Week InReview
Friday | Jan 3, 2020
The financial lesson of 2008-2009 that most investors have forgotten

If 2000-2009 was the Lost Decade for investors, 2010-2019 was the Decade of Forgetting. In March 2008, E.S. Browning wrote for The Wall Street Journal that “we may be in another  lost decade ” for stocks, like the Great Depression and the 1970s. He was right. 

in case you missed it...
The fate of the SEC’s disgorgement authority, new broker conflict-of-interest regulation, and a broker pay-to-play rule could be up to the courts in 2020. A disgorgement case will go before the U.S. Supreme Court, which also may look at a challenge to the pay-to-play regulation. And a case over the broker conflict rule, also known as Regulation Best Interest, is pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. (Bloomberg Law | Jan 2)

Modest equity gains, nerves over inflation and politics dominate the outlook. The U.S. equity and bond rally that everyone hates will continue in 2020. That is the verdict from some of the biggest strategists and investors on Wall Street. These market-watchers also forecast modest profits in U.S. investment-grade corporate debt and high-yield junk bonds. Aside from the 2020 presidential election, they are bracing for slowing economic growth coupled with inflationary pressures, which could mean rising volatility in financial markets. (Financial Times | Jan 1)

The U.S. economy has experienced its slowest recovery from a recession in the post-World War II era, and the longer it lasts the more evidence there is that normal cyclical patterns are missing. Their absence means market participants shouldn't rely on them to divine the economy’s future. (Bloomberg Economics - opinion | Dec 31)

As the next phases of uncleared margin rules come into force, there will be an economic driver for more clearing of FX. (Traders' Insight | Dec 31)

The Federal Reserve may have succeeded in thwarting major year-end turmoil in funding markets, but 2020 is likely to bring a whole new set of concerns. Recent repo action results suggest year-end pressure abating, but questions remaIn about how the Fed pares back liquidity measures. (Bloomberg Markets | Dec 30)
the cyber cafe
10 cyberattacks that reshaped the security landscape
After a number of devastating breaches and hacks, the sheer size of data lost is no longer the only indicator of severity. Tech Republic looks at the 10 most significant cyberattacks of the past decade, including those targeting Equifax, Capital One and Sony Pictures.
—  TechRepublic

Microsoft acts to block hackers linked to North Korea
Group dubbed ‘Thallium’ could have gone unnoticed since 2010. Microsoft has taken legal action to block 50 internet domains that formed part of a “command and control infrastructure” believed to have been used by a North Korean group to hack into its users’ accounts for nearly a decade.

The hacker who took down a country
Daniel Kaye, also known as Spdrman, found regular jobs tough but corporate espionage easy. He’s about to get out of prison.
—  Businessweek
binge reading disorder
Illustration: Angie Wang
These seven trends will shape how you eat in the next decade.
What’ll be big in 2020? In some ways, it’s hard to think of a decade beginning without considering the end of this one, a decade that radically changed how we looked at food — literally. Instagram made its debut in the fall of 2010; today, an estimated 95 million posts are uploaded every 24 hours, and food and drink are among users’ biggest interests.

The world's richest keep getting richer in bizarre ways
The leveraging of a giant social-media presence, a catchy tune about a family of sharks, and a burgeoning collection of junkyards are just a few of the curious ways that helped make 2019 a fertile year for fortunes to blossom around the world.

Washington’s new anti-robocall law won't stop the calls. Here's why.
Some robocalls are legitimate, and additional prosecutions don't prevent more bad actors from popping up.
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