Author: Deep

The dismal start to financial markets this year, coupled with concerns about the slowdown in China, should keep the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates four times in 2016, as policymakers had forecast last month, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Monday. Summers also warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that psychology in volatile markets can change quickly. “Just as I thought it was a mistake to overreact to bits of strength in the middle of last fall, there’s also a danger to overreacting to the weakness at present,” he said. Read MoreWhat you need know about the markets…

Tablets may have ushered in the post-PC age, but the only ones posting a growth in sales are detachables —  the ones that are most like PCs. At 206.8 million, tablet shipments last year were 10.1 percent down on 2014. The decline in the fourth quarter—which, with the holiday season, accounted for almost a third of the year’s sales—was even more marked, down 13.7 percent on a year earlier, according to market researcher IDC. It was, though, a record quarter for detachable tablets, a category in which IDC includes Apple’s iPad Pro and Microsoft’s Surface and Surface Pro, with shipments…

Despite some near-term bullish signals, oil markets remain fundamentally oversupplied and may not be able to hold above $30 per barrel, ClearView Energy Partners analyst Kevin Book said Monday. Crude oil futures rocketed 10 percent higher on Friday as traders covered bets that oil would fall farther and as heating oil prices rose ahead of a massive snowstorm on the U.S. East Coast. That plucked oil prices out of the $20-to-$30-per-barrel range, where they had fallen one week earlier. But on Monday, crude oil prices were down about 3 percent as Iraq announced record high oil production. “The fundamentals haven’t…

Microsoft Research has a new concept that could bring data centers powering cloud services closer to roughly half of the world’s population. All it requires is a custom submarine capsule designed to go five years at a time without a visit from a technician. The company’s R&D department recently went public with Project Natick, a data center enclosed in a steel capsule that sits on the ocean floor. These underwater data centers are more easily deployed, reduce emissions, and save a ton of dough on cooling compared to traditional server farms, at least in theory. Microsoft already completed its first…

A few years ago, Microsoft switched from per-processor to per-core licensing in SQL Server, and it’s about to do the same with Windows Server 2016. You may not be thrilled with the results. “Microsoft’s auditors likely will have a field day with these new requirements for Windows Server, in the same way that they have used the ever-more-complex licensing rules for SQL Server to increase the company’s audit-based revenue in recent years,” warned Christopher Barnett, an associate attorney with Scott & Scott LLP. Currently, each Windows Server license allows for use of the software on up to two physical processors.…

Even as the broader market rallied Friday, one group of stocks is still seeing an unusual amount of pain. Financial stocks have been the second-worst performers this year, with the S&P 500 sector down more than 10 percent year to date. And out of 18 stocks that hit new 52-week lows on Thursday and Friday, 14 were financial names. According to Larry McDonald, the outlook for these beleaguered stocks will remain grim, at least until commodities prices stabilize. “The credit profile of the major commodity multinationals, the Anglo’s, the Glencore’s, the Petrobras’, those big credits need to improve in order…

We’ve seen Windows 95 running on smartwatches and handheld game consoles, but now you can run the 20-year-old operating system directly through any web browser. The browser-based version of Windows 95 was created by programmer Andrea Faulds, and was recently discovered by The Next Web. Essentially, Faulds used the popular DOS emulator DOSBox to boot up a copy of Windows 95, then compiled the DOSBox code into Javascript using a program called Emscripten. Because the operating system isn’t running natively, it does have a fair share of limitations. Launching certain programs, such as Internet Explorer, will make the emulation crash.…

Wall Street is breathing a sigh of relief after the S&P 500 Index managed to eke out its first weekly gain of the year. Despite the signs of strength, one prominent market watcher says stocks are still in store for a “thundering reset.” “I think we have a dead cat bounce in no-man’s-land,” David Stockman told CNBC’s “Fast Money” last week. According to Stockman, the broad market has been trading in the abyss since breaking above 1,870 in 2014, seeing a meager 1 percent return since then. “We’re been there now for 700 days…we’ve had something like 35 attempts at…

When users first try virtual assistants (like Siri, Google Now, Cortana, M or Alexa), they’re struck by the idea that they’re talking to a computer, rather than a person. That much sounds obvious. In reality, however, the responses from virtual assistants are far more human than most people assume. In fact, every response is carefully crafted by a person or a team of people. What you get as a response to your question or request to a virtual assistant isn’t what a real-live person said. It’s what a team of people believe a real-live human being could or should say.…

The “Fast Money” traders gave their final trades of the day. Tim Seymour was a buyer of BIDU. Steve Grasso was a buyer of DECK. Brian Kelly was a buyer of the XLU. Guy Adami was a buyer of NKE. Trader disclosure: On January 22, 2016 the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC’s “Fast Money” were owned by the “Fast Money” traders: Tim Seymour is long AAPL, BAC, DO, FBT, FCX, GG, GPS, HOV, HYG, IWM, T. Tim’s firm is long BABA, BIDU, MA, NFX, SAVE, WMT.Brian Kelly is long BBRY, Bitcoin, GDX, GLD,…