The bottom line

Americans prefer bonds

Even as the stock market has rebounded since the financial crisis, Americans are staying away. U.S. investors have pulled $138 billion from mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in U.S. stocks since March 2009, while piling $1 trillion into safer bond funds.

The Wall Street Journal

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The high cost of patent lawsuits

Over the past two years, tech companies in the smartphone industry alone have spent as much as $20 billion on patent litigation and patent purchases—a sum equivalent to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, Apple and Google each spent more on patent lawsuits and purchases than on developing new products.

The New York Times

The price of gas in California

California’s average gas price hit a record high of $4.67 per gallon this week, up 49 cents in the past week alone. Pipeline problems and disruptions at key refineries, including an August fire at a Chevron plant near San Francisco, were to blame. Californians generally pay around 40 cents more per gallon than the rest of the country.

Los Angeles Times

India's stock market takes a beating

A sudden crash in India’s stock market briefly sent the market down nearly 16 percent last week. Errant trades by a Mumbai-based brokerage, attributed to human error, wiped more than $58 billion from the market value of some of India’s biggest companies.

Financial Times

The IMF issues a warning

The International Monetary Fund warned this week that risks of a steep global slowdown were “alarmingly high.” It lowered its global growth forecast for this year to 3.3 percent, down from its July predictions of 3.5 percent.

Bloomberg.com