On July 26 I passed on some support for the thesis that it wasn’t trade that was destroying jobs, it was tech. And now George Anders of Forbes argues that tech isn’t all that bad:
2.Tech’s positive impact on employment is much more striking if we also look at a wide range of white-collar professions where software advances improve individual workers’ productivity to the point that demand for their services soars.
3.A case in point: market research. Turn the clock back to 2010, when cheap, efficient services such as Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey weren’t yet ubiquitous. The U.S. got by with just 262,000 market research analysts and marketing specialists then. Splash in new technology that puts online polling and digital marketing within reach of everyone, and — voila! Employment in this category leaps 93%, to more than 506,000.
4.Another example of software’s ability to generate jobs: event planners. If you need to stuff envelopes and make dozens of phone calls, full-scale event planning is a luxury that only rich people (and Jennifer Lopez’s clients) can afford. Digitize everything, and opportunities increase faster than you can say: “Come to our Thursday night meetup.” Employment in this category has climbed 54%, to 87,400, with the creation of 31,000 net new jobs.
Meanwhile, it appears that vegan food startup Hampton Creek Inc. has been naughty:
In late 2014, fledgling entrepreneur Josh Tetrick persuaded investors to plow $90 million into his vegan food startup Hampton Creek Inc. Tetrick had impressed leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms by getting his eggless Just Mayo product into Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, and other top U.S. supermarkets within about three years of starting his company.
What Tetrick and his team neglected to mention is that the startup undertook a large-scale operation to buy back its own mayo, which made the product appear more popular than it really was. At least eight months before the funding round closed, Hampton Creek executives quietly launched a campaign to purchase mass quantities of Just Mayo from stores, according to five former workers and more than 250 receipts, expense reports, cash advances and e-mails reviewed by Bloomberg. In addition to buying up hundreds of jars of the product across the U.S., contractors were told to call store managers pretending they were customers and ask about Just Mayo.
…
“We need you in Safeway buying Just Mayo and our new flavored mayos,” Caroline Love, Hampton Creek’s then director of corporate partnership, wrote in an April 2014 e-mail to contract workers known as Creekers. “And we’re going to pay you for this exciting new project! Below is the list of stores that have been assigned to you.” Love’s memo also referenced a key competitor: “The most important next step with Safeway is huge sales out of the gate. This will ensure we stay on the shelf to put an end to Hellmann’s factory-farmed egg mayo, and spread the word to customers that Just Mayo is their new preferred brand. :)”
So the key takeaways, as they’re called in these degenerate days, are:
- Never trust a vegetarian
- Especially, never trust anybody who sells “mayo” without eggs in it.
Because that’s what they tried to do:
Hampton Creek Foods Inc., the healthy-food startup backed by investors including Bill Gates, can’t refer to its vegan-friendly sandwich spread as mayonnaise because it doesn’t have eggs in it, U.S. regulators said.
The company’s Just Mayo and Just Mayo Sriracha also contain ingredients that “are not permitted by the standard of identity for mayonnaise, such as modified food starch,” the Food and Drug Administration said in a warning letter to Hampton Creek, whose investors also include Silicon Valley luminaries Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla. The letter was dated Aug. 12 and was posted online Tuesday.
“The use of the term ‘mayo’ in the product names and the image of an egg may be misleading to consumers because it may lead them to believe that the products are the standardized food, mayonnaise,” the FDA said.
It looks like Carney has new instructions:
In what one bank dubbed a “sledgehammer stimulus,” the BoE cut interest rates 25 basis points to 0.25 per cent and said it would buy 60 billion pounds ($79-billion) of government bonds with newly created money over the next six months.
It also launched two schemes, one to buy 10 billion pounds of high-grade corporate debt and another – potentially worth up to 100 billion pounds – to ensure banks keep lending even after the rate cut.
…
Finance minister Philip Hammond welcomed the rate cut and said he and Carney had “the tools we need to support the economy as we begin this new chapter and address the challenges ahead.”
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.2847 % | 1,695.1 |
| FixedFloater | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.2847 % | 3,096.6 |
| Floater | 4.84 % | 4.58 % | 84,705 | 16.14 | 4 | 0.2847 % | 1,784.6 |
| OpRet | 4.84 % | 1.11 % | 51,101 | 0.08 | 1 | 0.0396 % | 2,847.0 |
| SplitShare | 5.07 % | 4.84 % | 100,480 | 2.28 | 5 | 0.5525 % | 3,398.3 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.5525 % | 2,651.5 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.42 % | -15.06 % | 78,530 | 0.09 | 12 | 0.2443 % | 2,716.1 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.12 % | 5.00 % | 106,812 | 14.85 | 26 | 0.4046 % | 2,894.3 |
| FixedReset | 4.92 % | 4.17 % | 150,406 | 7.13 | 89 | 0.6541 % | 2,069.3 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 4.97 % | 2.28 % | 117,317 | 0.09 | 32 | 0.3486 % | 2,806.4 |
| FloatingReset | 2.92 % | 4.26 % | 30,993 | 5.12 | 11 | 0.9122 % | 2,178.4 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| TRP.PR.F | FloatingReset | -1.09 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 13.65 Evaluated at bid price : 13.65 Bid-YTW : 4.51 % |
| TRP.PR.A | FixedReset | 1.01 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 15.05 Evaluated at bid price : 15.05 Bid-YTW : 4.55 % |
| RY.PR.Z | FixedReset | 1.04 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.45 Evaluated at bid price : 19.45 Bid-YTW : 3.88 % |
| BMO.PR.Z | Perpetual-Premium | 1.06 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2024-08-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.70 Bid-YTW : 4.57 % |
| BAM.PR.T | FixedReset | 1.09 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 15.75 Evaluated at bid price : 15.75 Bid-YTW : 4.87 % |
| RY.PR.H | FixedReset | 1.10 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.27 Evaluated at bid price : 19.27 Bid-YTW : 3.98 % |
| CU.PR.E | Perpetual-Discount | 1.14 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 24.34 Evaluated at bid price : 24.82 Bid-YTW : 4.99 % |
| BMO.PR.T | FixedReset | 1.16 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.15 Evaluated at bid price : 19.15 Bid-YTW : 3.98 % |
| BNS.PR.A | FloatingReset | 1.17 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 23.34 Bid-YTW : 3.83 % |
| BAM.PF.F | FixedReset | 1.17 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 20.69 Evaluated at bid price : 20.69 Bid-YTW : 4.50 % |
| CU.PR.G | Perpetual-Discount | 1.20 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 22.52 Evaluated at bid price : 22.81 Bid-YTW : 5.00 % |
| CU.PR.D | Perpetual-Discount | 1.22 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 24.33 Evaluated at bid price : 24.81 Bid-YTW : 5.00 % |
| TD.PR.S | FixedReset | 1.24 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 23.64 Bid-YTW : 3.80 % |
| FTS.PR.M | FixedReset | 1.26 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 20.12 Evaluated at bid price : 20.12 Bid-YTW : 4.17 % |
| BNS.PR.B | FloatingReset | 1.26 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.44 Bid-YTW : 4.26 % |
| BAM.PF.B | FixedReset | 1.27 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 18.41 Evaluated at bid price : 18.41 Bid-YTW : 4.71 % |
| BMO.PR.Q | FixedReset | 1.27 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 19.95 Bid-YTW : 6.25 % |
| BNS.PR.C | FloatingReset | 1.29 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.80 Bid-YTW : 4.12 % |
| BMO.PR.Y | FixedReset | 1.29 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 21.14 Evaluated at bid price : 21.14 Bid-YTW : 4.09 % |
| TD.PF.F | Perpetual-Discount | 1.31 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2024-10-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.55 Bid-YTW : 4.61 % |
| BMO.PR.W | FixedReset | 1.33 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.07 Evaluated at bid price : 19.07 Bid-YTW : 3.97 % |
| FTS.PR.G | FixedReset | 1.33 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 18.26 Evaluated at bid price : 18.26 Bid-YTW : 4.04 % |
| FTS.PR.H | FixedReset | 1.34 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 14.36 Evaluated at bid price : 14.36 Bid-YTW : 3.85 % |
| BMO.PR.S | FixedReset | 1.40 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.58 Evaluated at bid price : 19.58 Bid-YTW : 3.99 % |
| GRP.PR.A | SplitShare | 1.50 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2016-09-03 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.63 Bid-YTW : -8.32 % |
| SLF.PR.J | FloatingReset | 1.67 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 12.80 Bid-YTW : 10.95 % |
| RY.PR.M | FixedReset | 1.68 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 20.55 Evaluated at bid price : 20.55 Bid-YTW : 4.07 % |
| BMO.PR.R | FloatingReset | 1.70 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.73 Bid-YTW : 3.94 % |
| HSE.PR.C | FixedReset | 1.83 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 18.95 Evaluated at bid price : 18.95 Bid-YTW : 5.25 % |
| HSE.PR.G | FixedReset | 1.97 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 20.69 Evaluated at bid price : 20.69 Bid-YTW : 5.22 % |
| TRP.PR.B | FixedReset | 2.34 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 12.27 Evaluated at bid price : 12.27 Bid-YTW : 4.07 % |
| NA.PR.W | FixedReset | 2.41 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 18.72 Evaluated at bid price : 18.72 Bid-YTW : 4.13 % |
| IFC.PR.A | FixedReset | 2.44 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 15.55 Bid-YTW : 9.47 % |
| HSE.PR.E | FixedReset | 2.48 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 20.66 Evaluated at bid price : 20.66 Bid-YTW : 5.25 % |
| NA.PR.S | FixedReset | 2.54 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.35 Evaluated at bid price : 19.35 Bid-YTW : 4.15 % |
| BAM.PR.S | FloatingReset | 3.40 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 14.89 Evaluated at bid price : 14.89 Bid-YTW : 4.79 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| BIP.PR.C | FixedReset | 368,831 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2021-09-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.38 Bid-YTW : 5.05 % |
| MFC.PR.L | FixedReset | 72,450 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 18.70 Bid-YTW : 7.39 % |
| BAM.PR.R | FixedReset | 66,003 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 15.97 Evaluated at bid price : 15.97 Bid-YTW : 4.70 % |
| TRP.PR.D | FixedReset | 54,375 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 17.75 Evaluated at bid price : 17.75 Bid-YTW : 4.49 % |
| BNS.PR.N | Deemed-Retractible | 33,500 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2016-09-03 Maturity Price : 25.25 Evaluated at bid price : 25.65 Bid-YTW : -12.83 % |
| RY.PR.Z | FixedReset | 29,580 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2046-08-04 Maturity Price : 19.45 Evaluated at bid price : 19.45 Bid-YTW : 3.88 % |
| There were 25 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| MFC.PR.O | FixedReset | Quote: 27.05 – 27.47 Spot Rate : 0.4200 Average : 0.2670 YTW SCENARIO |
| HSE.PR.C | FixedReset | Quote: 18.95 – 19.38 Spot Rate : 0.4300 Average : 0.2925 YTW SCENARIO |
| TRP.PR.H | FloatingReset | Quote: 10.35 – 10.85 Spot Rate : 0.5000 Average : 0.3706 YTW SCENARIO |
| EML.PR.A | FixedReset | Quote: 26.22 – 26.55 Spot Rate : 0.3300 Average : 0.2196 YTW SCENARIO |
| ELF.PR.G | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 22.44 – 22.83 Spot Rate : 0.3900 Average : 0.2825 YTW SCENARIO |
| HSE.PR.G | FixedReset | Quote: 20.69 – 21.07 Spot Rate : 0.3800 Average : 0.2762 YTW SCENARIO |