NYT : Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron

The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by what appear to be the same Russian operatives responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election, a cybersecurity firm warns in a new report.

The report has heightened concerns that Russia may turn its playbook on France in an effort to harm Mr. Macron’s candidacy and bolster that of Mr. Macron’s rival, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen, in the final weeks of the French presidential campaign.

Security researchers at the cybersecurity firm, Trend Micro, said that on March 15 they spotted a hacking group they believe to be a Russian intelligence unit turn its weapons on Mr. Macron’s campaign — sending emails to campaign officials and others with links to fake websites designed to bait them into turning over passwords.

The group began registering several decoy internet addresses last month and as recently as April 15, naming one onedrive-en-marche.fr and another mail-en-marche.fr to mimic the name of Mr. Macron’s political party, En Marche.

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Those websites were registered to a block of web addresses that Trend Micro’s researchers say belong to the Russian intelligence unit they refer to as Pawn Storm, but is alternatively known as Fancy Bear, APT 28 or the Sofacy Group. American and European intelligence agencies and American private security researchers determined that the group was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee last year.

On Tuesday, Trend Micro’s researchers plan to release their report detailing cyberattacks in recent weeks against Mr. Macron’s campaign — as well as members of Germany’s Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, a political foundation linked to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party — in what appears to be the latest Russian effort to influence political outcomes in the West.

The Kremlin scoffed at the report. Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said Monday in Moscow that “this all recalls the accusations that came from Washington and which are still suspended in thin air.” In remarks to Russian news media, he added that Russia had “never interfered” in foreign elections.

But the report’s findings gave some credence to the “strong suspicions” voiced weeks before Sunday’s voting by Mr. Macron’s digital director, Mounir Mahjoubi, that Moscow was the source of what he said had been a barrage of “highly sophisticated” efforts to gain access to the campaign’s email accounts.

Mr. Mahjoubi said in an interview Monday and earlier in April that he had no proof of a Russian role, but that the nature and timing of so-called phishing attacks and web assaults on the Macron campaign had stirred worries that Russia was repeating in France what American intelligence agencies say was a concerted effort to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“The phishing pages we are talking about are very personalized web pages to look like the real address,” Mr. Mahjoubi added. Anyone could easily think he was logging into his own email. “They were pixel perfect,” he said Monday night. “It’s exactly the same page. That means there was talent behind it and time went into it: talent, money, experience, time and will.”

The goal was to obtain the email passwords of campaign staff members so a cyberattacker could lurk unseen inside an email account reading confidential correspondence. “If you are speed reading as you sign on, and everybody speed reads online, it’s something you might not notice,” Mr. Mahjoubi said. “For instance, it uses a hyphen instead of a dot, and if you are speed reading you don’t look at the URL.”

Unlike the attacks aimed at Mrs. Clinton’s staff, those directed at the Macron camp, Mr. Mahjoubi said, failed to gain access to any email accounts used by the candidate or his lieutenants.

This winter, the campaign’s website also came under attack. The attacks coincided with highly slanted articles about Mr. Macron on the French language services of Sputnik and RT, formerly Russia Today. Both are state-funded Russian news media outlets.

The coincidence of the hacking of the Macron campaign website, the phishing attacks and the slanted articles caused Mr. Mahjoubi to consider that there might be Russian involvement. “That was only a supposition,” he said, based on the timing.

Mr. Mahjoubi described the phishing attacks as the “invisible side” of an apparent Russian campaign to hurt Mr. Macron, while the “visible side” took the form of fake news or slanted stories in the French-language Russian media.

Russia, or at least its state-controlled media, clearly favored Ms. Le Pen, who criticized European Union sanctions imposed on Russia after it annexed Crimea in 2014 and voiced support for Moscow’s intervention in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad.

The success of its cyberattacks in the United States has only bolstered the Russian hacking group’s ambitions, security researchers say.

“This is the new normal,” said Tom Kellermann, a cyberintelligence expert and the chief executive at Strategic Cyber Ventures. “Geopolitical events will now serve as harbingers for these types of attacks.”

(ZH) Goldman Explains How Traders Made 4,364% Since 2009 With This 'Simple' Stra

Goldman Explains How Traders Made 4,364% Since 2009 With This 'Simple' Strategy


This is too easy. Forget NFLX Calls. As Goldman explains, the road to real riches over the past 8 years (off the '666' lows in the S&P) is simple - Sell Vol!
The S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Daily Inverse Index which tracks the return of being short a one-month VIX future was up 4364% from March 9, 2009 through 1Q 2017.
Policy uncertainty is elevated around the globe and yet the VIX has posted one of its lowest starts to a calendar year on record. Many investors want to get long volatility via VIX ETPs. But buyer beware. Not a single VIX ETP actually tracks the VIX. They track VIX futures and the performance differential can be large. In our view it is important to understand how VIX ETPs are constructed, key return drivers and historical performance across bull, bear, and boring markets before trading.
VIX ETPs have almost $4 billion in assets under management.
And Open Interest has grown dramatically.
Trading: VIX ETPs are benchmarked to VIX futures; not the VIX
In our client discussions the number one misunderstanding regarding VIX ETPs is the simple fact that not a single VIX ETP is actually benchmarked to the VIX. What actually trades? Most VIX ETPs are benchmarked to indices constructed by S&P Dow Jones Indices and track the daily return on a constant maturity one-month or five-month VIX future. In practice, this typically involves the daily rebalancing of two-to-four VIX futures contracts depending upon the target maturity.
VIX ETP performance
Long vol performance: Strong gains during market shocks; difficult to buy and hold. Many VIX ETPs track variations of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index which measures the performance of a constant maturity one-month VIX future. That benchmark index is down 99.9% since December 2005, equating to an annualized return of -46.1% over the period. Its double-levered counterpart has had a median loss of -1.2% per day; -14.5% per month and an annualized return of -80.7% back to 2005 (Double-levered long: From 100,000 to under a penny since 2005).
Timely hedges have performed very well: While long vol strategies have been tough to hold for long periods of time; timely hedges can perform very well. We estimate that the S&P 500 has dropped by an average of 9% across the top ten calendar-month declines back to December 2005. One-month VIX strategies were up in each of the ten months by an average of +37.3%.
Short volatility performance: It stands to reason that if being long volatility has done poorly over time then the short has done well. The XIV and SVXY should have daily returns similar to the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Daily Inverse Index (SPVXSPI) which tracks the returns from selling a constant maturity 1m VIX future. The SPVXSPI was up 4364% from March 9, 2009 – March 31, 2017. The S&P 500 was up 249% over the same window. The inverse index has had an annualized return of 21.5% since December 20, 2005. The S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Daily Inverse Index, which tracks the return of being short a one-month VIX future, was up 4364% from the market bottom on March 9, 2009 through the end of the first quarter of 2017. The index has had a median daily return of 0.6% and an annualized return of 21.5% since December 2005.
The best of times for short volatility: After vol spikes and slow markets with low realized volatility. Being short volatility often performs well after market shocks as volatility mean reverts and over periods of persistently low volatility and stable market returns. Exhibit 6 shows that the top 10 calendar month gains in the S&P 500 immediately followed many of the largest down moves. The S&P 500 gained 7.9% on average versus 21.6% on the 1m -1x index.
The worst of times for short volatility: Market shocks. Being short volatility can generate high returns but it can also suffer severe drawdowns. The index has shown a positive correlation of 0.82 and a beta of 4.3 to daily S&P 500 returns since 2013. The high beta means that drawdowns can be large when the market is down and the 1m -1x index was down -71.4% in 2008 and -45.5% in 2011. The worst calendar month for the strategy occurred in October 2008 when the S&P was down -16.9% but the 1m -1x index dropped -58.7%. The worst calendar day for the 1m -1x index occurred on June 24, 2016 (Brexit): The index was down 32.7% versus the S&P 500 down 3.6%.
Contango: Why long VIX ETP performance has been so poor
The VIX curve is said to be in contango when VIX futures are trading at higher levels than the VIX. The VIX curve has been in contango 70% of the time back to December 2005. ETPs which track one-month VIX futures strategies have lost an average of 83 basis points per day when the VIX curve has been in contango. That is not a fluke. We provide a quick mathematical illustration that contango leads to negative performance for long vol VIX ETPs all else equal.
VIX ETP scenario analysis: VXX returns if the VIX stays where it is We outline the methodology used to create many VIX ETPs. Once you understand the methodology, some simple, yet powerful, questions can be answered. For example, what are the potential returns on a VIX ETP over the next month if the VIX stays where it is and futures roll down the curve? The answer depends upon both the level and the term structure of implied volatility.
Compounding: A short is not the mirror image of a long
Most VIX ETPs are rebalanced daily, which means they track the one-day return of an index. By construction, that means that a long and a short can track their respective benchmarks perfectly each day but they may not be mirror images of each other over longer holding periods due to the compounding of returns. August of 2015 was an interesting example in a tough market. The benchmark for a one-month VIX futures strategy was up 71%, the inverse was down 48% and the double-levered was up 170%.
* * *
So that's it America. Easy! Instead of buy-and-hold, it's sell-vol-and-roll - what could possibly go wrong?

    TEchCrunch : Nissan signs up to Mobileye’s crowdsourced real-tim

    Nissan signs up to Mobileye’s crowdsourced real-time maps for autonomous cars

    Mobileye’s Road Experience Management (REM) platform scored another big win today: Signing up Nissan, the third major automaker to enter an agreement with the company to help build and use its high-precision road maps, which are updated in real time using anonymized, crowdsourced data from cars on the road.

    Nissan joins BMW and Volkswagen as REM platform members, and will both use the Global RoadBook maps that result from Mobileye’s system to help its own vehicles navigate and to add redundancy to its forthcoming autonomous driving software. Nissan vehicles will also help contribute to the pool of collective crowdsourced data, which is big for REM because the more vehicles participating, the better the quality of the real-time data that updates the maps across the fleet as soon as changes happen on the road.

    Nissan had already been working with Mobileye and REM, with a pilot that extended into Nissan’s London-based self-driving tech demonstrations. REM isn’t the only collab between the two companies, either – Nissan uses Mobileye tech in its ProPILOT ADAS system, for instance.

    Mobileye and future owner Intel must be even happier about this new deal, however – with each new automaker that sings up for REM, the platform becomes an even more attractive component for other car companies, and approaches the status of ‘industry standard’ for autonomous vehicle operation.

    WWD : Puma Profit Leaps 92.2% in Q1

    Puma Profit Leaps 92.2% in Q1
    All of the German company's geographies posted double-digit sales increases in the three-month period.

    PARIS — Puma SE reported net profit advanced 92.2 percent in the first quarter of 2016 versus the same prior-year period.

    The German sporting goods maker’s net earnings reached 49.6 million euros, or $52.8 million, in the three months ended March 31. Meanwhile, its gross margin — a key indicator of profitability — gained 30 basis points to 47.1 percent from 46.8 percent. Earnings before interest and taxes rose 70.1 percent to 70.2 million euros, or $75 million.

    Boosted by strong sell-throughs driven by footwear, Puma said it got off to a better than expected start to the year, surpassing the 1 billion euros, or $1.1 billion, in sales in a quarter for the first time in the company’s history. Revenues rose 18 percent, driven by all regions, which posted double-digit gains.

    Dollar figures are converted at average exchange for the period to which they refer.

    Earlier in the month, Puma had raised its sales outlook for 2017 to a low double-digit percentage rate increase in currency-adjusted terms, up from high single digits.

    Puma’s full-year earnings before interest and taxes are now anticipated to fall between 185 million euros and 200 million euros, or $196.1 million and $212 million at current exchange, up from the previous guidance of 170 million euros to 190 million euros, or $180.2 million to $201.4 million.

    Management at the company controlled by French group Kering maintains net earnings will improve significantly in 2017.

    >>> US Gapping down

    Gapping down
    In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance    :
    • ESRX -11.5%, NGL -10.6%, (lowers FY17 guidance) R -6.7%,CDNS -5.9%, SWFT -5.3%, ABX -3.7%, LH -3.2%, LMT -3.2%,PHM -2.9%, LLY -2.7%, TECK -2.2%, CNI -2.2%, XRX -2%, ERIC -1.6%, ZION -1.1%, RMBS -1%, TROW -0.9%, TMUS -0.8%, ST -0.8%
    Select metals/mining stocks trading lower:
    • EGO -3.1%, KGC -1.6%, AG -1.5%, GG -1.1%, GDX -0.9%, GOLD -0.7%
    Other news:
    • CTRV -25.4% (commences an underwritten public offering)
    • MBII -17.7% (proposes common stock public offering)
    • KPTI -3.8% (commences underwritten public offering of $40 mln in shares of common stock)
    • PZRX -2.1% (modest pullback)
    • SITE -2.1% (announces secondary offering of 8,500,000 shares of common stock by selling stockholders)
    • WPZ -2% (reduces quarterly distribution to $0.60/share from $0.85/share)
    • OMED -1.3% (OncoMed Pharma will reduce its workforce by approximately 50%; co will also seek to maximize the value from potential interest in partnering the assets to which it has worldwide rights)
    Analyst comments:
    • ORLY -0.8% (downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank)
    • COL -0.6% (resumed with a Sell at Goldman)
    • GE -0.6% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA/Merril)
    • BHP -0.5% (downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Goldman)

    >>> US Gapping up

    Gapping up
    In reaction to strong earnings/guidance    :
    • CATB +37.3%, UIS +16.6%, MDR +9.5%, LLNW +9.1%, SVU +7.8%, GCI +7.6%, CAT +6.4%, RDWR +5.8%, AKS +5.5%, ATI +5.4%, MAS +5.3%, BIIB +4.5%, LXU +4.1%, RAD +3.8%, HUM +3.2%, RRC +3.2%, RAD +3.2%, CR +3.1%, ICHR +3%, (also commences public offering of 4,500,000 ordinary shares by selling shareholders), AA +3%, JBLU +3%, FNB +2.5%, MCD +2.4%, NVS +2.3%, RE +2.3%, DD +2%, WNC +1.9%, CNC +1.4%,GPK +1.3%, EAT +1.2%, TSN +1.1%, VLO +1%
    M&A news:
    • NORD +26.5% (to be acquired by by consortium led by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Baring Private Equity Asia for $32.50/share)
    • APFH +9.2% (to be acquired by Tyson Foods (TSN) for $40.25/share in cash)
    • STRP +7.4% (Board determines that an unsolicited offer from a 'multi-national telecommunications company' for $104.64/share in stock constitutes a 'Superior Proposal')
    • MVC +4.8% (MVC Capital announced that Equus Total Return (EQS) will acquire MVC's largest portfolio holding U.S. Gas & Electric; Transaction consideration values USG&E at $167.5 mln)
    • TSN +0.9%
    Select EU financial related names showing strength:
    • CS +2%, RBS +1.4%, SAN +1.4%, LYG +1.2%
    Other news:
    • CATB +35.3% (announced additional favorable results across multiple functional assessments in the MoveDMD trial)
    • CANF +25.3% (Barzilai Medical Center's Institutional Review Board has approved the Phase III ACRobat trial protocol and patient enrollment for the study)
    • CAPR +16.2% (positive top-line results from a safety and exploratory efficacy analysis of 6 month data from the randomized 12-month Phase I/II HOPE Clinical Trial of CAP-1002)
    • QURE +8.7% (will present data on its technologies to improve gene therapy as a therapeutic approach at the ASGCT on May 12 )
    • OPGN +5.7% (presents prelim results on its Acuitas Rapid Test)
    • ZSAN +4.4% (continued strength)
    • PRTK +3.7% (presents new data from a Phase 1 study on its once-daily oral and IV, broad spectrum investigational antibiotic omadacycline at the ECCMID 2017)
    • IMGN +3.6% (Highbridge Capital discloses passive stake)
    • ABEO +2.9% (announces that updated Phase 1/2 clinical trial data on the EB-101 gene therapy program)
    • GALT +2.5% (received a Decision to Grant for its patent application for "Composition of Novel Carbohydrate Drug for Treatment of Human Diseases.")
    • NVO +2.1% (in sympathy with NVS), LOGI +2% (enters new $250 mln share buyback program)
    • CVS +1.7% (in sympathy with RAD)
    • DE +1.5% (in sympathy with CAT earnings)
    • SNY +1.3% (in sympathy with NVS)
    • X +1.3% (in sympathy with AA and AKS)
    • SHPG +1.3% (in sympathy with NVS)
    • NFLX +1.2% (signs licensing agreement with China's iQiyi, according to The Hollywood Reporter)
    • GSK +1% (in sympathy with NVS)
    Analyst comments:
    • IDRA +5.8% (initiated with a Outperform at Robert W. Baird; tgt $5)
    • BBY +2.6% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA/Merrill)
    • SUN +1% (upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Citigroup)
    • JPM +0.8% (upgraded to Buyfrom Neutral at Guggenheim)
    • WFC +0.7% (upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Guggenheim)
    • AXP +0.6% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Guggenheim)

    >>> US Early premarket gappers

    Early premarket gappers
    Gapping up:
    • UIS +16.6%, IDRA +10.2%, LLNW +8.7%, GCI +7.6%, RAD +6.2%,RDWR +5.8%, STRP +5.7%, LXU +5.4%, SLCA +4.9%, ZSAN+4.4%, STM +3.6%, AA +3.6%, RRC +3.6%, FIT +3.5%, IMGN+3.4%, BIIB +3.1%, ICHR +3%, CR +2.6%, SANM +2.6%, AKS+2.5%, HUM +2.5%, FNB +2.5%, RE +2.3%, NVS +2.2%, MVC+2.1%, BBY +1.9%, WNC +1.9%, SVU +1.8%, CVRS +1.7%, CVS+1.4%, CNC +1.4%, GPK +1.3%, MAS +1.3%, TRU +1.2%, GSK+1%, AMP +0.9%, FBK +0.8%, CCI +0.8%, DD +0.8%, KNL +0.7%,SAP +0.7%
    Gapping down:
    • CTRV -22.9%, ESRX -12.3%, NGL -10.6%, MBII -8.6%, SWFT -4.8%, CDNS -4.4%, KPTI -3.8%, WPZ -3.4%, PHM -3.3%, ABX -3.2%, ZION -2.5%, TECK -2.1%, PZRX -2.1%, SITE -2.1%, ERIC -2%, WHR -1.8%, CNI -1.5%, OMED -1.3%, XRX -1.1%, RMBS -1%