Fiat's Marchionne to become new Ferrari chairman after Montezemolo quits

by Agnieszka Flak

Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne

MILAN (Reuters) - Luca Cordero di Montezemolo will step down as chairman of Ferrari as of Oct. 13 and will be replaced by Sergio Marchionne, who also serves as the chief executive of parent group Fiat (FIA.MI).

The departure of Montezemolo, announced by Fiat on Wednesday, was widely expected after escalating clashes between the two executives over strategy and the role of the luxury sports car business within the Fiat group.

Fiat shares were up 2.4 percent by 0721 GMT (3.21 a.m. EDT), against a 0.1 percent fall for Milan's blue-chip index .FTMIB.

Montezemolo, Ferrari's chairman since 1991, has been wanting to keep Ferrari autonomous, while Marchionne has been pushing to better integrate the business within Fiat to boost the group's move into the premium end of the car market as it seeks to rival the likes of Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE).

The Oct. 13 resignation date coincides with the day when Fiat, which owns 90 percent of Ferrari, plans to list Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in New York after completing a merger with its U.S. business and cementing a shift of the Italian group from its home for the past 115 years.

"Ferrari will have an important role to play within the FCA Group in the upcoming flotation on Wall Street. This will open up a new and different phase, which I feel should be spearheaded by the CEO of the Group," Montezemolo said in a separate statement.

Marchionne said that he and Montezemolo had discussed the future of Ferrari at length and that "our mutual desire to see Ferrari achieve its true potential on the (Formula One racing) track has led to misunderstandings, which became clearly visible over the last weekend".

The Fiat CEO said on Sunday that the recent disappointing performance of Ferrari's Formula One racing team was "unacceptable" and that it was "absolutely non-negotiable" that Ferrari should win Formula One races

Under Montezemolo's more than two decade-long tenure, Ferrari raced to the top of the Formula One grid, increased revenues tenfold and tripled sales volumes as the Italian family business grew into one of the world's most powerful brands.

See the original article >>

Should Mario Draghi Spend More Time on Twitter?

By Todd Buell

Reuters

Should European Central Bank President Mario Draghi spend more time checking out social media to help him gauge the state of the economy?

Two scholars from the Dutch national statistics agency CBS, Piet J.H. Daas and Marco J.H. Puts, argue in a recent paper that following social media might be a faster way for policymakers to gauge consumer confidence that waiting for more conventional surveys.

Consumer confidence indicators typically give an early read on how the public responds to geopolitical events or changing economic policies – such as the rate cuts and bond buying programs announced by the ECB Thursday.
With consumer spending accounting for the lion’s share of gross domestic product in advanced economies, confidence surveys are among the most closely-watched indicators and can influence stock and bond markets.

Official data show that Dutch sentiment has increased through much of the year, but fell in August.

The paper suggests that this key information can be gleaned earlier from looking at aggregate social media data.

“Consumer confidence and monthly aggregated social media sentiment display a similar development,” write the authors. “Changes in the sentiment of social media routinely preceded changes in consumer confidence. This lag is in the order of seven days.”

The authors suggest that Mr. Draghi and other policymakers should take social media more seriously.

“If changes in social media sentiment are indeed related to Dutch consumer confidence, they could be used as a readily available indicator for changes in consumer confidence and, as such, may contribute to, or even provide an early indicator of, an important official statistic,” say the scholars. This knowledge could offer “important information on the state of the economy” to policymakers, write the authors.

To conduct its study, the statisticians used both data used for official monthly consumer confidence reports and data on social media purchased from a Dutch company called Coosto, which has a collection of over 3 billion social media messages from 2009 to the present. Coosto automatically determines the sentiment of its collected messages as either positive, negative or neutral based on the types of words (in Dutch) that are used, and the use of smiley faces.

The ECB is active on twitter; it has had a twitter feed for about five years. Still, there are limits to how far the ECB will go in the social media revolution. Remarks from then Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen over two years ago remain valid: “I would not expect every member of the ECB Governing Council to open a twitter account soon or to accept you as friends on Facebook.”

Indeed, an ECB spokesman said that at present no members of the ECB’s six-person Executive Board has a twitter account.

See the original article >>

Gold may be a ‘buy’ as investors turn ever more bearish

By Mark Hulbert

The last time such gloom set in, the yellow metal staged a rally

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — Gold is finally getting close to a bottom in prices.

That is the surprising conclusion of contrarian analysis, which for months now has stubbornly refused to turn positive on gold — even as the yellow metal has suffered a death by a thousand cuts. Just this week, for example, bullion hit a fresh three-month low — among indications that gold’s recent decline has violated some key technical levels.

But what contrarians focus on is market sentiment, and on that front there has been a big change: For the first time in a long time, a large number of short-term gold timers have decided to throw in the towel.

As a result, the market-timing community on balance is now more bearish than it has been in 14 months — which, according to the contrary logic of contrarian analysis, is a bullish development. The last time the typical gold timer was as gloomy as he is today, gold began a two-month rally in which it gained more than $200.

Consider the average recommended gold market exposure level among a subset of short-term gold market timers tracked by the Hulbert Financial Digest (as measured by the Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index, or HGNSI). This average currently stands at minus 40.6%, which means that the typical gold timer is recommending that clients allocate nearly half their gold-oriented portfolios to going short the market.

That’s a particularly aggressive bet that gold will keep declining, and — at least according to contrarian analysis — these timers are unlikely to be right.

As recently as last week, the HGNSI had not fallen below minus 21.9%. That was less than the lows to which this sentiment index fell last December (minus 36.7%) and in the summer of 2013 (minus 56.7%). And that, in turn, led me to conclude that contrarians were not yet ready to bet on even a short-term rally.

That’s why, in mid-July — the last time I devoted a MarketWatch column to a contrarian analysis of gold — I argued that sentiment conditions were not yet favorable for gold. “Unless you have nerves of steel and are ready and willing to hold on to gold despite extraordinary volatility,” I concluded, “you might want to wait until sentiment conditions are more favorable.” Gold at that time was trading at around $1,310 an ounce.

The usual qualifications apply, of course. Sentiment is not the only thing that moves the markets. And even when contrarian analysis is right, it doesn’t necessarily have pinpoint accuracy. But, because sentiment analysis has been on the correct side of this gold market in recent months, it’s definitely noteworthy that it’s now more optimistic.

See the original article >>

Ferrari chairman to resign

By Manuela Mesco

Departure effective next month

Reuters

Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo

MILAN — Fiat SpA said Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo will resign, only days after Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said the luxury car brand’s Formula One race results were unacceptable.

Marchionne will take over from Montezemolo, whose departure is effective from Oct. 13.

Speaking at a business meeting in Italy last weekend, Marchionne praised Montezemolo for having achieved excellent business results but said he was “sad” that Ferrari hasn’t won any titles since 2008. He that nobody occupying positions of power at the company was indispensable.

“Luca and I have discussed the future of Ferrari at length,” said Marchionne in a statement on Wednesday, “and our mutual desire to see Ferrari achieve its true potential on the track has led to misunderstandings which became clearly visible over the last weekend.”

Montezemolo said in a separate statement that Ferrari will play an important role in the listing of Fiat F, +2.08%   Chrysler Automobiles Group in Wall Street and this new phase “should be spearheaded by the CEO of the group,” said Montezemolo.

See the original article >>

World Growth vs. Copper

by Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Copper is frequently cited as a leading indicator of economic activity because if its widespread use in many sectors of the economy, from homes and factories, to electronics and power generation and transmission.
For that reason, some call it "Dr. Copper".
Inquiring minds may be wondering what copper has to say about future economic growth. The following charts will explain.
World Growth vs. Copper

Copper Daily Chart

The above charts courtesy of Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank.
Iron Ore Down 38% this Year
China is slowing and its property bubble is under severe pressure. But it's not just copper that is under pressure.
Iron has taken a big hit, and iron producers are under severe stress.
Reuters reports Iron Ore Price Plunge Claims First Australian Casualty.

Plunging iron ore prices have dealt their first blow in Australia, sending fledgling miner Western Desert Resources Ltd into administration after it failed to reach a deal with bankers over its debt.
Western Desert was caught out by a move by the world's top four iron ore producers to flood the market with low-cost supply, outpacing Chinese demand growth for the steel-making ingredient and slashing iron ore prices by 38 percent this year.
UBS estimated that even at present iron ore prices, smaller producers Atlas Iron Ltd, Gindalbie Metals Ltd and Grange Resources are all under water.
Iron ore, which is priced in U.S. dollars, has sunk to a five-year low of $83.60. Australian miners have felt the impact even more as the Australian dollar has risen 5 percent against the U.S. dollar in that time.
China imported 8.5 percent more iron ore in August than a year earlier, but imports for the year are expected to grow by only 49 million tonnes, well below the volume of extra supply, according to Australia's official forecaster.

Expect China to Surprise on the Downside
Iron is under pressure even with rising demand from China. What happens if future demand disappoints?
I have been stating for quite some time that China is on the verge of a major slowdown and base metals would be affected, and so would the currencies of major commodity exporters like Australia and Canada.
China cannot and will not grow at 7% a year as most expect. The consequences of that have yet to be felt.
US Will Not Decouple
Finally, those who think the US will decouple from this global mess are just as wrong as those who thought China would decouple from the global economy in 2008.

See the original article >>

The Most Significant Apple Development No One Is Talking About

by Lou Basenese

Summary

• With the most anticipated Apple event in history about to kick off, a specific feature, not a product, promises to be the most significant development.
• Rumors, backed by credible evidence in the form of a patent application suggest Apple's iWatch will offer wireless charging capabilities.
• Apple is uniquely positioned to bring about the tipping point for consumer awareness and in turn, mass adoption.
• Energous is the only pure play stock. It's novel RF approach makes it the potentially biggest winner of a wireless charging boom, sparked by Apple.

Forget about the long awaited launch of the iPhone 6. We could be at the doorstep of a much more significant development when Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) unveils its latest round of products at today's big event.

You see, analysts also expect the company to unwrap its first wearable device, the iWatch. And wearables represent an up-and-coming industry in desperate need of a breakout product.

Despite attracting $1.4 billion in venture capital funding - and lofty expectations for device shipments stretching into the hundreds of millions by 2018 - a mere 1 million smartwatches sold in the second quarter, according to Strategy Analytics.

That compares to 295 million smartphones during the same period. (Can you say, pathetic?).

Market-leader Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) has already launched five smartwatch models. And yet, every last one of them has been a dud.

No wonder industry insiders are publicly "hoping that Apple can crack the missing [sales] code," as Reuters reports.

Whether Apple can officially jump-start the wearables market remains to be seen. We'll save that discussion for another day.

What I'm most interested in today is one of the rumored features of the iWatch. It promises to be the most disruptive of all developments. For the entire mobile market, not just wearables.

Don't Taser Tether Me, Bro!

One of the most annoying things about mobile devices is the requirement to be tethered to a cord every couple of hours to recharge. This becomes an extreme pain point for wearables.

Source:IHS

I mean, who wants to have a watch that requires removal every couple hours?

It's no surprise then, Apple's spent years trying to figure out a way to cleverly charge a wearable device.

A patent filed in September 2009 (# 8193781) reveals the company experimented with a kinetic approach, whereby the motion of a person's arm swinging would power a tiny charging station within the device.

Reliable sources confirmed to The New York Times that Apple's also been experimenting with a solar-charging approach, by adding a photovoltaic layer to the screen.

In the end, it appears the company opted for a wireless charging method. And that, my friends, is the development everyone should be talking about.

A Cable-Free Future is Upon Us

Right before the closing bell on September 4, rumors started circulating that Apple's iWatch will include an inductive wireless charging solution.

Strong evidence exists to support the claims, too. Specifically, patent application # 20140241555, which was filed in early 2013 and just published on August 28.

In it, Apple describes coiled inductor wires with dual purposes. The NFC antenna, for instance, which is going to enable Apple's foray into mobile payments, could also be used for wireless charging, as needed.

Wireless charging has been gaining more and more attention because of the obvious need for it.

While mobile devices keep getting more and more powerful, advancements in battery technology have not been able to keep up.

"The gap is becoming larger and larger, so by 2020 the gap will be exponentially larger than it is today," according to Rahul Mangharam, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

That means much more frequent tethering to a power cord is coming. Or is it?

In recent months, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) made big announcements involving wireless charging initiatives.

On June 11, Intel teamed up with privately held, Witricity, to incorporate wireless charging capabilities into chip designs. Intel's goal is to have a completely wire-free laptop by 2016.

The very same day, Starbucks announced a national rollout of Duracell's Powermat wireless charging stations.

Both initiatives represent important steps towards a cable-free future. But Apple's the one company that can initiate a quantum leap forward.

We can all agree, Apple's in rarefied air when it comes to captivating and influencing consumers. Therefore, Apple's adoption of a wireless charging solution holds the potential to unlock pent up demand that consumers didn't even know existed. In a way Starbucks and Intel simply can't.

Confused? Let me explain…

A recent study by HIS found that two-thirds of consumers don't even have a clue that wireless charging capabilities exists.

However, once informed, a staggering 83% said they would be interested in wireless charging. They'd be willing to pay for the capabilities, too.

Bottom line: Apple's inclusion of a wireless charging solution in the iWatch promises to be the tipping point for consumer awareness and in turn, mass adoption.

Not just in the wearables market, but also in all manner of battery-powered devices. Think Nest Thermostats, GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO) cameras, keyboards, tablets, LED lighting, video game controllers, medical devices, home security systems and sensors. The list goes on.

Later today, we'll hopefully find out which of the currently available wireless charging standards Apple's going to use.

Regardless of the choice, I'm convinced the biggest, long-term beneficiary of the development promises to be Energous Corp. (NASDAQ:WATT). I'll share more specifics why shortly. It relates to the company's novel approach (radio frequency instead of inductive). So stay tuned.

See the original article >>