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David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Despite further monetary policy easing from the People's Bank of China and restrictions on some forms of futures trading, Chinese stocks fell yet again on Wednesday. Whatever word you choose to describe it — chaotic, wild, skittish, or others — the movements during the session were ridiculously rapid. Stocks opened higher, then tanked, then roared higher again before sliding into the close. It's truly head-spinning stuff, but increasingly familiar for those who have been watching closely. (snip)

China’s stuttering economy might come more strongly into view from the Rocky Mountains at this week’s Jackson Hole meeting of central bankers following the chaos in the stock markets. Many economists still expect the Federal Reserve to stay the course and start raising interest rates this year. Despite the wild see-sawing of US stocks after China’s “Black Monday” meltdown, the bet is on the central bank to move soon and start weaning the US off rates that have stayed near zero since 2008. The annual policy conference in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, starting onon Thursday, has traditionally...

Myles Udland August 26, 2015 For the second day in a row, US stock futures are surging. Near 7:15 a.m. ET, Dow futures were up 300 points, S&P 500 futures were up 39 points, and Nasdaq futures were up 84 points. Wednesday morning's rally in US futures follows an ugly day on Tuesday, which saw stocks rally sharply early in the day before a huge sell-off in the final hour of trading. All told, the Dow fell more than 600 points from its peak on Tuesday to the market close. On Tuesday, all three major US indexes closed in the...

If you want to understand what’s going on in the stock market and what you should do with your own investments, don’t assume the past three trading days have been rational. And don’t talk about a market “correction.” Doing that will rot your brain. And don’t panic. Although this is an ugly market, this isn’t anything like the 2008-09 meltdown that wiped out millions of homeowners’ equity and put the world’s financial markets at risk. This is a stock market decline that, as we’ll see in a bit, has a serious impact on only a relatively small number of Americans....

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Chinese stocks have finished Thursday’s morning session sharply higher. At the mid-session the benchmark Shanghai Composite index is up by 1.55% following three days of savage losses. Despite the gain, the index is still down 15.26% for the week. All sectors are currently trading higher with industrials, up 2.8%, topping the list. (snip)

Summary Apple's much rumored electric vehicle may use fuel cell technology from U.K. startup Intelligent Energy. Intelligent Energy's technology doesn't require high pressure hydrogen storage and can be refueled by swapping out self-contained modules. Apple may already have exclusive rights to the technology, and use this as leverage to partner with an auto manufacturer such as BMW. By now, the weight of the evidence that Apple is working on a car has become overwhelming, but an announcement out of the UK of a hydrogen fuel cell powered iPhone may shed the most light yet on Apple's automobile project. The technology...

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said Apple Watch is off to a strong start and announced steps to deepen the tech giant’s presence in the retailer’s stores. Best Buy continued its remarkable turnaround last quarter, with a big assist from Apple. The largest U.S. electronics retailer reported a rise in domestic comparable sales of 3.8% for the second quarter, well ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, and posted a better than expected profit. While Best Buy has helped its cause by cutting costs and adding floor space to growing categories like smart homes, home theaters, and shops-within-a-shop for top brands, it...

Stock markets around the world have been posting big losses for the last few days. The route was especially rough this morning, with the DOW Jones at one point falling 1,000 points in less than an hour. At the heart of the current slide is an issue which could impact many tech companies: economic weakness in China. Two weeks ago China's government made an aggressive move to devalue its currency. This followed several weeks of tumult in the Chinese stock market, during which the government had also interceded with force. Taken together, investors saw a Chinese market where growth was flagging. That...

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel is famously outspoken and sharp-tongued, and on CNBC on Wednesday he did not disappoint. In a "Squawk Box" interview.Thiel trashed Twitter, Uber and Apple, among others, "Twitter is hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It's a horribly mismanaged company—probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there. But it's such a solid franchise it may even work with all that," the co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor said.

A Nevada based company is suing Apple for patent infringement. The company alleges that Apple's 2-step Apple ID verification system/process violates their patent. Verify Smart Corp. alleges that Apple makes, uses, tests, markets and sells or otherwise provides a system and method for enabling a user to authenticate their identity when initiating an electronic transaction, using a one-time pass-code sent to the user's mobile phone (hereinafter "Apple two-step verification"). They further claim that Apple's two-step verification system is designed to enable secure transactions for their customers. Verify alleges, that Apple's two-step verification infringes claims 2 and 5 of their...

There is so much to admire about Apple. They make superb, beautiful products. Their amazing comeback story is unparalleled in corporate history. Steve Jobs has become something akin to a modern-day patron saint of the tech industry. Tim Cook is, rightly, enormously respected.So why do I think they represent so much of what’s wrong with the tech world?It’s because they have, I think, an almost Shakespearean tragic flaw: their obsession with centralized corporate control of the devices they sell. Apple sells fantastic hardware, and excellent software … and tries to maintain an iron-fisted grip on both, throughout their lifespan. Even...

Business has been captured by Climatism, the belief that humans are causing dangerous global warming. Leading businesses announce plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, purchase renewable energy, use vehicle biofuels, and buy carbon credits. But there is no evidence that commercial policies to “fight” climate change have any measureable effect on global temperatures. Apple and Google, the darling companies of the millennial generation, have spent billions trying to halt global warming. Apple has brought us the Mac personal computer, the I-Phone, the I-Pad, and other trend-setting electronic devices, becoming the world’s highest-valued company. Google has been called the most innovative...

Leave it to the left-wing anti-gun nuts to try and get something like this banned. Nowadays most smart phones have emojis. The Apple iPhone has a revolver emoji that is used while texting others. You can use the emoji however you want, the point is sending someone an emoji of a gun is in no way able to harm another. But gun activist in New York think it can lead to violence so they’re trying to get Apple to ban its use. The group called “New Yorkers Against Gun Violence” has petitioned Apple with their “Disarm the iPhone” campaign and...

Dow down over 430 points as of about 2:20 PM CST. Central banks have no more options.  Debt levels are completely unprecedented around the world.  These debts will never be paid back by human effort. Watchers have been saying that we might witness a big crash around this time for 5, 6, 7 years now.  Are you listening?  Are you awake? Is your treasure in Heaven or on earth? Pray. MARANATHA! Update: Yesterday's plunge of the DJI was the biggest point-drop in almost four years.  Today's is even larger.

U.S. stocks traded about 2 percent lower on Friday, extending a recent rout, as concerns about slowing global growth continued to pressure investor sentiment. ( Tweet This ) The Dow Jones industrial average briefly fell into correction territory, losing more than 470 points as all blue chips declined. In the last five years, the index has only had four instances with closing losses of more than 400 points. "It's an expiration day and it looks like they're to have for sale on the close maybe as much as a billion dollars," said Art Cashin, director of floor trading for UBS....

In a sign that the uproar was threatening not only his reputation but also his business dealings, Dr. Dre, who has previously spoken dismissively or vaguely about the allegations [including criminal charges, that Dr. Dre physically abused women], which are decades old, confronted them on Friday in a statement to The New York Times,” Joe Coscarelli reports for The New York Times. “While he did not address each allegation individually, he said: ‘Twenty-five years ago I was a young man drinking too much and in over my head with no real structure in my life. However, none of this is...

One obvious reason that Windows 8 was such a disaster for Microsoft was that a lot of longtime Windows users absolutely hated it. To express their frustrations with Windows 8, many of these users either switched back to Windows 7 or changed computing platforms all together by switching to Macs. One such person was Vivek Wadhwa, the director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, who fled Windows 8 in terror for Apple before giving Microsoft another shot with Windows 10. Writing in The Washington Post, Wadhwa explains that he recently installed Windows 10 onto his...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month found an iPhone design patent successfully leveraged by Apple against Samsung in its first court action invalid on multiple counts, bringing Apple's $548 million damages award into question. Apple's D'677 patent (right) shows a design different from two previous applications. Spotted by FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller, the non-final decision regarding Apple's U.S. Patent No. D618,677, known as the D'677 patent, was handed down by the USPTO's Central Reexamination Division on Aug. 5. The decision follows an anonymous ex parte examination request -- likely filed by Samsung -- calling the design patent's...

Since we last published an in-depth report into Apple's Project Titan autonomous car project seven months ago, the company's bank balance has grown by £15bn ($23bn) – enough to fund the entire development process of a completely new car several times over. Now, after a small misfire in the rumour mills, talk of an Apple car is back on the front pages. But let us rewind briefly to that small misfire and look at where we are at today. Rumours of Apple producing its own car began at the start of 2015; they escalated quickly as talk of a secret...

Just days after patching the DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE vulnerability with a new OS X point release, Apple's desktop operating system has been hit with yet another zero-day exploit that would allow an attacker to gain root access without using a password. Luca Todesco on Twitter The exploit was discovered by Italian developer Luca Todesco, who relies on a combination of attacks — including a null pointer dereference in OS X's IOKit — to drop a proof-of-concept payload into a root shell. It affects every version of OS X Yosemite, but seems to have been mitigated in OS X El Capitan, which is nearing release....