Notable Articles [July 28, 2014]

Scientists say it's extremely likely an El Niño will affect the world's weather in 2014: 90% chance is where ECMWF scientists pegged it. El Niño events occur every five years or so and peak in December, but the first, and potentially greatest, human impacts are felt in India and southern Asia (severe drought). For the US, a strong El Niño would bring rain, typically double the annual average in southern California. El Niños also typically lead to wetter winters in Texas, and other parts of the south-west. El Niños also typically damp down hurricane activity…Source: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/11/-sp-el-nino-weather-2014

Equinox Fitness Is Buying Rest of Millennium’s Gyms: like, a monopoly in Manhattan at this point? If it is secular in health awareness rather than savy business-dealing (both perhaps), Lululemon is still the apple of my eye…Source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/equinox-fitness-is-buying-rest-of-millenniums-gyms/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Trillion-dollar boo-boo: Russian stocks trade on a huge discount to much of the rest of the world, with an average price-earnings ratio (p/e) of just 5.2. At present, the Russian market has a total value of $735 billion. If it traded on the same p/e as the average emerging market (12.5), it would be worth around $1.77 trillion… Source: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608754-bad-governments-cost-investors-fortune-trillion-dollar-boo-boo

Catmull's Mental Models: Finished Catmull (Pixar’s founder)’s book over the weekend. A must-read for those interested in Disney/Pixar (and frankly why Disney’s cartoons got on the right track after Pixar was acquired). The tangents that carries across to investing, however cliché it might seem, are resonating. This post describes it better than I can… Source: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2014/07/catmulls-mental-models.html

Brazil Primer: 107-page JPM report on Brazil from 2011. Solid…Source: http://media.wix.com/ugd/9f8e1b_bd1e65a078151c5d9dafb661cd61d6d0.pdf

At Theravance, It's Hard to Breathe Easy: Barron’s hit piece further knocking THRX on its slugglish Breo & Anoro Q2 results. We will see…Source: http://online.barrons.com/news/articles/SB50001424053111904780504580043374038515184

Citron hit-piece on Z-TRLA: I’m a bit reluctant to give it airtime, but the argument is basically RLGY (as well as others) can pull their listing as RLGY’s own-platform is being set up, while the synergies Z-TRLA talk about will never be realized…Source: http://www.citronresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Zillow-Trulia-final-a.pdf