Bamboo Innovator

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 19 Feb (Thurs) – Why building something useful for others is the best marketing there is; How Impulsiveness Can Boost Your Creativity

Life

• Why building something useful for others is the best marketing there is: FastCo
• How Impulsiveness Can Boost Your Creativity: FastCo
• College is for developing the muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in life and will also show what it means to be fully human. NYT
• Killer Scenes: “I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life.”: SP
• How Toll founder and Rich Lister Paul Little found out Japan Post was buying the company he created: BRW
• ‘From Atoms to Bits’: A Brilliant Visual History of American Ideas: Atlantic
• Sea Snails Make Nature’s Strongest Material And It’s Not Their Shells; What makes the structure of goethite particularly compelling is that it it doesn’t grow weaker in bigger structures. Forbes, Reuters
• How Nascar Plans To Turn Its Survival Story Into A Decade Of Success: Forbes
• How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize: HBR
• Visualizing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: HBR
• Bridging Psychological Distance: Four types of gaps-social, temporal, spatial, and experiential-separate us from our goals.: HBR
• From Risk to Resilience: Learning to Deal With Disruption: MIT
• Do you really understand how your business customers buy? B2B purchasing decisions increasingly trace complex journeys, challenging the long-standing practices of many sales organizations.: McKinsey
• How big companies can innovate; Who says innovation is only for start-ups? In these interviews, the heads of three large, established companies-Intuit, Idealab, and Autodesk-argue there’s no reason big players can’t develop the next big thing.: McKinsey

Books & Research

• Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most: Amazon, FT
• Tips and Tells from Managers: How Analysts and the Market Read between the Lines of Conference Calls: SSRN

Greater China

• Directors of London-quoted Chinese sports shoe maker Naibu have been forced to admit that they have lost all contact with the company’s chairman and senior executive, in the latest controversy to hit Aim: FT
• “So Mr Chairman, just how many passports do you have?” Investors grapple with China corruption risks: FT
• Apple is struggling to launch Apple Pay in China: BI
• Branding the new way for China’s agricultural dream: WCT
• Could internet red envelopes shift bribery in China online?: WCT
• Venture capital group linked to Li Ka-shing invests heavily outside China: WCT
• China’s contradictory war against corruption: FT
• Enter the dragons: China’s smartphone makers prepare for global domination: Fortune
• The mutating nature of trust in China: FT
• Public corruption in China: Then and now: SCMP
• SEC Sanctions Chinese Accounting Firms For Refusal To Surrender Documents: MWE

India

• How to Build in India: Bloomberg
• Sameer Pitalwalla: Creator of a media company for the digital generation: forbes

Japan & Korea

• Japan Gives Smart Eyewear a Go: Bloomberg
• An activist raid forces new logic on Fanuc robot factory; Pressure from Daniel Loeb and a changing business climate is forcing secretive company to adapt: FT
• Japan wages: Manufacturing consent; As annual pay talks begin, Abe’s government needs salaries to rise to boost the economy: FT
• Promising signs of change in corporate Japan: JT
• Japanese Shipping and Delivery Firms Push Services Abroad: WSJ
• Samsung Makes Move Into Mobile Payments: WSJ

ASEAN

• Iceberg cool to MAS review of its report; “we use public financial information, which should simplify the review process.”: BT
• Malaysia’s 1MDB to Break Up Assets, Signaling Wind Down: Bloomberg
• Bakrie Telecom debt ploy using SPV exposes new foreign investor pitfall in Indonesia: TODAY, Reuters
• Indonesian govt to place SOE subsidiaries under close scrutiny to prevent them from being exploited for illicit purposes. JP

Macro

• HSBC tax scandal prompts rivals to check for ‘problem dossiers’: FT
• The HSBC Scandal: A Red Flag for U.S. Regulators?: K@W
• Dueling Thresholds Emerge on Going-Concern Warnings; a new accounting standard meant to give investors more warning of when a company is in trouble could actually lead to less warning: Compliance
• Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC premises: FT
• Activist investors tread softly in Asia; Corporate warriors likely to have to take a less aggressive approach: FT
• The finance sector and growth: Warning: too much finance is bad for the economy: Economist
• Mutual Funds: Mutton dressed as lamb: New research suggests that investors do get misled by stale returns: Economist
• American student loan debt has surpassed the GDP of Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland combined: Quartz
• A measure introduced by the Italian government to incentivise partial listing of family businesses and encourage long-term shareholdings has been amended after institutional investors raised concerns that it unfairly benefited controlling shareholders: Campdenfb
• Why Active Management Fell Off a Cliff – Perhaps Permanently: TRB
• Watchdog ‘disappointed’ with Grant Thornton audits: FT
• Buying ‘market truths’ pays, but not impressively; It may be time to buy protection against another major drawdown: FT
• Stockpickers see fertile ground ahead; Active fund managers see fertile territory ahead for stockpicking as they expect correlations between equities to fall this year.: FT
• Sub-zero bonds will change risk calculation; Search for yield will evolve into a flight from near-certain loss: FT
• Breakup Artist Hedge Funds Betting Billions On Corporate Marriages: Forbes
• Negative rates as global cash burn: FT
• Central Banks and the Perils of Subzero Conditions; The longer such conditions persist, the greater the risk of perverse consequences: WSJ
• A new economic mystery: negative interest rates: WaPo

TMT

• Just 7% From the Bubble Peak, Nasdaq Investors Losing Nerve: Bloomberg
• Tim Cook says he always knew Google Glass would fail; “They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.”: BI
• Software is steering auto industry; This revolution makes it possible for a technology group to be a car company: FT
• Contactless card junkies tap their way to payment addiction; Payment becomes more detached and money more abstract so friction is almost entirely absent: FT
• Microsoft Has Suddenly Gotten Serious With Mobile: NYT
• Photoshop at 25: A Thriving Chameleon Adapts to an Instagram World: NYT
• Microsoft Is The New Google, Google Is The Old Microsoft: Forbes
• Pandora’s grand plan: A CRM system for recording artists: Fortune
• Samsung buys digital wallet star to take on Apple Pay: SCMP
• Tags to Riches: Mining Company Tracks Production With Sensors: WSJ
• China’s WeChat sends a message to Line and Kakao in their home turf: Reuters
• Service Innovation in a Digital World; Digital attackers tend to thrive on simplicity. CFO
• How the Internet may be shifting innovation away from big cities: WaPo
• Confidence Games: Why People Don’t Trust Machines to Be Right: K@W

Healthcare

• How Drug Company Gilead Outpaces Its Competitors—And Common Diseases; It can take up to 15 years to bring a lifesaving drug to market. gilead operates at the speed of need. FastCo
• Is biotech growth just what the doctor ordered? When the head of the US Federal Reserve raises concerns over a potential bubble in a sector, is it time to worry?: FT
• Global Pharma’s R&D Re-Balancing: Forbes
• NYU Professor Uncovers How The FDA Systematically Covers Up Fraud & Misconduct In Drug Trials: Zerohedge

Energy & Commodities

• How oil’s dramatic plunge has changed the energy equation: Fortune
• Is Warren Buffett Right About Big-Oil Stocks?: Barron’s

Consumer & Others

• Nike just increased its cool factor by teaming up with an awesome Japanese brand: Quartz
• Under Armour is expanding its empire: BI
• The epic rise of Marlboro cigarettes: BI
• Campbell Soup CEO says distrust of ‘Big Food’ a growing problem: Fortune

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 18 Feb (Wed) – Vincent Van Gogh: Superstar Of The Year; Comparisons With Others Can Obscure Our Own Goals

Life

• Comparisons With Others Can Obscure Our Own Goals: NYT
• Vincent Van Gogh: Superstar Of The Year: Forbes
• Everything You Need to Know About Becoming a Better Listener: HBR
• The Mistake Companies Make When Marketing to Different Cultures: HBR
• Experts Brainstorm Ways to Fund Cities to Withstand Disasters: JG
• How to Find a Best Friend; It is harder for children to form lasting friendships; rising screen time and lots of activities get in the way: WSJ
• Unfriendly Persuasion by CFOs Could Spur Faulty Audits; Caught between the need to serve clients and the requirement to be skeptical of them, auditors may stint on audit quality. CFO

Investing Process

• How to Tell if a CEO Is Lying: A new approach to financial analysis measures executive evasion and candor to gauge a company’s outlook: II
• The “Oracle of Omaha’s” investment vehicle picked up a stake in 21st Century Fox and ditched all of its Exxon Mobil shares. Fortune

Greater China

• Hanergy’s Li taps shadow lenders to fund group’s startling growth: FT
• Western executives should speak truth to Chinese power; Better governance and greater transparency would be a good target: FT
• China’s Churning Out Billionaires Like It’s 1999: Bloomberg
• China Considering Mergers Among Its Big State Oil Companies; Beijing’s Step Back With Big Oil: Merging China’s National Oil Companies Would Be Retrograde Move: WSJ1, WSJ2
• Public corruption in China: Then and now: SCMP

India

• It’s Time for Modi to Live Up to His Promises; India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spent his first nine months in office on basic reforms, but there’ve yet to be any sweeping changes: WSJ
• Is India Really Growing Faster Than China?: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Firing Up Japan’s Scrappy Steelmaker: WSJ

ASEAN

• Are Indonesia’s Years of Living Dangerously Over? Investors like Jokowi’s reform agenda but they shouldn’t forget the nation’s past financial missteps: Barron’s
• Half of Harley Motorcycles in Indonesia Are Said to Be Illegal: JG
• More Doubts Are Cast Over Jokowi’s Promise to Fight Corruption: JG
• Editorial: Dearth of Leadership From President Jokowi: JG
• In Indian Graft Battle, Some Lessons for Indonesia’s President; Joko Widodo may not have heard of Arvind Kejriwal at all but no doubt he would envy his position as head of his own political party: JG
• KPK vs Polri: Children of light and children of darkness: JP
• Future of NOL sinks deeper into doubt: BT

Macro

• Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC premises: FT
• DuPont Says Trian Bases Fight on ‘Myths’; CEO Kullman says Trian proxy fight ‘based on misrepresentations, inaccurate data, and flawed analyses’: WSJ
• Retirement-Account Standards May Tighten: Brokers Would Have to Put Clients’ Interests First: WSJ
• David Tepper Dumps 40% Of US Equity Exposure Despite Claiming “Stocks Inexpensive”: Zerohedge
• Emerging fund managers stuck in buy-and-hold as trading shrivels: Reuters

TMT

• Marc Andreessen’s plan for fostering more “Unicorn” startups: Pando
• It’s ‘Silicon Valley vs. Motor City’: Bloomberg
• GoPro CIO Prepares to Rein in Rogue IT: WSJ
• At GM, Internet Ordering Required a Massive Overhaul; Auto maker spent years building internal systems expertise to allow customers to shop online: WSJ
• Bosch CEO: Tech industry interlopers force car industry to react: Reuters

Energy & Commodities

• How will the oil crash affect Norway? FT
• Big Investors Make Big Bets For and Against Energy; Buffett, Soros Sell Off Exxon Mobil Stakes: WSJ
• Milking New Zealand’s Way of Life: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Tim Hortons will become household name around the world, CEO Daniel Schwartz says: FP
• Has Coca-Cola lost its cool?: TheAge

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 17 Feb (Tues) – Jony Ive carried a resignation letter in his pocket the first time he met Steve Jobs; “Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?” Jobs was saying that the designs Ive had looked fresh and exciting, but Ive hadn’t been able to get the rest of the company to pay much attention to his work

Life

• Jony Ive carried a resignation letter in his pocket the first time he met Steve Jobs; “Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?” Jobs was saying that the designs Ive had looked fresh and exciting, but Ive hadn’t been able to get to pay much attention to his work: BI, Newyorker
• The financial dangers of swapping common sense for risk models: FT
• Red Ocean Traps: HBR
• The art of delegation and clearing bottlenecks at the top: Forbes
• A multimillion-dollar fraudster who accumulated properties, luxury cars and a house boat has been jailed for eight years. TheAge
• Prerna Sharma: The scientist of small things: Forbes
• Light bulbs vs. the Internet; Calling for less destruction and more creation: WaPo
• Fraudulent Hedge Fund Manager Moazzam Malik Fakes Own Death: VW

Greater China

• Jack Ma Says Alibaba At ‘Most Critical Moment’ As China Starts New Investigation: Forbes
• Ambitious Chinese officials ‘setting secret traps to blackmail rivals’ to advance their own careers: SCMP
• Accounting scandal in hidden debt as Kaisa discloses much higher debt burden; Troubled Chinese developer Kaisa told foreign bond investors that it faces a $10.4bn debt load—more than double the audited amount it previously disclosed; Developer Kaisa eyes urgent restructuring of debts that now top HK$78 billion: WSJ, SCMP
• Hong Kong-Shanghai Trading Link Struggles to Connect With Investors; Rollout of China’s three-month-old Stock Connect program was too fast, fund managers say: WSJ
• China’s One Trillion Reasons to Prevent Yuan Tumbling: Bloomberg
• Concerns raised as China steel enters ‘peak zone’: FT
• Guangzhou doctors angry after inspectors search hospitals for ‘bribes’: SCMP
• How China’s political purge felled Kaisa; Confusion sparked by speed of developer’s demise: FT
• Chinese provinces turn to old investment and easing playbook: FT
• Chinese innovation: BGI’s code for success; DNA company’s fortunes hint at a new model for nation’s tech industry: FT
• Xi Takes A Gamble With Corruption Crackdown: Barron’s
• Sneak peek on China bank earnings offers worrying credit cost picture: SCMP
• What if China home prices keep falling?: SCMP
• China’s aluminium tug of war stuck in repeat mode: SCMP
• Peter Woo Kwong-ching will retire as chairman of Wharf (Holdings) to make way for a smooth transfer of control of the business empire to the next generation.: SCMP
• China’s COSCO Dis-Assembles 8 Ships Amid Glut As Baltic Dry Hits Another Record Low: Zerohedge
• Ambitious Chinese officials ‘setting secret traps to blackmail rivals’ to advance their own careers: SCMP
• Jack Ma Says Alibaba At ‘Most Critical Moment’ As China Starts New Investigation: Forbes

ASEAN

• Noble rejects improper accounting claims: FT, WSJ, BT
• Indonesian police seeking to ‘defang’ anti-graft agency: DW
• Yangon-based paper attacks Myanmar’s elite rulers, describing them as impediments to progress and harmony in society. TheAge
• Thai SEC has filed a complaint with the Department of Special Investigation against six people and three companies for allegedly falsifying accounts and committing fraud that caused unspecified damage to Thai Unique Coil (TUCC): NM
• 300 Singapore property investors found themselves in trouble after pumping US$11 million into Clara Tan’s CTL Global’s plan to buy up distressed houses in the US after attending property seminars: AsiaOne
• Are short sellers gunning for Singapore again?: CNBC

Macro

• Reform the Condominium: It’s become too much of a vehicle for financial speculation: NYT
• How the unspoken currency war threatens to be a silent killer in world markets: FP
• Chart of the day: How US$2.4tr will vanish from global growth: SCMP
• HSBC Bank: Secret Origins To Laundering The World’s Drug Money: Zerohedge
• Giant Australian construction firm Leighton Holdings faces courtroom accusations it concealed a financial black-hole worth up to $4 billion from shareholders, potentially breaching continuous disclosure laws: TheAge

TMT

• The migrant story behind thriving global tech sector; Immigrants are inherent risk-takers with an incentive to better their circumstances: FT
• At UPS, the Algorithm Is the Driver; Turn right, turn left, turn right: inside Orion, the 10-year effort to squeeze every penny from delivery routes: WSJ
• Liberty Global, Becoming a Big Fish, Risks Attracting the Eye of a Shark: NYT
• Gyde this: Aussie brothers Andrew and Scott Julian aiming for the Google of streaming video: TheAge
• Hyperloop Is Real: Meet The Startups Selling Supersonic Travel: Forbes
• SocialCops helps tackle big problems with Big data: Forbes
• How Zombies have taken over pop culture: Forbes
• Challenge of Apple Watch: Defining Its Purpose; Envisioned as a health monitor, Apple Watch provides data, communicates in new ways: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Time to start treating commodities as currencies?: FT

Healthcare

• Pharma Must Launch Itself Back to Full Health; Belief in improving R&D productivity needs to be justified commercially: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Fortress Ferrero resists bankers’ siege; Nutella creator’s death sparks speculation over strategy: FT
• Edible insects: grub pioneers aim to make bugs palatable; Could insects be the next sushi and bug-burgers the new sirloin steak? Pat Crowley, founder of Chapul, which makes energy bars from finely milled crickets, hopes so: FT
• All eyes on chocolate maker Ferrero’s next generation: Reuters

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 16 Feb (Mon) – If you want something done, do not write a to-do list

Life

• If you want something done, do not write a to-do list: FT
• How To Be Someone People Love To Talk To: Bark
• A new aristocracy? The beauty of Koreans’ zeal for education was that it gave people a chance, and a reason to work hard so they could build their own future. But a recent study paints an alarming picture: KT

Greater China

• Deflation is making China’s debt mountain even more terrifying: BI
• Internet payment portals luring Chinese customers with red envelope war: WCT
• The Global Economy’s Chinese Headwinds: PS
• China’s ‘blood famine’ drives patients to the black market: Reuters
• HK needs more risk-takers to nurture start-up culture: SCMP
• Hong Kong firms must break their family ties: SCMP

India

• Delhi Wakes Up to an Air Pollution Problem It Cannot Ignore: NYT

Japan & Korea

• ‘Nut rage’ prompts S.Korea to consider law against as “gabjil”, or high-handedness conduct by the rich and powerful: AsiaOne

ASEAN

• Myanmar’s next steps depend on the generals: FT
• Jokowi Has Forgotten Some Basic Truths About His Job: JG
• In Indonesia, fresh chance to break gas pump monopoly: Reuters
• The polemic on Indonesia’s wasteful and inefficient bureaucracy has resurfaced after ban on holding of meetings and other government events in hotels as from Dec. 1, 2014: JP
• Indonesia Faces a Crossroads in Corruption Battle: WSJ

Macro

• Corporate bonds: Emerging bubble; Signs of distress are appearing in companies’ debt: FT
• Banks dismantle ‘strings of pearls’ as they turn to dust; Pressure from investors and regulators has led lenders to dismantle units built in boom years: FT
• The $100m man’s guide to Brazilian graft: FT
• Negative rates to rattle financial system; Impact to hit pension funds and insurance groups: FT

Energy & Commodities

• Rigged, manipulated and opaque: the $3 trillion oil market needs reform: Telegraph

TMT

• British companies are attempting to boldly go where no manufacturer has gone before by enabling huge pieces of hardware for satellites to be built in space. FT
• Hoping Google’s Lab Is a Rainmaker: NYT
• Slice and Carve: The Next Wave in Computer-Aided Creativity: NYT
• Five Ways That Apple Is Already Positioned to Be a Car Company: Bloomberg
• Online Bank Robbers Steal Up to $1 Billion: Researcher: Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• Starbucks in Britain: A loss-making machine; Why one of Starbucks’ divisions in a coffee-loving country is so unprofitable: Economist
• Hello Kitty…For Men! But Can Sanrio’s New Fashion Line Overcome The Pussy Factor?: Forbes
• Does Levi Strauss still fit America?: Fortune
• Vitamins Hide the Low Quality of Our Food: NYT

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 15 Feb (Sun) – The Difference Between Routine and Ritual: How to Master the Balancing Act of Controlling Chaos and Finding Magic in the Mundane

Life

• The Difference Between Routine and Ritual: How to Master the Balancing Act of Controlling Chaos and Finding Magic in the Mundane: BP
• Thoreau on Hard Work, the Myth of Productivity, and the True Measure of Meaningful Labor: BP
• Mary Oliver on a Life Well Lived and How to Be Fully Alive; “Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going?”: BP
• The Decision-Maker: A Tool For a Lifetime: Farnam
• Monopoly’s Inventor: The Progressive Who Didn’t Pass ‘Go’; Elizabeth Magie, a crusader against big business, devised the classic capitalist game decades before the man credited with its creation. NYT
• Michele Ferrero, Italy’s Richest Man And The Maker Of Nutella, Passed Away On Saturday: Forbes
• When Things Get Really Bad, Here’s The Leadership Skill You Need Most: Forbes
• How the Industrial Revolution Began; Britain enjoyed abundant supplies of coal and iron and capital and food. Innovation in all these sectors revolutionized industry. Barron’s
• What historians think of historical novels; what historians and novelists can learn from each other: FT

Books

• The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance: Amazon

ASEAN

• Here it comes again, the mobnas (national car)! The old dream of having our own national car has never really vanished in Indonesia: JP

Macro

• The SEC alleges that a fund called Wolf Hedge wasn’t doing anything close to investing: BI
• Outflanked and outmuscled: Bombardier Inc’s uphill climb against competitors with much deeper pockets: FP

TMT

• Red Hat CEO: Today’s IT department is in a fight for its life: BI
• The Invention Mob, Brought to You by Quirky, a company that uses crowdsourcing to create and refine products, could be a model for bringing ideas to market in a faster, more efficient way. NYT

Energy & Commodities

• Rick George sees a ‘cleansing’ of the oil industry after years of profligate spending: FP
• Price Of Farmland Suffers First Annual Decline Since 1986: Zerohedge

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 14 Feb (Sat) – Blackstone’s Chief Has a Warning for Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs; Are You Proud of How You’re Spending Your Time?

Life

• Blackstone’s Chief Has a Warning for Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs: NYT
• Are You Proud of How You’re Spending Your Time?: HBR
• Confucius Has Long Held Back China; Under Confucius’s teaching, the majority of Chinese people endured 2,000 years of subsistence living, while the ruling class controlled most resources and wealt: WSJ
• When the Growth Model Fails; Work hard or get laid off, as opposed to work hard and get higher wages: This management-by-stress technique is a major cause of suffering in our modern societies: NYT
• Son of Carpetright founder to launch rival flooring retailer: Telegraph
• For You, Half Price: NYT
• How Scams Worked In The 1800s: NPR
• Fund Pros Who Live Together, Buy Together; Study Suggests Managers Are Influenced by Investments of Peers Who Are ‘Neighbors’: WSJ
• How digital technology is destroying your mind: WaPo
• Coursera takes aim at education—and unemployment—on a global scale: McKinsey

Books

• To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science: Amazon, WaPo

Investing Process

• ‘Machine’ Dalio takes on ‘Man’ Ackman: CNBC
• This Quiet Activist Investor Has Averaged 19 Percent Returns for More Than a Decade: Bloomberg

Greater China

• Mobile payments thriving in China: WCT
• China entering New Year with fewer crackers, less pork, more thrift: Reuters
• Alibaba Dealings With Chinese Regulator Draw SEC Interest: WSJ
• China’s Corruption Crackdown a Boon for Lingerie; Sales Increase for Pricey Undergarments as Government Discourages Conspicuous Consumption: WSJ

India

• Beyond brick & mortar: Inside Grundfos Pumps India: Forbes
• Indian Banks Struggling With Bad Loans: WSJ
• The Many Strands of Indian Identity; An ambitious new library of Indian literature shows the cultural riches ignored by today’s Hindu nationalists: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Samsung, LG to create drone: Maeil
• Korean DRAM makers take 70% of the market: JA

ASEAN

• Off the Wagon: Vietnam’s Binge-Drinking Problem; The nation is the third-largest beer consumer in Asia, behind Japan and China: JG
• 1MDB Mess Clouds Petronas $7 Billion Debt Proposal: Bloomberg
• OJK tells Indonesian banks to be vigilant as bad loans rise: JP
• Post-2015 Asean – empower the people: TheStar
• LNG tankers lie unused around Singapore as gas downturn turns to crisis: Reuters

Macro

• Will The Carbon Bubble Be The Next Financial Crisis? Forbes
• Avoid devaluing currencies to boost trade: TheStar
• ‘Sin-Vestors’ Can Reap Smoking-Hot Returns: WSJ
• The Myth of Black Swan Market Events: NYT
• Opinion: Why the smart money is running from hedge funds: Marketwatch

TMT

• One of the smartest VCs of all time just warned that startups are chasing the wrong thing right now: BI
• Why It Makes Perfect Sense For Apple To Invest In The Future Of The Car: Techcrunch
• Visa to fight fraud with apps: JT
• Apple Gears Up to Challenge Tesla in Electric Cars: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Mass layoffs complicate oil industry’s long-term plans: Reuters
• How not to run a national oil company: TheStar

Consumer & Others

• The incredible staying power of the Oreo cookie: Quartz
• Hitching a Toy to a Star: Superhero Movies Create Opportunity for Toymakers: NYT

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 13 Feb (Fri) – 11 inspiring quotes from Abraham Lincoln on liberty, leadership, and character; How a frugal janitor saved, invested and ultimately amassed $8 million

Life

• 11 inspiring quotes from Abraham Lincoln on liberty, leadership, and character: BI
• How a frugal janitor saved, invested and ultimately amassed $8 million: WaPo
• Authorpreneurship: To succeed these days, authors must be more businesslike than ever: Economist
• How a 23-year-old makes $500,000 a year tweeting random facts: BI
• Charles Darwin, Natural Novelist: Why style was so important to the theory of evolution: NewYorker
• “Guys, Let’s Grow The Hell Out Of This Company”: How Y Combinator Startups Go Big: FastCo
• Those who can: How to turn teaching into a job that attracts high-flyers: Economist
• Lois Braverman of the Ackerman Institute: Making Room for Differences: NYT
• Seven secrets to nailing your pitch: Shark Tank judge Naomi Simson: BRW
• Turn email responses into blog posts, and other ways to protect your time without being rude: BRW
• Are National Champions Really Winners?: PS
• The trouble with the family compact: Bombardier Inc’s new CEO Alain Bellemare is on a short leash: FP
• Identify Blue Oceans by Mapping Your Product Portfolio: HBR
• 15 Habits Of Exceptionally Persuasive People: Forbes
• Opera: The Economic Stimulus That Lasts for Centuries: Bloomberg

Greater China

• From Wealth to Health: Rich Chinese Seek Spiritual Fulfillment; Executives Spurn M.B.A.s for Philosophy Classes, Shopping Excursions for Buddhist Meditations: WSJ
• Bunge says China lenders distorting soyabean trade: FT
• China’s increase in debt is massive and unsustainable: WaPo
• Without corruption, some ask, can the Chinese Communist Party function? WaPo
• Shaanxi Government to Probe Missing Funds After Mass Investor Protests: RFA
• China’s Two Largest Taxi-Hailing App Companies Discuss Merger; Alibaba-Backed Kuaidi Dache and Tencent-Backed Didi Dache Enter Advanced Talks: WSJ
• It’s a Wanda-ful life: China’s biggest property tycoon wants to become an entertainment colossus: Economist
• China’s army: Lifting the veil; Xi Jinping is bringing a corrupt army to heel. Now he must make it behave responsibly: Economist
• For many of China’s biotech brains-in-exile, it’s time to come home: reuters
• A third of China’s $2.5 trillion corporate bond market is going to be hung out to dry: BI
• Burst of Taiwan’s real estate bubble likely: regulator; Taxes to be levied on combined value of property and land in Taiwan: WCT
• Thinking Big in Guizhou with Big Data Business: caixin
• Collateral Damage From China’s Antigraft Drive: Bloomberg
• Hong Kong Civics Class Puts Beijing on Edge: WSJ
• China’s lending push bypasses cash-starved farm sector: Reuters

India

• Slumdog Millionaires: A colorful range of everyday entrepreneurs disprove the notion that India is simply a ‘socialist country in which the state is the key.’: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• GS E&C faces a class action suit for losses a group of individual investors suffered as the result of allegedly deceptive notices made through the stock market. KT
• Japan’s Oldest Businesses Have Survived for More Than 1,000 Years: Atlantic
• Lotte Group’s “exorbitant” bid to win the largest amount of duty free space at Incheon International Airport (ICN) is triggering concerns that it may fall victim to a “winner’s curse.”: KT
• Korean Air shocked by one-year jail ruling on heiress: AsiaOne
• Japan Rally Mutating With Abe Beneficiaries Becoming Biggest Losers: Bloomberg
• How Two Small Rocks Stop Japan and South Korea Getting Along: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• Vietnam’s migrant labourers: Going to debt mountain; Working abroad is no bargain: Economist
• Thai PM pushes ‘business as usual’ amid slow politics: Nikkei

Macro

• The mystery of negative bond yields: SCMP
• Equities bask in “weird world” of negative yields: Reuters
• Britain’s markets watchdog says investigating 67 fund managers: Reuters
• How businesses linked to blacklisted oligarchs avoid Western sanctions: Economist
• The tax havens hidden in plain sight: FT
• How Mortgage Fraud Made the Financial Crisis Worse: NYT
• Credit Suisse’s Superbad Bank; The last assets are so risky they are risk-weighted at more than 100%. Eventually, what is left in the bad bank then may end up once again just being part of the bank.: WSJ
• Central Banks Now Open 24/7 Fighting Currency Wars and Deflation: Bloomberg
• Even Berkshire’s Boardroom Ties Can’t Prevent the Costco-AmEx Divorce: Bloomberg

TMT

• Automated Insights, the guys with ‘robots’ writing stories, acquired by owner of Stats, LLC: WaPo
• The entrepreneur who is beating Amazon at same-day delivery: FastCo
• Holographic movies: Light at the end of a tunnel; Affordable moving holography may not be too far away: Economist
• Web pioneer Vint Cerf warns of internet history ‘black hole’: FT
• Tim Cook Doesn’t Believe This Made-Up Math Law Will Limit Apple’s Growth: Bloomberg
• 10 years of Google Maps: 10 ways it changed the world: TheAge
• Google, Mighty Now, but Not Forever: NYT

Healthcare

• The Coming Boom In Brain Medicines: Forbes
• Why Isn’t Health Care More Like Starbucks? Forbes
• Vaccines and Politicized Science; Jenny McCarthy knows the credibility of science is a house of cards. WSJ
• Toxic Ganges adds to spread of drug-resistant bacteria: FT
• How CVS turned its cigarette ban into a strategic weapon: BI
• Does a Real Anti-Aging Pill Already Exist? Inside Novartis’s push to produce the first legitimate anti-aging drug; The bacterium Streptomyces hygroscopicus is found only on Easter Island. Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• Levi Strauss CEO on a ‘mission to get women back into jeans’: Fortune
• Tesla: The Road to Riches Is Littered With Potholes: WSJ
• Even Pasta and Cheese Makers Now Want Their Own Small Jet: Bloomberg

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 12 Feb (Thurs) – Jeff Bezos’ best piece of advice to entrepreneurs: Be missionaries, not mercenaries; Rethink Your After-Work Routine to Make the Transition Home a Happy One; Fatigue and Stress Fuel the Tendency to Ruminate; a Mental Break Helps Us Leave the Bad Mood Behind

Life

• Jeff Bezos’ best piece of advice to entrepreneurs: Be missionaries, not mercenaries: BI
• This Harvard grad couldn’t find a job on Wall Street, so he launched his own startup — it’s now worth $600 million: BI
• Rethink Your After-Work Routine to Make the Transition Home a Happy One; Fatigue and Stress Fuel the Tendency to Ruminate; a Mental Break Helps Us Leave the Bad Mood Behind: WSJ
• Peter Thiel and Education’s New Utopians: Bloomberg
• 1 in 5 S Korean teachers regret choice of job; The discontent among Korean teachers was in stark contrast to Korean teachers’ relatively high average pay: Reuters
• What Is the Purpose of Society? We can’t fix our problems if we don’t know the end goal: NYT
• Lessons from RadioShack: To Stay on Top, Figure Out What Got You There: K@W
• Dr. Henry Singleton – Part Four: Five Strategies For Business Success: VW
• Is Your Leadership Style Right for the Digital Age? K@W
• An Excess of Sunshine, a Paucity of Rules; Disclosure and transparency have become the answer to every vexing problem, but too much sunlight can be blinding: NYT
• Darwin’s Finches Reveal Role of Genes in Evolution; Scientists Identify Genetic Mechanism Behind Beak Shapes: WSJ
• Sriracha’s inventor refuses to trademark the name even though he could be losing out on millions: BI
• How to Live a Happier Financial Life: WSJ
• 5 Ways to Become More Self-Aware: HBR
• A Lesson in Entrepreneurship From a Doll; American Girl, Other Firms Design Toys for Young Girls That Tap Into the Appeal of Owning a Business: WSJ
• W.R. Grace: The End of an Empire; a conglomerate that dates back over 150 years, has operated everything from steam ships to dialysis centers, is joining H-P, ITT and other giants narrowing its focus and splitting up. WSJ

Books

• Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too) : Amazon
• Frugal Innovation: How to do more with less: Amazon, FT

Investing Process

• A Reader’s Suggestion for DEEP VALUE COURSE: CS
• Tales of Russia’s First Activist Investor; The founder of The Hermitage Fund made, lost, and made a fortune investing in Russia. Then he learned the truth about doing business in Moscow: Barron’s

Greater China

• PBOC keeps close watch on shadow banking, bad debt amid China slowdown: SCMP
• Under pressure: Graft campaign weighs heavily on Wang Qishan: WCT
• 50 Shades of Shadow Banking: China Risks Reined In; A central bank report has a more granular look at credit expansion: Bloomberg
• China Inc’s bank-free shopping spree?: FT
• Kaisa Group, the Chinese developer embroiled in an anti-graft probe, sent prices on its bonds sliding after saying it expects it will need to change its international debt obligations: Bloomberg
• First Tell Us What’s Wrong With Stock Market, SEC Official Says: Bloomberg
• China’s Top Anti-Graft Regulator to Inspect 26 State Companies: Bloomberg
• CEOs On The Run: Financial Crisis With Chinese Characteristics: Forbes
• China’s Huawei Says Its Ready for Transparency: Caixin
• The shuttering of China? FT
• Bringing the American way of selling skin-care products and vitamins to China helped make Amway Corp. the world’s largest direct seller. It also made the children of one of its co-founders billionaires. Bloomberg
• China’s People’s Liberation Army audits spending; move aimed at uncovering embezzlement, accounting fraud, stealing from private coffers and other wrongdoing so as to curb “deep-seated, unhealthy” tendencies in the military. SCMP
• Beijing Directive Cuts Into Debt Issuance; Sales Are Derailed as Doubt Is Cast on Local-Government Backing for Bonds: WSJ

India

• Trick or treat? India’s strong GDP figures mask economic reality: Reuters
• Delhi Elections: What Lessons Will the BJP Choose to Learn? WSJ
• McDonald’s hit by beef with India partner: FT
• India Smugglers, and Their Bodies, Take a Break From Gold: Bloomberg
• Sebi questions ownership of Sahara properties ; Sebi says the group may not wholly own some of the properties in India it listed as proof of its ability to repay the savers: Livemint

Japan & Korea

• Paint peeling off South Korea’s economic miracle: Nikkei
• Abe’s Third Arrow Finds Its Mark; Prime Minister Shinzo Abe scores a major victory in agricultural reform, but things only get harder from here: WSJ
• Popularity of e-cigarettes is lighting up Korea; As debate rages over health risks, the government has focused its attention on regulating the smoking trend. JA
• Can Ssangyong Motor regain its past glory?: KH
• Samsung sees gold in mirrorless camera market: JP

ASEAN

• 1MDB’s Lenders Threaten to Put Malaysian State Investment Firm in Default: WSJ
• Alibaba’s AliExpress Sets Its Sights On Indonesia’s Promising E-Commerce Market: Techcrunch
• MAS seeks more bite to oversight of derivatives, securities: BT
• Companies should comply with SGX’s MTP as soon as possible: BT
• Key Thaksin Ally to Face Thai Court Over 2008 Crackdown: JG
• Survey: High Hopes but Little Satisfaction in Jokowi: JG
• Do You Already Speak Indonesian? Under a controversial new proposal, foreigners working in Indonesia may need to master the Indonesian language: JG
• Household Debt Keeps Thailand Southeast Asia’s Sick Man: JG
• Singapore Finds A Way Out of Labor Crunch With Drones: JG

Macro

• SEC Claws Back Money from Tech CFOs for Accounting Fraud: AT
• The Reason Why Trading Currencies Is Now The Most Difficult Since Lehman: Zerohedge
• SEC Wades Into Bitter Fight Over CVR Energy Takeover; Watchdog Investigates Whether Refiner Made Misleading Disclosures During Takeover by Carl Icahn: WSJ
• ‘Smart beta’ drives down active management fees: FT
• Yes, looser credit – and fraud – drove the housing bubble: FT
• Krugman: Nobody Understands Debt: NYT
• Hedge Funds Focused on Currencies Get Big Payoff; January Was Big Winner for Firms, Especially Those Driven by Algorithms: WSJ
• The Day the Shouting Stopped; The energy, the surging life force of the trading pits has given way to the silent precision of electronic trading. WSJ
• U.S. becomes hot spot for aerospace manufacturing: Reuters

Healthcare

• Analytics Predict Which Patients Will Suffer Post-Surgical Infections: WSJ
• Stroke Procedure to Pluck Clots From Brain Betters Recovery Odds: Bloomberg

TMT

• Tim Cook explains why Apple Pay doesn’t collect your data: ‘You are not our product.’: BI
• Datto: The Secret Tech Money-Making Machine You’ve Never Heard O: Forbes
• Slow Start for Google’s Smartwatches; Dearth of Apps Are Cited as Problem Hurting Sales: WSJ
• Sleuthing Search Engine: Even Better Than Google? Memex, Developed by the U.S. Military, Is Helping to Track Down Online Criminals: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Next RadioShack? Here Are The Most Troubled Retail Stores: Forbes
• Crowdsourcing Helps Domino’s Pizza Serve Up Rise in Profit; Mobile Application Pizza Mogul Allows Customers in Australia to Design Their Own Pizzas: WSJ
• Adore Me’s secret for disrupting the lingerie market: BRW

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 11 Feb (Wed) – The classic allegory of ‘stone soup’ provides a lesson every entrepreneur should learn

Life

• The classic allegory of ‘stone soup’ provides a lesson every entrepreneur should learn: BI
• A Time for Fewer, Better Friends; As people get older, they deliberately narrow their social circles. Ties with close friends tighten; less meaningful relationships are discarded. WSJ
• The Act of Rigorous Forgiving: NYT
• TIM COOK: ‘Sitting is the new cancer’; Apple Watch will gently vibrate on his wrist to remind him to occasionally get up and move: BI
• The fear of not delivering that accompanied Ocado’s rise; Creating a business often requires self-belief bordering on the sociopathic: FT
• Five Ways to Reverse the Downward Spiral of Distrust: Strategy&
• Peter Thiel has never met a regulation he didn’t hate: Fortune
• Everything Is Awesome! Why You Can’t Tell Employees They’re Doing a Bad Job; New Mantra at Many Workplaces Is ‘Accentuate the Positive’: WSJ
• Malcolm Gladwell shares the worst advice he’s ever received: ‘It’s been done” : BI
• The Redefined No of the CFO; For today’s financial leader, decisions are based on strategy, not spreadsheets. Strategy&
• Your Lifetime Earnings Are Decided in the First 10 Years of Your Career: Bloomberg
• Ending the cycle of elect and regret: TheStar

Investing Process

• Booth Laird 2014 Annual Letter: Reflection On 7 Years: VW
• On the Perils of Management Access & Straying From Process: Our Adventure With Jones Soda: SSA

Greater China

• Credit insurer Atradius warns of spiraling payment problems in China as trade data for January signals the sharpest slowdown in domestic demand in five years: SCMP
• Jack Ma, Alibaba Navigate a Tangled Web in China: WSJ
• Political risks stalk China SOEs abroad: FT
• First online hospital in China starts services in Guangdong: WCT
• The ‘New Normal’ for Doing Business in China; While the business environment isn’t perfect for U.S. companies operating in China, the glass is still half full. WSJ
• China Stocks Become Asia’s Biggest Loser; Chinese Stocks Fall After 2014 Rally; Worsening Economy, Flurry of IPOs, Reliance on Borrowed Money Spell Trouble: WSJ
• Ageing China draws investors to its ‘hot as Internet’ healthcare sector: Reuters
• Hong Kong warns over digital currencies amid alleged bitcoin fraud: Reuters

India

• Beware of froth over India’s tech sector turning into a bubble; Hopes for a ‘mobile-first’ ecommerce model rest on questionable assumptions: FT
• Sahil Barua: Leading E-commerce logistics with Delhivery; The potential of ecommerce logistics is a no-brainer and Sahil Barua’s Delhivery spotted the opportunity before most in India: Forbes
• India’s ruling party trounced in Delhi in big blow for Modi; Winning power in India’s states is critical to control of the upper house of parliament, where Modi’s party lacks a majority and has been thwarted in its effort to pass reform: Reuters

Japan & Korea

• Korean companies still offer lowest payout ratios among big Asia markets: FT
• Loeb’s Third Point takes aim at Fanuc; A famed US activist investor is taking on one of Japan’s most obsessive companies in what promises to be an epic clash of cultures across the Pacific. FT
• Competitive lives of Korean superrich supermoms: KH
• Unconventional analysts thriving during hard times in Korea; Changing demands of investors reshaping a financial profession: JA
• Japan’s deflationary challenge caught in a bottle of ketchup: Reuters

ASEAN

• Foreign Ownership Cap, Divestments Loom in Revived Indonesian Banking Bill: JG
• OW Bunker accounting fraud fallout could lead to exit of Opet Singapore: BI
• Hard, soft or effete: Jokowi, choose your brand of power!: JP

Macro

• Tax avoidance as bad as bottom of the harbour schemes: TheAge
• Asian cities attract more overseas money than Switzerland: FT
• Sin stocks pay as alcohol and cigarettes beat sober rivals: FT
• EM bond allure fades as US rate rise looms: FT
• The inaugural Luxembourg tax-avoidance power rankings: Quartz
• Most CFOs are embarrassed by their companies’ tax avoidance schemes; just take a look at how Pepsi runs money through Luxembourg shell companies to “optimize” its tax bill: Quartz
• HSBC files: Swiss bank aggressively pushed way for clients to avoid new tax; Far from acting as passive party to clients’ tax schemes, HSBC Suisse marketed device to effectively sabotage European savings directive: Guardian
• Cash pilgrims and bricks of money: HSBC Swiss bank operated like cash machine for rich clients: Guardian
• Sri Lanka Cancels Casinos, Spotlights Asia Investment Risk Crapshoot: Forbes
• The Paratroopers of Crony Capitalism; Why give golden parachutes to executives who leave to enter government service?: WSJ
• Australia’s Property Boom Spurs Interest in ‘Granny Flats’: WSJ
• GMO Q4 Letter: Jeremy Grantham: ‘How On Earth Did I Miss This!’ Jeremy Grantham says that falling oil prices shouldn’t have been such a surprise, calling it his major regret for 2014: VW

TMT

• Tim Cook demolishes anyone who thinks Apple is about to get smoked by Chinese upstarts like Xiaomi: BI
• Google has a patent for a wearable that makes you smell better: Quartz
• SAP’s Bill McDermott Pushes Into the Cloud: WSJ
• Handwriting Isn’t Dead-Smart Pens and Styluses Are Saving It; Connected Pens and Improved Styluses Make Your Handwritten Notes Available on All of Your Devices: WSJ
• Apple: the first $700 billion company: Fortune, WSJ

Healthcare

• Healthcare: The race to cure rising drug costs; Critics are asking if the big pharma industry’s premium pricing model can endure: FT
• New Dosages of Old Drugs Are Used to Raise Their Prices: NYT

Consumer & Others

• Unilever must aim not to spread itself too thinly: FT
• Saving McDonald’s; With fourth-quarter earnings dropping 21% and global sales down, the company needs a back-to-basics turnaround. WSJ

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 10 Feb (Tues) – Plumbing the delicious depths of February with ume; Blossoming during one of the coldest months of the year, often covered in ice and snow, the ume is sometimes thought of as a metaphor for chinmoku (沈黙, silence or reticence) and nintai (忍耐, patience)

Life

• Plumbing the delicious depths of February with ume: JT
• The rise of the entrepreneur-in-residence: FT
• Power of the humble CEO: BT
• How Ancient Chinese Thought Applies Today: HP
• Seven strategy lessons from the Staples deal to buy Office Depot; Latest bid shows fragility of competitive advantage but ‘category killer’ notion is not dead: FT
• The hackathon enters the corporate mainstream; Moving beyond coding roots, they now inject urgency into business: FT
• Are Economists Overrated? NYT
• How to use financial blogging to build an audience: LinkedIn
• Boiling point: redesigning the kettle for the 21st century: Guardian
• The RadioShack Lesson: Another storied brand succumbs to change and competition. WSJ

Books

• This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress: Amazon, WaPo

Greater China

• 984 HK and 246 mainland clients named on HSBC list of hidjng assets, including Li Xiaolin – the daughter of former Premier Li Peng. Standard
• A mining billionaire said to have links with disgraced former security chief Zhou Yongkang and who once launched a bid for Australia’s Sundance Resources was executed for multiple murder: Standard
• Is the $1tn China carry trade imploding?: FT
• China’s ‘little red soldiers’ get lessons in loyalty: JT
• Hidden debts in Beijing: JA
• China’s Dangerous Debt Drag: Bloomberg
• Seventy Chinese listed firms affected by far-reaching anti-graft campaign so far: SCMP
• Refiners in China told to strengthen inventory management; “Over the past several years, China’s crude oil reserves have been a secret: WCT
• New China law targets tax avoidance offshore: SCMP
• In China, Heavy Industry Unexpectedly Falls Sharply: NYT
• Chinese Phone Upstarts Sell With Personality, Not Product: NYT
• Qualcomm’s Fine Signals China’s Toughened Stance: WSJ, WSJ2

India

• India GDP figures fuel investor suspicion: FT
• India’s happy story stands out in Asia: Debt piles elsewhere are worryingly high, particularly in China and South Korea: FT
• Taking The Taboo Out Of Lingerie In India By Putting It Online: Forbes
• Subsidies lure firms in India’s electronics push: SCMP
• India Growth Rate Set to Rival China: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Kosdaq’s trillion won club growing: JA
• Amid mobile slump, Samsung needs more outside customers for its chips and panels: Reuters

ASEAN

• A tale of two shipbuilders: Petrobras scandal rocks the boat for Singapore’s largest rig makers: SBR
• 1MDB caught in battle of tycoons brewing in Malaysia: BT
• Foreign Investors Canceled Plans for 16 Footwear Factories in Indonesia: JG
• Flamboyant Malaysian Jho Low’s real-estate deals called into question: NYT

Macro

• HSBC admits failings after helping criminals hide assets; The Swiss Leaks: Bill Whitaker investigates the biggest leak in Swiss banking history and examines HSBC’s business dealings with a collection of international outlaws: TODAY. CBS
• Leaked HSBC files damage bank and the concept of banking secrecy; Outcry about why more has not been done to prosecute individuals: FT
• Morgan Stanley eyes an exit from hedge funds; The US bank is looking to sell off its stakes in Lansdowne Partners and other alternative investment groups: Telegraph
• The S.E.C.’s Hazy Approach to Crime and Punishment: NYT
• Asian cities attract more overseas money than Switzerland: FT
• Policy makers eye corporate cash piles in bid to boost growth: FT
• Too BIG to sail? Container ship giants veer off course in battle of the mega vessels: SCMP
• Why U.S. Assets Are So Seductive; The drop in oil prices, Europe’s bouts of weakness, and a strong dollar make American stocks and bonds the world’s most attractive–for now.: Barron’s
• Central Banks Encourage Risky Behavior; Investors in Asia should be wary of low interest rates and rising debt amid weaker growth across the region. Barron’s
• Asian Borrowers Walk Credit Tightrope; The region’s debt burden has climbed to a massive 244% of GDP and poses a major risk to its economies.  Barron’s
• More pig farms popping up in US; Growing U.S. hog herd, flat Chinese demand slams pork prices: Yahoo
• Currency-hedged ETFs in vogue as investors clamor for more: Reuters
• Regulation of Shadow Banking Takes a Dark Turn: A ‘chain’ of routine securities transactions, the Fed suggests, can transform a nonsystemic firm into a systemic firm. WSJ
• SEC Advances Hedging Rule; Rule Requires Firms Disclose Whether Employees are Allowed to Hedge Against Company Stock: WSJ
• New Rules Poised to Reshape Analyst Research Sector; EU Law Requires Investment Managers to Pay for Research or Related Services: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Oil ‘contango’ puts profit in storage: FT
• Oil could plunge to $20 and this might be ‘the end of OPEC’: Citigroup: FP
• Oil Producers Stress Surviving $50 Oil; Investors Weigh Independents’ Balance Sheets, Prospects Amid $50 Oil: WSJ

TMT

• Industrial robots steal a march in east Asia: FT
• Yahoo: Identity crisis; Once the storefront of the web, the internet company has been overtaken by rivals: FT
• Cheaper robots could replace more factory workers: study: Reuters
• The Holy Grail of Welding: Steel + Aluminum; Auto Industry’s Drive for Light-Weight Parts Fuels Voestalpine’s Hunt for New Process: WSJ

Healthcare

• A Warning From the Heart of Malaria Research; A Veteran Doctor Fears the Rise of a Drug-Resistant Strain Will Help the Disease Spread: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Unilever must aim not to spread itself too thinly: FT
• Paul Polman’s socially responsible Unilever falls short on growth: FT

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 9 Feb (Mon) – How to Be Invisible: Stop demanding attention. Be like the arctic fox

Life

• How to Be Invisible: Stop demanding attention. Be like the arctic fox: NYT
• Care Is the X Factor at Work: The most powerful influence on people’s engagement at work is feeling genuinely cared for by their supervisor: NYT
• What is college good for? A college education should infect students with the desire to pursue worthy perception and lofty goals in their lifelong journeys: KT
• When You’re at the Crossroads of Should and Must: Firstround
• Would Aristotle find fat bonuses gross? We live in an age of meritocracy, but there is some debate over what this thing we call merit is. SCMP
• Engage The Fox: Farnam
• Marcus Aurelius: You Have One Life To Live: Farnam
• Atul Gawande: The Building Industry’s Strategy for Getting Things Right in Complexity: Farnam

Greater China

• Kaisa Sequels Coming to China’s Banks Amid Corruption Web: Bloomberg
• Magic Kingdom in China a mystery after the U.S. entertainment giant pushed back the opening of its first mainland China theme park to 2016: ChinaPost
• Fraud committed by unlicensed organizations running banking businesses are on the rise in China, reflecting poor government supervision: WCT
• HK Bitcoin investors claim HK$3b losses: Standard
• Taiwan’s Richest Man Faces Tougher Times In Mainland China: Forbes
• “Desperate” China Technocrats Worry About Balance Of Payments Crisis: Forbes
• In Macau, casino titans join China reform wagon: Reuters

India

• BRIC Becomes I With India Set to Outperform First Time Since ’99: Bloomberg
• India Sensex Set for Longest Loss Streak in 15 Months After Vote: Bloomberg
• With the much-hyped USD 2-billion funding by Mirach falling apart over “forgery” allegations, Sahara has begun exploring fresh options to secure bail for its chief Subrata Roy: Moneycontrol

Japan & Korea

• More than half of home-furnishing retailers near IKEA’s first shop in South Korea have seen their sales sink for the past two months, hit by the Swedish industry giant’s entry into the local market: KT
• Korea Pop Fervor to Lift AmorePacific China Sales by 30%: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• As Technology Entrepreneurs Multiply in Vietnam, So Do Regulations: NYT
• Indonesian Hotels Face Carnage From Widodo’s State Spending Cuts: Bloomberg

Macro

• EM fund managers: genuinely active or closet trackers? FT
• Fed-mageddon Looms Over Asia: The growing number of Americans finding work could lead to higher U.S rates and renewed volatility for Asia. Barron’s
• Easing Isn’t a Cure-All for Asia: Beijing’s monetary policy isn’t all that aggressive, and India’s central bank chief worries about “hot” money chasing rates. Barron’s
• Bigger Container Ships Pose Bigger Risks; Insurers, Others Worry About the Potential for Catastrophic Accidents: WSJ
• Currency-hedged ETFs in vogue as investors clamor for more: Reuters
• Warren Buffet faces pressure for more disclosure: FT: Reuters
• Head Of Largest Swiss Cantonal Bank Says Swiss Capital Controls Are “Certainly Possible: ZeroHedge
• Hanergy’s soaring share price raises bubble fears: SCMP

TMT

• Predicting Apple’s Future: Tim Cook’s Gentle Path To Avoid Apple’s Downfall: Forbes
• Uncovering Security Flaws in Digital Education Products for Schoolchildren: NYT
• Google shares its plan to nab 80% of Microsoft’s Office business: BI
• Smartwatch App Helps Track Glucose: WSJ

Healthcare

• Drug Making Breaks Away From Its Old Ways; ‘Continuous-Manufacturing’ Process Can Improve Quality Control, Speed Output: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Tapped in: Craft breweries usher in a beer can revival: Fortune
• Behind RadioShack’s Collapse Is a Tiny Distressed Lender: bloomberg

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 8 Feb (Sun) – How to Listen Between the Lines: Anna Deavere Smith on the Art of Listening in a Culture of Speaking

Life

• How to Listen Between the Lines: Anna Deavere Smith on the Art of Listening in a Culture of Speaking: BP
• The Island of Knowledge: How to Live with Mystery in a Culture Obsessed with Certainty and Definitive Answers: BP
• How to Work Through Difficulty: Lewis Carroll’s Three Tips for Overcoming Creative Block: BP
• Happy Birthday, Design Matters: 10 Years of Intelligent and Inspiring Interviews with Creative Icons; Stimulating, ennobling, deeply human conversations with Maira Kalman, Seth Godin, Dani Shapiro, Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Ware, Shepard Fairey: BP
• Teaching economics: The demand side; The economics curriculum is evolving, but too slowly for some: Economist
• Lunch with the FT: Ginni Rometty; the IBM chief talks about having ‘cyber-conversations’ with half-a-million employees, machines making decisions and why she wishes they’d gone to Starbucks: FT
• A CEO wrote this brutal memo when he realized his billion-dollar startup was failing: BI
• How Do You Rank the World’s Best CEOs? HBR
• Are C.E.O.s That Talented, or Just Lucky? NYT
• Ecolab: Cleaning Up the Planet; Baker moved the industrial-cleaning company into the fast-growing market for water-conservation products, and it has been mopping up ever since. Savvy acquisitions, and a clothes-dryer bar that beats the competition. Barron’s
• Guy Kawasaki’s 7 tips for better social media storytelling: Be Valuable, Be Interesting, Be Bold, Be Brief, Be Thankful, Be Visual, Be Organized: FP
• Simple, Bedrock Rules on Personal Finance: WSJ

Greater China

• Chinese Tycoon’s Journey From Prison Inmate to White Knight: Bloomberg
• Time For Xi To Reform His Reforms: Forbes
• E-commerce fresh food a growing trend in China: WCT
• The big Anbang: A once-obscure Chinese insurance firm leaps into the spotlight: Economist
• Floriculture: Let a million flowers bloom; Yunnan has rapidly emerged as China’s dominant flower-growing region, accounting for about a third of China’s blossom exports: Economist

ASEAN

• Joko Seen Making Yet Another Concession to PDI-P ‘Cronies’ With National Car Program: JG
• Must privatisation be painful? Sticking to principles is half the battle. The other half is explaining and doing it well: TheStar

Macro

• Yield scarce as the world turns negative: FT
• Swiss franc turmoil leaves exporters on the downhill slope: Telegraph
• The Great American Dream, Still Deferred: NYT
• Swiss National Bank Hints At Capital Controls: ZeroHedge

TMT

• How Tinder is transforming the mobile dating game in a big way: FP

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 7 Feb (Sat) – A spoonful of sugar is a sweet investment for Warren Buffett; Buffett’s greatness has been defined by his acceptance of the world as he has found it; Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior

Life

• A spoonful of sugar is a sweet investment for Warren Buffett; Buffett’s greatness has been defined by his acceptance of the world as he has found it: FT
• Here are the core lessons from a book that Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates think everyone should read: BI
•  ‘A business executive first and a CFO second’: Meet the boardroom’s newest risk-taking, rule-breaking powerbrokers: FP
• The Rise of the Frugal Economy: PS
• The Black Box of Ethical Dilemmas: Forbes
• Protecting the elderly from fraud: JT
• Closing the Gap Between Blue Ocean Strategy and Execution: HBR
• New research into losing offers lessons in sales and consumer behaviour: SCMP
• The World Was Watching: America’s Civil War slowly came to be seen as part of a global struggle against oppressive privilege.: WSJ
• How Humankind Conquered the World: Long ago, there were more than half a dozen species of human. Only Homo sapiens survived and thrived, transforming the face of the planet along the way.: WSJ
• Our Amazingly Plastic Brains; Mental and physical exercise can keep the brain fit and help it recover capacities lost to disease and trauma: WSJ
• Asia’s Rise Is Rooted in Confucian Values; Booming states like China, South Korea and Singapore became capitalist by relying on old tenets of tolerance and social stability. WSJ
• How Star Wars Made $27 Billion; Think Star Wars made most its money off the films? Think again!: FastCo

Books

• Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior: Amazon

Investing Process

• Short Selling: Cleaning Up After Elephants By Guy Judkowski: Marketfolly, PDF
• Enron Case Study Analysis. Ask Why? Why?: PDF

Greater China

• China’s Cooling Sends A Chill Across Asia; Japan’s and Korea’s trade takes a hit as China’s “new normal” sees it snatch a greater share of the region’s exports. Barron’s
• A Mandate, Not a Putsch: The Secret of Xi’s Success: Jamestown
• Has China reached ‘peak steel’?: SCMP
• Haier boss sees future in the internet; Zhang Ruimin, described as one of the world’s top business minds, aims to turn top white goods maker Haier into an ‘entrepreneurial platform’: SCMP
• China to have most robots by 2017 as car, electronics factories automate: SCMP
• HPH Trust takes HK$19 billion “goodwill” write-down on Hong Kong terminal assets: SCMP
•  Secrecy surrounding Sunac’s Kaisa rescue puts HK’s reputation at risk; Lack of disclosure benefits privileged few at the expense of minority shareholders as yields on Kaisa’s bonds rebound despite negative news: SCMP
• NVC Lighting says founder enters pledge deal without knowledge of board; Wang Donglei, who is now chairman of NVC, had alleged that founder Wu Changjiang embezzled about RMB573m: SCMP
• Alibaba’s Ant Burrows Into India: WSJ
• China’s Monumental Debt Trap – Why It Will Rock The Global Economy: ZeroHedge
• Chinese Rating Agency Warns Coming Crisis Is Worse Than 2008, Blames US “Printing Press”: ZeroHedge
• China Clamps Down on Foreign Casinos Wooing Chinese Gamblers: Bloomberg
• As investors move to passive funds, stockpickers get creative: Reuters

Japan & Korea

• Shrinking Tokyo living rooms put squeeze on Abenomics: FT

ASEAN

• Survey: Indonesians Believe Cases Against KPK Leaders Engineered: JG
• Indonesia World Leader in the Use of Mobile Banking Apps: Report: JG
• Going beyond the ‘global city’ paradigm: Singapore should strive to be a unique regional city. BT

Macro

• Rise in financial alchemy is worryingly familiar; Low yields mean risky inventions are bound to spring up: FT
• Wage cuts and discounts as Swiss companies respond to franc strength: Reuters
• Why Invest In Hedge Funds If They Don’t Outperform The Market?: Forbes

TMT

• Platforms, not products, are the way to bring financial services to the poor: Quartz
• The ‘Amazon will destroy your startup’ fallacy: Fortune
• The largest online tax-software company in the U.S. temporarily halted electronic filing of all state returns after more than a dozen states spotted criminal attempts to obtain refunds through its systems.: WSJ
• The billion-dollar e-commerce company you know nothing about; Zulily has defied the conventional wisdom-marketing to moms, sticking with flash sales, evading Amazon. Can it defy the doubting investors who think it can’t last?: FastCo
• GoPro’s CEO on his media ambitions, potential Apple rivalry and drones: Fortune

Healthcare

• Say “ahh” and let your smartphone check for Parkinson’s disease: Quartz
• Biosimilars may one day save your life. But what are they?: Fortune

Consumer & Others

• The Chipotle Effect: How Chefs Are Reinventing Fast Food: WSJ

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 6 Feb (Fri) – Staying Relevant In A Rapid Innovation Era; The Simple Trick To Productivity? Do One Thing At Once

Life

• Staying Relevant In A Rapid Innovation Era: Techcrunch
• The Simple Trick To Productivity? Do One Thing At Once: Forbes
• Here’s what it’s like to attend Apple’s secret university: BI
• Business Books Reveal a Billionaire Obsession: NYT
• The Hard Work of Invention: Strategy&
• Don’t Be Afraid to Stand Apart From the Herd; What feels safe is often risky, and what feels risky is often safe. This statement contradicts just about every evolutionary instinct we possess. NYT
• The last 90 days: For successful bosses the end is almost as important as the beginning: Economist
• Picasso’s granddaughter is about to flood the market with thousands of his paintings, and art investors are freaking out: BI
• In Bedbugs, Scientists See a Model of Evolution; bedbugs have evolved resistance to pesticides: NYT
• Well Book Club: Raising an Unspoiled Child: NYT
• More College Freshmen Report Having Felt Depressed; “You have to get good grades, have all sorts of after-school activities that take up tons of hours, and you have to be happy and social — you have to be everything.”: NYT
• Today’s graduates face daunting challenge: KT
• How To Prevent Burnout – 13 Signs You’re On The Edge: Forbes
• Creative slumps: 5 ways to snap out of it: Fortune
•  America’s Most Loved and Most Hated Companies; People hate Goldman Sachs more than oil spills and the Koch brothers: Bloomberg

Research 

• Juicing the Dividend Yield: Mutual Funds and the Demand for Dividends: SSRN, VW

Greater China

• CBRC Warns Public Not to Fall for High-Interest Scams at Banks; Regulator provides details of fraud schemes involving banks in Changsha and Hangzhou, then says people shouldn’t be so greedy: Caixin
• Default With Chinese Characteristics; The political lessons of property developer Kaisa’s collapse. Developers often take on liabilities disguised such they don’t look like loans at all. They can look like sales of assets, equity investments or conventional sales to individual buyers: WSJ
• Conquering China’s Mountain of Debt: Bloomberg
• China Bank Move Leaves Companies Cold; Business Owners Question Benefit of Move to Bolster Lending: WSJ
• China timber demand stokes Southeast Asia tensions: FT
• Port assets losing allure for Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa; Li Ka-shing ponders partial sale of port assets in Hutchison Whampoa: SCMP1, SCMP2
• Mao Xiaofeng’s downfall just the start for China’s finance sector: WCT
• Party Like a Rock Star: Chinese Tech Firms’ Edition; As Competition Intensifies, Internet Companies Give Employees Gifts Like BMWs, Ski Trips, Cash: WSJ
• Alibaba’s Beijing Burden; Harsh accusations from a regulator and a hard lesson in Chinese political economy: WSJ
• Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook group, owner of the world’s biggest jewellery company, is making an unlikely foray into China’s oil trading business: AsiaOne
• Mother of Jack Ma’s Fund Partner Becomes Billionaire With Alipay: Bloomberg

India

• India Farmer Suicides on Rise as Cotton Slump Spurs Debts: Bloomberg
• Forbes India: 20 Quality Indian stocks to invest in 2015: Forbes
• Indian tycoon Roy’s get-out-of-jail deal is mired in mystery: AsiaOne
• India’s growth revival story akin to running a marathon: Uday Kotak: Forbes
• Internet biz will grow 10 times in India in 10 yrs: Cisco: Moneycontrol

Japan & Korea

• Hyundai’s Chungs Revive Glovis Stake Sale to Avoid Probe: Bloomberg
• In the Shadow of Abenomics, Japan’s Poor and Elderly Are Being Left Behind: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• Singapore Isn’t Greece, Temasek Tells S&P in 29 Pages: Bloomberg
• A Tale of Two Surveys: Is Jakarta Really Among the World’s Worst Cities?: JG
• Jokowi Will Kill the KPK Without Direct Action: JG
• Thais discover limits to rule by diktat: JP

Macro

• PwC chief misled us over Luxembourg tax avoidance schemes, claim MPs: Guardian
• SEC Doesn’t Take Its Automatic Punishments Too Literally: Bloomberg
• GMO Q4 Letter: Ditch The Good, Buy The Bad And The Ugly: VW
• Investors Await Aussie-Dollar Windfall; Weaker Aussie to Offer Earnings Support for Australian Companies: WSJ
• Not kicking the habit: The world is still addicted to debt: Economist
• Shareholder activism: Capitalism’s unlikely heroes; Why activist investors are good for the public company? Economist
• The economist realtors love to hate: David Madani stands by 2011 prediction of Canadian housing ‘day of reckoning’: FP
• Instead of paying down its debts, the world’s gone on another credit binge: Telegraph
• Rich Brazilians, Wary of Government, Look Abroad; President Rousseff’s Re-Election Prompts More Wealthy Brazilians to Seek to Move or Set Up Businesses in South Florida, Obtain U.S. Residency: WSJ
• Investors and Companies Should Talk Revenue Recognition: FASB Member: WSJ
• Currency Shocks Leave Asia Nowhere To Hide: Barron’s
• Too Soon to Remove B From BRIC, Says Acronym Coiner O’Neill: Bloomberg

Healthcare

• The global problem of spiralling costs for cancer medicines: FT
• Big Data and Bacteria: Mapping the New York Subway’s DNA; Scientists in 18-Month Project Gather DNA Throughout Transit System to Identify Germs, Study Urban Microbiology; “They are like New Yorkers. They can survive anywhere.” WSJ
• There’s a national shortage of saline solution. Yeah, we’re talking salt water. Huh?: Fortune

Energy & Commodities

• Petrobras, Now $262 Billion Poorer, Exposes Busted Brazil Dream: Bloomberg
• American energy exports: Crudely put; Exports of hydrocarbons from America are already booming. Lifting the ban on crude-oil exports should be next: Economist
• Silver’s $645-million one-day wipeout flashes warning: FP
• Texas Swagger Fades Fast as Oil Boom Town Squeezed Hard by OPEC: Bloomberg
• Oil Boom a ‘Game-Changer’ on Trade Deficit; Increased Imports of Other Goods Replace Reliance on Foreign Crude: WSJ

TMT

• Just the ticket: As the film business changes, IMAX is determined to stay in the front row: Economist
• Blokeish crowdsourcing fuels the Lad Bible’s unholy success: FT
• Corporate raiders no longer outsiders in Silicon Valley: FT
• Jeremy Grantham Divines Oil Industry’s Future; The legendary investor discusses the various forces that will drive energy prices in coming years. Barron’s
• The inside story of how the Google Glass experiment imploded: TheAge

Consumer & Others

• The McDonaldization of American pet food: WaPo
• The impending rise of the mini-Chipotle: Quartz
• Lifestyle brands are acquiring their way to becoming tech companies: Quartz
• RadioShack was the Starbucks of the ’80s and then it ran out of batteries: Quartz
• GoPro gets closer to becoming a media company with its new Roku channel: Quartz
• Swatch Plans Smartwatch to Compete With Apple Watch’s Debut: Bloomberg

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 5 Feb (Thurs) – Seth Klarman: What I’ve learned from Warren Buffett

Life 

• Seth Klarman: What I’ve learned from Warren Buffett: FT
• Why Mark Zuckerberg is reading a book called ‘Gang Leader for a Day’: BI
• This simple phrase could revolutionize your business; “idk” is a simple acronym of great power: FP
• The First Page; Never take the reader’s attention for granted. We have to earn it, you and I, and that ain’t easy. Is there a secret? None that I’ve found. We’ve got to keep striving for that magic, wherever and however we can find it. SP
• Here’s the advice billionaire investor Peter Thiel wishes he could’ve given his younger self: BI
• Peter Thiel has an insane story about what a real tech bubble feels like: BI
• Why being lazy and procrastinating could make you wildly successful; Bill Gates said he would always ‘hire a lazy person to do a difficult job’ at Microsoft ‘because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it’: Telegraph
• The Dangers of Believing That Talent Is Innate; A study of academia shows how being convinced of intrinsic ability may lead to bias and unwillingness to change. WSJ
• Psychologists say one strategy is key to defusing heated arguments and avoiding divorce: BI
• Employees reveal the best things about working at Apple: BI
• Review: ‘Bold’ by Peter Diamandis and Stephen Kotler; A guide to exponential digital chutzpah from a master of the art of ‘going big’: FT
• Abbott, Giles and Newman: the lessons from their leadership failures: BRW
• Innovate or Stagnate: PS
• How to Revive a Tired Network: HBR
• A Simple Way to Measure How Much Customers Love Your Brand: HBR
• In Leadership, When Does Your Hard-Earned Confidence Become A Weakness?: Forbes
• The dawn of marketing’s new golden age: Marketers are boosting their precision, broadening their scope, moving more quickly, and telling better stories. McKinsey

Books

• Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets : Amazon

Investing Process

• A Look At Negative Equity Companies: VW

Greater China

• Corporate China not yet ready to rule the world; Regulation and suspicion harm companies’ efforts to break into foreign markets: FT
• SEC, Chinese Affiliates of Accounting Firms Near Settlement; Chinese Audit Firms of Big Four Accounting Firms Face Sanctions Over Document Sharing: WSJ
• Facing up to ‘Mask City’ in HK: Standard
• Feed China, starve the world? WCT
• Fake app-ranking factory unveiled in China: WCT
• CDB Told to Return to Policy Bank Role It Left Years Ago: Caixin
• China has crossed a major investment threshold that is going to change the entire world? FP
• China RRR Cut Shows Rising Pressure From Capital Flight: Forbes
• China High-Rollers Are Avoiding Macau Because of China’s Crackdown and Gambling Elsewhere: Bloomberg
• Chinese online video provider LeTV takes aim at manufacturing cars: SCMP
• Alibaba hits the sky delivering tea by drone in three mainland cities: SCMP
• Doubt grows over China investment plans; A lack of capacity, motivation and funding on the part of the officials may see some of the local governments’ investment projects fall through: SCMP
• Margin Trading Adds to Risks in China; Funds Lent Have Risen 11% so Far This Year; Worry Over Umbrella Trusts: WSJ
• China to ban online impersonation accounts, enforce real-name registration: Reuters
• State-Backed Automaker FAW ‘Spent Millions to Buy Land, Build Villas’; Company leaders illegally owned or held shares in dealerships, and some helped relatives do business with the automaker: Caixin

India

• India’s Rajan Denies Risk of Banking Crisis as Bad Loans Mount: Bloomberg
• Samsung Overtaken by Micromax’s 21-Language Phone in India: Bloomberg, Reuters
• India: GDP growth rate up, confidence in statistics down?: FT
• India Inc’s tryst with Bollywood: How corporates are changing the scene: Forbes

Japan & Korea

• ‘Park sinks deeper into political crisis’: KH
• 8 in 10 large Korean companies voice concerns about prolonged recession, says poll: Maeil
• Japan Needs More Corporate Funerals: Bloomberg
• Workaholic Japan considers making it compulsory to take vacation days: JT
• Korea moving to adopt ‘Google Tax’: KT
• GolfZon jumps on President’s lift of golf ban: KT

ASEAN

• Joko Widodo stumbles into crisis over police chief nominee: FT
• Singapore remisiers write to Tharman to resolve issues plaguing market; Widespread unhappiness sees more than 1,000 stock traders, investors put pen to paper asking for separation of SGX roles, restoration of trust in market: BT
• Jokowi the Javanese Ruler: Like the dalang in a shadow puppet performance, a consummate Javanese leader is ‘samar’ (shrouded in mystery) in his conduct. JG
• In Jokowi’s Indecision, a Skirmish for Power; Saving Face: Analysts suggest the president hasn’t withdrawn his nominee for police chief out of deference to his political backers: JG
• Jakarta: World’s Worst for Traffic Gridlock: JG
• Bitcoin fervour cools in S’pore: AsiaOne
• Malaysian conglomerate struggles to turn car unit around: Nikkei

Macro

•  UK watchdog hands KPMG fines totalling £390,000: FT
• Investors fear loss of millions in Brazilian property scheme: FT
• US endowments pare bets on alternatives: FT
• Buffett tells Fox Business he wants a company in Europe: Reuters
• Debt mountains spark fears of another crisis: FT
• Asset Managers Break Promises on Responsible Investment: AI
• Bitcoin’s day of reckoning is here: Quartz
• Devaluation by China is the next great risk for a deflationary world: Telegraph
• Why the Great White Short II on Canadian banks is ‘inevitable’; The Great White Short on Canada’s big banks fizzled the first time around back in 2013, but round two, if it happens, will be tougher to vanquish: FP
• Buffett’s $1m bet pays off as index tracker beats hedge funds: Telegraph
• Intel CFO: Obama Repatriation Tax Proposal ‘Lipstick on a Pig’; it makes us less competitive with Samsung and TSMC which are the people we compete with on a worldwide stage, because they have much more pro-business tax policies: Barron’s
• Central Bankers Play Jack-In-The-Box: Barron’s
• If “S&P’s core business of rating securities was for three critical years “a scheme to defraud investors,” why is S&P still rating securities?”: Bloomberg
• S&P got off easy; The next time the government finds that S&P has defrauded investors again, it should ask for more. Fortune
• Are Emerging Markets Ready for the Housing Earthquake? FT
• Pension Funds Criticize Transparency at KKR; KKR Returned Some Fees but Didn’t Disclose Reason Was SEC Exam: WSJ
• Bootstrapped Startups Risk a Lack of Connections; Financial Self-Reliance Can Come Back to Haunt Entrepreneurs if They Suddenly Need Investors: WSJ
• Chelsea Clinton’s Husband Suffers Massive Hedge Fund Loss On Greek Investment: ZeroHedge
• The Face Of The Oligarch Recovery: Luxury Skyscrapers Empty As NYC Homeless Population Hits Record High: ZeroHedge
• 26 Percent Of Brokers Have Lost Money To Scam Emails: SEC: VW

TMT

• SAP founder Hasso Plattner: ‘If this doesn’t work, we’re dead. Flat-out dead.’: BI
• Materials science: Wings of steel; An alloy of iron and aluminium is as good as titanium, at a tenth of the cost: Economist
• Big Data: Credit where credit’s due; Companies use technology to create ‘proxy’ credit profiles, raising concerns about the tactics: FT
• Why 3D printers are ‘the sewing machine for the 21st century’: TheAge
• Microsoft Is Acquiring Calendar App Sunrise For North Of $100 Million: Techcrunch
• Giving Drone Industry Leeway to Innovate: NYT
• Why Twitter Bought Bangalore ‘Missed Call’ Startup ZipDial: Forbes
• ‘Sharing economy’ reshapes markets, as complaints rise: AFP
• Inside the studio where ESPN is betting billions on the future of sports: Verge
• Google’s secret weapon in the battle for the internet of things: academia: FastCo
• The Uberpreneur: How An Uber Driver Makes $252,000 A Year;  “It’s a genius way to start a business nowadays, especially because nobody’s doing it.”: Forbes

Energy & Commodities

• RICH BERNSTEIN: Oil CEOs today sound like tech CEOs in 2000: BI
• Default risk rises in US oil and gas sector: FT
• Big oil is not the biggest victim of cheap crude: FT
• A tiny share of Mongolians have decided the country’s future, by text message: Quartz
• It’s Pork Over Beef in America for First Time Since 1952: Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• 4 ways McDonald’s tried to change Chipotle: BI
• How Taco Bell’s Ordering App Turns Extra Onions Into Real Money: Bloomberg
• The retailers that could be swallowed up next by Amazon: FP
• Starbucks brews up first UK profits in 17 years: Guardian
• Chipotle: The Definitive Oral History; The builders of a $22 billion burrito empire—the founder, his father, his college buddies, key execs, and a couple of pig farmers—open up about how they won the fast-food future : bloomberg
• Under Armour buys fitness app startups: ChinaPost
• Hugo Boss to take full control of Asian business: AsiaOne
• Coke hopes to cream it but consumers dub foray into dairy ‘franken-milk’: TheAge
• How Doonesbury helped make Pandora a success: WaPo
• The Chipotle effect: Why America is obsessed with fast casual food:  WaPo
• Lebanese Clan Rides Zara’s Rise to Become Billionaires: Bloomberg

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 4 Feb (Wed) – 15 successful entrepreneurs share the most important lesson they learned in their 30s

Life

• 15 successful entrepreneurs share the most important lesson they learned in their 30s: BI
• Bringing an Entrepreneurial Mindset to the World’s Failing Systems: HBR
• A history of hustling gives hip hop its entrepreneurial edge; Rappers facility with commerce can teach us about the value of human capital: FT
• How to Lead in Ambiguous Times; Stability, resilience, and relationships are the keys to thriving amid geopolitical crises. Strategy&
• Don’t Ask for New Ideas If You’re Not Ready to Act on Them: HBR
• Copy Martin Luther King and use the language of the greats: FT
•  Celebrate engineers over X Factor stars, says Professor Brian Cox: Telegraph
• Fundraising for start-ups: cash from nearest may be dearest; Sometimes there is no alternative to borrowing from friends or family: FT
• Extract from ‘Editor Unplugged’: The people Vinod Mehta admires: Forbes
• Why It’s So Hard to Fill Sales Jobs; ‘Salesman’ Baggage Means Well-Paying Tech-Industry Positions Go Begging: WSJ

Greater China

• Investors finally abandon “junk stocks” in face of regulatory crackdown; Only 78 Chinese firms have been delisted since China established its modern stock market in 1990 and not a single stock was delisted from 2008 until mid-2014. Reuters
• Why Did the Chinese Executive Disappear? It’s ‘Personal’: Bloomberg
• Chinese Retailers Play Poker in Empty Malls as Shoppers Go Online: Bloomberg
• China’s anti-corruption probe broadens into finance sector; Bankers’ arrests appear to be targeting political patronage networks: FT
• Labour unrest: Out brothers, out! Guangdong province pioneers a new approach to keeping workers happy: Economist
• China’s high agricultural stockpiles complicate reform efforts; China has amassed 60 per cent of the world’s cotton stocks, prompting an announcement by Beijing last year that it would release its cotton holdings. FT
• Want Want Group chairman remains Taiwan’s richest man: WCT
• Is There A Tech Bubble In China?: Techcrunch
• Mao in demand than ever: Chinese actors line up to play leader; Rash of historical propaganda television shows leads to scores of lookalikes flocking to portray the veteran Communist party leader: Guardian
• World Bank Probes $1 Billion China Loan; Questions Sparked by Complex Transaction Involving Two Arms of Bank: WSJ
• China Estimates Largest Capital Outflow in More Than a Decade in Final Quarter 2014: WSJ
• Behind Bull Run: A Bet on Nimbler State Giants; Investors Hope Growth Slump Will Spur Beijing to Unlock Behemoths’ Hidden Potential: WSJ
• Proper land sale system may cause more Kaisas; bribes can cost a fifth of property sales: SCMP
• Hong Kong property stocks tumble as government warns of housing bubble: SCMP

India

• Hardline Indian Hindus become Modi’s enemies from within: Reuters
• Burger King’s Helping Hands In India: Forbes
• Modi Taps $19 Billion Hoard as India Chases China Growth: Bloomberg

Japan & Korea

• Abenomics Gets Boost, But for How Long?: WSJ

ASEAN

• Crime-Fighting Measures in Jakarta Take a Modern Twist on Classics: JG
• Editorial: Basuki Will Do What the Police Won’t: JG
• Firms fret as Vietnam drops digits to meet mobile phone demand: Reuters

Macro

• Gallup CEO: “America’s 5.6% Unempoyment Is One Big Lie”: LinkedIn
• Meet the 80-Year-Old Whiz Kid Reinventing the Corporate Bond: Bloomberg
• Nestle’s corporate bonds traded at negative yields, highlighting investors’ desperate search for cash-conserving investments following the move by the European Central Bank to drive down borrowing costs across the continent. FT
• Reach for returns takes funds into the shadows; Asset managers delve deeper into shadow bank territory for returns: FT
• Bond Buyers Escape Wall Street to Computerized Shadows to Trade: bloomberg

TMT

• How Satya Nadella has changed Microsoft in just one year: BI
• Welcome to year 11 of people worrying about a tech bubble: BI
• Technology’s next 25 years belong to the world, not the US: FT
• ‘Hidden strong players’ alter smartphone landscape; Smaller competitors with unique strategies threatening Samsung: JA
• Five Questions About Amazon Prime That Jeff Bezos Still Won’t Answer: Bloomberg
• What Amazon’s learned from a decade of Prime: WaPo
• A booming video game market is putting the strain on networks featuring real-time graphics-heavy games. WSJ’s Sarah Needleman explains how firms are investing in solutions.: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Cash-Starved Oil Producers Trade Treasured Pipelines for Money: Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• Chip Wilson made billions selling the world’s most ubiquitous yoga pants. Then he insulted his customers and lost control of his company. Now he talks for the first time about his plans for his next venture. NYT
• Coke bets on ‘premium milk’ to boost category: JP

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 3 Feb (Tues) – Mikaela Shiffrin, the 19-year-old American skiing star, has taken an unconventional approach to the sport, from her training growing up to her pre-race ritual of doing word searches

Life

• Mikaela Shiffrin, the 19-year-old American skiing star, has taken an unconventional approach to the sport, from her training growing up to her pre-race ritual of doing word searches: WSJ
• How to Be a Stoic: NYT
• Remembering Chandrakant Sampat: India’s original value investor: Forbes
• South Korea-born New Zealand golfer Lydia Ko, 17, became the youngest world No.1 in golf history by reaching the top of the women’s rankings: KT
• George Lucas: More substance over style, please: TODAY
• We Know Why You’re Always Late; What Researchers Have Learned About Tardiness and How You Can Arrive on Time More: WSJ
• The Postmodern Autocrat’s Handbook: JG
• Secrets for world-class procurement body: JP
• Music Enhances Feelings of Attraction; Feelings of Interest Among Singles’ First Meeting Increased Significantly If Music Was in the Background: WSJ
• The Smart Way to Teach Children About Money; Many Parents and Schools Take Exactly the Wrong Approach, Research Suggests: WSJ

Investing Process

• Why management quality should matter for investors: Forbes
• Managing the Man Overboard Moment: Making an Informed Decision After a Large Price Drop: CSFB
• Discounted Cash flow Valuations (DCF): Academic Exercise, Sales Pitch or Investor Tool? VW

Greater China

• Hanergy Seeks to Reassure Investors on Soundness of Finances: Bloomberg
• Would You Still Buy Alibaba If It Were Two-Thirds Smaller? If 80% of Taobao’s products are fake, illegal, or substandard, look for that site’s gross merchandise volume-the metric Alibaba uses-to shrink by a large percentage. Forbes
• Possible Class Action Suit Against Alibaba For Disclosure Failures: Chinatechnews
• igging into China’s debts: FT
• China Minsheng President Exits and Investors Follow; Serious allegations add to concerns about risky loans and intentions of the bank’s largest shareholder. Barron’s
• ‘Li Ka-shing’s Magic Trick: Unlocking Billions From Undervalued Assets: Forbes
• Too big to fail’ scenario for Alibaba: Standard
• Shares of Chaoda Modern Agriculture (0682) slumped 45.45 percent to HK$0.60 after it resumed trading after being suspended for more than three years for accounting fraud: Standard
• Fake HK uni busted: Standard
• Did compromise between Alibaba and SAIC really achieve progress? WCT
• Chen Xiaolu, the son of a legendary figure in Communist Party history has denied a report that he is the de fact head of an insurance company in Shenzhen that is in the spotlight for several large purchases at home and abroad: Caixin
• Farglory billionare Chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) faces 9 years in Bade bribery case: ChinaPost
• Singapore looks to Taipei as inspiration in plan to maintain urban cleanliness: ChinaPost
•  China’s latest corruption probe could spell trouble for the global banking industry: Quartz
• Austerity bites into China’s new year perks; Goodbye ipads, hello spring onions: staff complain of low-grade presents from bosses: FT
• China shadow bank regulation shows results: FT
• Weaker trade is EM’s demon in disguise: Link between global growth and global trade seems to be loosening: FT
• China Logistics Entrepreneur Zhou Guohui Joins Ranks Of World’s Billionaires: Forbes
• Mainland China’s perpetual QE and its many losers: SCMP
• Why the surge in suspected laundering cases in Hong Kong: SCMP
• Bank of Beijing director in graft probe: SCMP
• Lesson From China: Hard Times for Coal; Mines Shut as China Burns Less Coal: WSJ
• China’s Antigraft Drive Turns to Financial Sector: WSJ

India

• Indian pioneers combine profitability and probity: FT

Japan & Korea

• Coupang, South Korea’s leading e-commerce company, said Tuesday its value of mobile payment transactions reached $1.27bn in 2014, lending weight to a market bet that the firm is close to going public. KH
• Hotel Shilla seeks to acquire world’s No. 1 in-flight duty free provider DFASS: Maeil
• Chaebol leaders mourn Poongsan matriarch: JA
• The daughter also rises – even at LG Group: JA
• K-pop’s production line for Gangnam Style wannabes: FT
• Nut rage: Korean Air boss’s daughter treated crew “like slaves”: AsiaOne

ASEAN

• ‘Dangerous’ Inequality Spurs Widodo Drive for Indonesia Shakeup: Bloomberg
• Singapore SMEs urged to work hard at differentiating themselves: BT
• Thailand’s Dictators in Denial; The junta takes a harder line against popular politicians. WSJ
• Over 260 investors lodge police reports on gold buyback pyramid scheme in Singapore: TODAY

Macro

• Robert Samuelson: Challenging what we know about the housing bubble: WaPo
• It has taken more than a decade, but with just one deal, CRH has transformed itself from an Irish buildings group into the world’s third-biggest building materials supplier by market value. FT
• The incredible shrinking adviser: How onerous new rules are driving away financial planners in droves: FP

TMT

• How Africans Keep Talking When Their Pre-Paid Cards Run Out; Lending airtime minutes has proven lucrative for the Lebanese telecom entrepreneur who owns Channel TT: Bloomberg
• Apple has enough cash to buy the best startups in the world: BI
• The moment digital selling tips over into creepy stalking; The ‘creepiness quotient’ is a vital sales and marketing metric: FT
• Driven to distraction by electric cars; A great idea in theory is more difficult to put into practice: FT
• Tyrants will find the key to the internet’s back door; Banning strong encryption is no solution to security: FT
• What to make of Amazon’s island of misfit toys: WaPo
• Silicon Valley Boom Unnerves Some Venture Capitalists: NYT

Healthcare

•  Health advances using ‘big data’ at risk, ministers warned: FT
• Big pharmaceuticals groups faces biosimilars challenge: FT
• After 70 years, why aren’t we better at developing flu vaccines?: Fortune
• No Place for a Heart Attack: A Group of 12 Institutions Are Working to Improve Survival Rates for In-Hospital Attack Patients: WSJ

Commodities & Energy

• Rise and fall of a commodities powerhouse: FT

Consumer & Others

• Four ways McDonald’s almost ruined Chipotle: Quartz
• After 94 years, RadioShack may be about to pull the plug: Fortune
• 7 Quotes That Show How Much Chipotle Hates McDonald’s: Buzzfeed

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 2 Feb (Mon) – Warren Buffett: Know when to hold ’em; Shareholders will be poring over the Berkshire Hathaway chief’s 50th anniversary letter for clues on its future strategy; The Disease of Being Busy; The Difference Between Seeing and Observing; A Navy SEAL Explains 8 Secrets To Grit And Resilience

Life 

• Warren Buffett: Know when to hold ’em; Shareholders will be poring over the Berkshire Hathaway chief’s 50th anniversary letter for clues on its future strategy: FT
• The Disease of Being Busy: Onbeing
• A Navy SEAL Explains 8 Secrets To Grit And Resilience: Barker
• A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business: Farnam
• The unsung pioneers of the information age: FT
• Sergio Mattarella: enemy of the Mafia and champion of the law: FT
• The Difference Between Seeing and Observing: Farnam
• This $31 Million Leonardo Da Vinci Codex, Now On View in Phoenix, Holds The Secret To Creativity: Forbes
• Accomplish More by Committing to Less: HBR
• The Pleasure of Reading to Impress Yourself: Newyorker
• The Psychology of We: Farnam
• Closing The Computer Science Gap, From Classroom To Career: Techcrunch
• Why the modern world is bad for your brain; In an era of email, text messages, Facebook and Twitter, we’re all required to do several things at once. But this constant multitasking is taking its toll and making us less efficient: Guardian
• The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains: Atlamtic
• Innovation’s 3 essential ingredients: here’s how to test if your business has them: BRW
• 15 examples of Pete Carroll’s unique style of coaching: BI
• Germany is lagging behind disruptive US start-ups, warns Bosch chief: FT
• Child’s success depends on holistic education, family support: ESM Goh: TODAY

Books

• 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story: Amazon
• Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind : Amazon

Investment Process

• Warren Buffett on Investment Filters [Case Study]: CS

Greater China

• Is energy tycoon Li Hejun really the richest man in China? WCT
• HK graduates ‘lack skills’ in solving live problems: SCMP
• Lots of people inside and outside China have heard Premier Li Keqiang promote mass entrepreneurship and innovation in speeches. Far fewer know where he got the idea. It comes at least in part from Edmund Phelps’ Mass Flourishing: Bloomberg
• A night out with the Chinese billionaire builder suing local governments: Fortune
• China to step up anti-graft drive in media and broadcasting sector: SCMP
• M&A buzz in China last year may result in landmine shares this year: WCT
• Smartphone shipments from Dongguan 50% of China total: WCT
• Western schools lead the way to China: FT
• Yan Jiehe, CPCG: the Chinese billionaire turned debt collector: FT
• China’s e-commerce firms and banks fight for market share: SCMP
• China to curb phone, computer purchases in restive Xinjiang: Reuters
• Sizing Up China Bond ETFs; New China-bond focused ETFs could be intriguing for yield-hungry investors, but there are political risks.: Barron’s
• Betting Against Macau; The Las Vegas Sands’ weak profit report suggests the depth of the problems as the ex-colony tries to clean up its act.: Barron’s
• China’s Property Market On Shaky Foundations; Falling house prices and high debt levels are a threat to banks and growth in the world’s second largest economy. Barron’s
• New Chinese Property Investment Tip: Follow the Graft Inspectors: WSJ
• Corruption fighters in China may include outsiders: AsiaOne
• Math Beats English in China as TAL Closes Valuation Gap with New Oriental Education: Bloomberg
• How the Chinese Are Turning Fecal Sludge Into ‘Black Gold’; “The world has much to learn from China in the way it’s harnessed waste for energy” : Bloomberg

India

• Statistical revisions add shine to India growth: FT
• Tata heads list of India’s socially minded pioneers: FT
• India’s Status As An Art Hub Began With An Airline Sick Bag: Forbes
• New Outsourcing Frontier in India: Monitoring Drug Safety; Business Is Booming as Regulators Require Closer Tracking of Side Effects: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Burberry Asia chief says embracing technology is crucial in Korea: JA
• Biggest buyers on book apps in Korea are women: JA
• Hyundai Motor to build tallest building in Korea: JA
• The curse of owning a small business in Korea: JA
• Daelim-dong to become Seoul’s Chinatown: KT
• After 450 years, Japanese maker of squid-guts delicacy seeks bankruptcy protection: AsiaOne
• More Dead Than Alive: Japan’s Shrinking Regions Abandon Ancestral Graves: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• Malaysian billionaire Tong Kooi Ong denies allegations he is involved in a US$1.4 billion bet against the ringgit, and denied claims he is engineering a crisis with the Malaysian currency for personal gain: TODAY
• Big Fish Susi by Far the Most Popular Minister: Survey: JG
• GM and China’s SAIC to push into Indonesia with no-frills vans: Reuters
• Malaysia’s 1MDB Delays Loan Payment Again; But Sources Say Malaysian State Fund Closer to Sealing Deal With Tycoon to Help Pay Debt: WSJ
• Thai business leaders welcomed military coup: FT
• Thai Union Frozen Products plans to reel in more western seafood brands in the latest phase of the expanding global voyage of the Southeast Asian country’s ambitious consumer industries. FT
•  In red heartlands, Thai army keeps a lid on dissent: Reuters
• Juara Beauty Aims to Win Over Indonesia: JG
• Meet the “Reset Generation”. This is a group of 20 million aspiring, thirsty and sometimes irreverent individuals who will be the drivers of the economy. They were born between 1980 and 1996 and represent almost a third of the entire pop: NM
• Editorial: Lucrative street business; The Jakarta government has never stopped looking for breakthroughs in its bid to increase revenues from, among other things, parking fees: JP
• Indonesia: When even kindergarten pupils lose  their appetite for our (beloved) police: JP
• An introduction to the Jardines; Shunned by local brokers, tightly-controlled, the venerable and storied Jardine group is nevertheless too important to miss: BT
• Singaporeans lose thousands after US property scheme turns sour: TNP
• More private properties in Singapore being sold at a loss: AsiaOne
• Gemstone fever hits Jakarta: AsiaOne
• Myanmar coffee scene fuelled by middle class caffeine high: AsiaOne
• Two pipe bombs exploded outside a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok in an attack which Thai police said was aimed at raising tension in a city living under martial law: Reuters

Macro

• As Regulators Focus on Culture, Wall Street Struggles to Define It; Big Banks Try to Monitor Employee Attitudes to Avoid Future Problems: WSJ
• Capitalism has broken free of the shackles of democracy; Economic models have proved more portable than political ideas: FT
• Barack Obama plans to tax overseas cash piles; One-off $238bn levy on earnings held abroad to fund infrastructure: FT
• Psychometric testing on the rise in emerging markets; Schemes to assess creditworthiness launch in Peru, India and elsewhere: FT
• The perils of a strong US dollar: FT
• Biggest Pension Acts Like Teenager on Allocations: Canada Credit: Bloomberg
• Asia Junk Bond Market Struggles to Rebound; Few Buyers and Sellers Make for Frustration Among Brokers: WSJ
• Hedge Fund Brevan Howard’s Fortunes Blighted by Billions in Outflows and Management Row: WSJ

TMT

• In Smartphone Market, It’s Luxury or Rock Bottom: WSJ
• Netflix Faces Life in the Mainstream; Netflix’s own success means it must spend more on original content to distinguish itself from more traditional networks launching rival streaming service: WSJ
• Samsung’s Own Chips Were Factor in Blow to Qualcomm: WSJ
• Sophisticated sensors replicate human senses: JA
• MyChi, Your Personal Food Therapy Advisor Enabled by Eastern Wisdom: Technode
• Software that can publish every draft of a book simultaneously shows the true beauty of the creative process: Quartz
• The SaaS Adventure: Techcrunch
• How young creators are finding fans and making money on YouTube: BRW
• Virtual Reality, The Empathy Machine: Techcrumch
• Google, Microsoft and Amazon pay to get around ad blocking tool: FT
• This case transforms your iPad’s screen to make typing easier, and it looks like magic: BI
• What We Know, Now, About the Internet’s Disruptive Power: HBR
• Apple: what do you do after becoming the world’s most profitable company?: Guardian
• How Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ Helped Start YouTube: Forbes
• Delphi Automotive Wins with Safety Technology; Delphi, a leader in driving technology, is now a robocar player mistaken for an old-line supply company. Barron’s

Healthcare

•  In pursuit of next-generation Ebola stockpile vaccines: Reuters

Consumer & Others

• How Cadbury lost the right to sell its own chocolate in the US: Quartz
• From Holdens to hematopoietic stem cell expansion: meet the investor taking Australian manufacturing way up the value chain: BRW
• Grocery watchdog to sharpen its teeth following Tesco accounting scandal: FT
• How Ikea spread the flat-pack revolution across the world; Ikea chief executive Peter Agnefjäll plans to double the size of the business by the end of the decade, and India is Ikea’s next target: telegraph

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 1 Feb (Sun) – Emerson on Talent vs. Character, Our Resistance to Change, and the Key to True Personal Growth

Life

• Emerson on Talent vs. Character, Our Resistance to Change, and the Key to True Personal Growth: BP
• Anne Lamott on How We Endure and Find Meaning in a Crazy World: BP
• Pulitzer-Winning Poet Mark Strand on the Heartbeat of Creative Work and the Artist’s Task to Bear Witness to the Universe: BP
• How to Listen Between the Lines: Anna Deavere Smith on the Art of Listening in a Culture of Speaking: BP
• D.T. Suzuki on What Freedom Really Means and How Zen Can Help Us Cultivate Our Character: BP
• Jeff Bezos’ brilliant advice for anyone running a business: BI
• That’s Funny — but Why? Alan Alda on the Science of Humor: Bloomberg
• Yves Chauvin, Chemist Sharing Nobel Prize, Dies at 84; Chauvin helped unlock the secret of “green chemistry” to produce less hazardous waste in manufacturing: NYT
• If you live in France and don’t eat baguettes, you might be a terrorist? Quartz

Books

• Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair: Amazon

Investing Process

• Aswath Damodaran – Price And Value: Determinants, Divergence, And Convergence via CFA Institute: CFA
• Warnings from the Enron Message Board: SSRN

Greater China

• Probe into China Minsheng chief Mao Xiaofeng just tip of iceberg in banking world of corrupt alliances: SCMP
• As China’s Offshore Yuan Crashes To A 2 Year Low, Beijing Warns Its Citizens: “Don’t Buy Dollars”: ZeroHedge
• China’s Self-Destructive Tech Crackdown: NYT

ASEAN

• Bursa Malaysia proposal on RPT advice is dropped without explanation: TheStar
• Thai conglomerate pursues ‘old school’ expansion in Europe: Nikkei

Macro

• Barron’s 2015 Roundtable issue with Marc Faber, David Herro, Oscar Schafer, and Mario Gabelli discussing their approach to investing. Barron’s
• Repeat Default Rates Rise Since Great Recession, Says Moody’s: WSJ

TMT

• Silicon Valley Reinvents The Invisible Hand: Techcrunch

Energy & Commodities

• One too many oil and gas hubs; The Iskandar dream is in jeopardy because of several unplanned projects on reclaimed land. Do we want to see the oil and gas industry in Johor face the same fate? TheStar

Consumer & Others

• How Honest Burgers became the latest chain to tap into the burger boom; The fast-growing burger business has landed a £7m funding deal; “The burger boom will only get bigger and bigger. The days of frozen burgers are gone.” Telegraph
• McDonald’s Is Everywhere, But It Doesn’t Stand For Anything; The company keeps trying to appeal to new diners, but Americans aren’t biting: Bloomberg