestyle brand' which is cashing in on the legal marijuana craze crossing America.
The 82-year-old singer founded Willie's Reserve in 2014 and has received funding from Tuatara Capital who support a range of legal cannabis companies.
Speaking about the deal, the Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die singer said: 'I hear stories from people across the country about how the end of marijuana prohibition is improving their lives. Legal marijuana makes sense. Good business will prove it can work in America.'
Willie's Reserve will only be available in Colorado and Washington initially, but will roll out to other states if they alter their local cannabis laws.
The brand will be grown in Colorado and Washington.
Earlier, the country singer said: he was 'looking forward to working with the best growers in Colorado and Washington to make sure our product is the best on the market'.
Nelson joins other famous pot personalities, including rapper Snoop Dogg; singer Melissa Etheridge, developing marijuana-infused wine; and reality TV star and self-help guru Bethenny Frankel, who is working on a strain of Skinnygirl weed that wouldn't leave users with the munchies.
Washington and Colorado made pot legal for adult use in 2012. Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia also have removed legal restrictions, and more states are expected to vote on legalisation next year.
The moves have created marketing opportunities, but links to celebrity smokers aren't always considered a positive.
This year, the National Cannabis Industry Association decided to drop actor Tommy Chong — co-star of the 'Cheech and Chong' comedy team — as it prepared to lobby Congress for pot-friendly regulations. The group wanted to move past the stoner stereotypes they say Chong represents in favor of positioning pot as similar to fine wine.
Rapper Snoop Dogg has launched a new lifestyle website devoted to cannabis, claiming his respository will be an encyclopedia on the drug.
The website, merryjane.com, went live on Monday with a website which asked users to register for early access to the site.
The rapper described it as an online venue for information, insights, news and business guidance about the marijuana world and it boasts celebrity allies including actor Seth Rogen and singer Miley Cyrus.
He told the TechCruch Disrupt conference in San Francisco: 'We will be like the encyclopedia to the cannabis world.'
Merry Jane, which will be ad-supported, will try to connect legal shops and customers, according to a promotional video shown at the conference.
'I enjoy it for medical reasons,' Snoop Dogg responded when asked why pot was such a passion for him and so deeply tied to his persona as an entertainer.
'It is a peace situation for me. Every time I have been around it, I have seen beautiful things happen. I've seen people manifest love, peace and harmony.'
The rapper-turned-startup-investor predicted that marijuana would be legal in California and 20 other U.S. states in two years.
- DAILYMAIL.CO.UK -
