Baltic Dry Index. 919 -18 Brent Crude 77.12
Spot Gold 1946 US 2 Year Yield 4.50 +0.17
Coronavirus
Cases 01/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 05/06/23 World 689,905,362
Deaths 6,887,328
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history
counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent
that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those
who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the
present.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
OPEC+
met and Saudi Arabia agreed to cut oil output again next month, with more “voluntary”
cuts to come next year.
With
global recession looming for later this year and next, crude oil prices rose
slightly, but the stock casinos largely yawned, more impressed that Uncle Scam will
not now default this month, not that I think that was ever likely, and instead
go on spending like a drunken sailor, although that’s grossly unfair to drunken
sailors.
Almost
unnoticed in mainstream business media, China’s mainland property sector is in
deep trouble again, not that it ever left deep trouble, but for now in the
stock casinos, we’re all going to get rich frontrunning Uncle Scam’s two
trillion dollar spending spree, plus hyping Artificial Intelligence companies
into the next Dot Con Bubble.
Asia markets rise
after Biden signs debt ceiling bill; oil surges on OPEC+ cuts
UPDATED SUN, JUN 4 2023 11:09 PM
EDT
Asia-Pacific markets are largely higher after
U.S. President Joe Biden signed
into law a debt ceiling bill that allowed the U.S. to avert
defaulting on its financial obligations over the weekend.
The compromise debt ceiling bill passed
the Senate by a 63-36 margin Thursday evening, winning enough
support from both parties to overcome the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to avoid
a filibuster. On Wednesday, it moved through
the House after about 72 hours, passing 314-117.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index saw
a 0.26% gain on Monday, extending its rally from the 4% gain recorded in
Friday’s session. Mainland China markets bucked the trend, with the Shanghai Composite fell
marginally and the Shenzhen
Component declined 0.25%.
Oil
futures also surged as the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) kingpin Saudi Arabia’s decision to cut oil
production by another million barrels per day.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose
further after leading its global peers for the month of May, gaining 1.67%,
while the Topix opened 1.4% higher. The next level to watch for investors will
be the 32,644 mark which would breach its highest since July 1990.
South Korea Kospi inched up
0.32% and the Kosdaq was up marginally. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was
up 1.07%, ahead of the country’s central bank rate decision tomorrow.
In the U.S. on Friday, all three major indexes
gained over 1%, with the Dow
Jones Industrial Average jumping 2.12% for its best day since
January.
The S&P 500 climbed
1.45%, while the Nasdaq
Composite advanced 1.07%, reaching its highest level since
April 2022 during the session.
Hong Kong’s China
mainland property stocks fall 3% at open
Hong Kong’s Hang
Seng Mainland Properties index (HSMPI) fell 3% at the open and last traded 2.5%
lower as markets corrected the rally from speculations that Chinese
policymakers will roll out stimulus to boost the industry.
The HSMPI was down
nearly 30% year-to-date and fell 20% quarter-to-date. Over a one-year period,
the index fell 53.03%, according to Refinitiv data.
Real estate stocks
were among the major decliners in the wider Hang Seng index alongside
basic materials stocks on Monday morning’s trade.
Industrials stocks
were the leading sector for the index, alongside utilities, financials, and
technology.
Asia markets rise
after Biden signs debt ceiling bill; oil surges on OPEC+ cuts (cnbc.com)
Saudi
pledges big oil cuts in July as OPEC+ extends deal into 2024
June 5, 20234:32 AM GMT+1
VIENNA, June 4
(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will make a deep cut to its output in July on top of a
broader OPEC+ deal to limit supply into 2024 as the group seeks to boost
flagging oil prices.
Saudi's energy
ministry said the country's output would drop to 9 million barrels per day
(bpd) in July from around 10 million bpd in May, the biggest reduction in
years.
"This is a
Saudi lollipop," Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz told a news
conference. "We wanted to ice the cake. We always want to add suspense. We
don't want people to try to predict what we do... This market needs
stabilisation".
OPEC+, which
groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies led by
Russia, pumps around 40% of the world's crude, meaning its policy decisions can
have a major impact on oil prices.
A surprise
decision to cut supply in April briefly sent international
benchmark Brent crude around $9 higher, but prices have since retreated under
pressure from concerns about the weakness of the global economy and its impact
on demand.
On Friday, Brent
ended trade for the week at $76.
Saudi Arabia is
the only member of OPEC+ with sufficient spare capacity and storage to be able
to easily reduce and increase output.
More
Saudi
pledges big oil cuts in July as OPEC+ extends deal into 2024 | Reuters
Up
next, trouble at Goldman and Apple? Surely not! Still, better put JP Morgan on
standby for Goldie and Elon Musk on standby for Apple just in case.
Apple Customers Say It’s Hard
to Get Money Out of Goldman Sachs Savings Accounts
June 3, 2023 Updated: June 3, 2023
Some Apple customers have found it difficult to access their savings
from a new account program in partnership with Goldman Sachs.
After the new Apple savings account was launched in April to great
fanfare, the system has been facing serious teething problems, according to
customers.
The annual yield on an Apple savings account offers a generous 4.15
percent interest rate, dwarfing the current savings account yield of 0.39
percent, according to Bankrate.
The account’s interest rate is about ten times the average yield offered
by mainstream banks, making it attractive to new customers and falls well below
the Federal Reserve’s borrowing rate of between 5 percent and 5.25 percent.
This allows users to earn a sizeable amount in interest over the course
of a year.
Some reports suggest that the launch had already attracted as many
as $1 billion in deposits within four days of launch.
Goldman is the primary issuer of Apple’s new credit card, which is the
only way a customer can open a savings account with the tech giant.
---- After signing up for the
credit card, Apple users can open an account in less than a minute from
their iPhones, with no minimum balance requirement.
The accounts have zero
deposit fees and offer a maximum balance of $250,000.
Depositors are free to
access their money at any time, unlike many normal bank accounts, which limit
customers to six major cash withdrawals a year.
New Apple Accounts Face Severe
Teething Issues
However, some customers have faced
delayed money transfers, while others reported having trouble transferring
money from their new Apple accounts, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A few are even reported
having trouble accessing their funds or even seeing them vanish during
transfers from Apple to another bank.
Nathan Thacker, a
resident of Georgia, told The Wall Street Journal he had
trouble transferring $1,700 from his Apple account to JPMorgan Chase since
May 15.
After contacting
Goldman Sachs’ customer service department multiple times, he was told to wait
a few days.
The money only arrived in Thacker’s account after The
Wall Street Journal contacted the bank about his problem and similar
experiences from other customers.
Stories on social media
are filled with similar experiences from customers unable to access their Apple
savings accounts.
More
Apple Customers
Say It’s Hard to Get Money Out of Goldman Sachs Savings Accounts
(theepochtimes.com)
Finally,
more on so you really, really, really want an electric vehicle.
I love electric vehicles – and was
an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped
Rowan Atkinson Sat 3 Jun 2023 08.00
BST
Sadly,
keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV. There are sound
environmental reasons not to jump just yet
Electric
motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first
university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a
subsequent master’s in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising,
academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why
I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles. I bought my first
electric hybrid 18 years ago and my first pure electric car nine years ago and
(notwithstanding our poor electric charging infrastructure) have enjoyed my
time with both very much. Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they’re
wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run. But
increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts,
electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is
claimed to be.
More
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
IMF chief says
there’s no significant slowdown in lending and the Fed may need to do more
The International Monetary Fund has yet to see
enough banks pulling back on lending that would cause the U.S. Federal Reserve
to change course with its rate-hiking cycle.
“We don’t yet see a significant
slowdown in lending. There is some, but not on the scale that would lead to the
Fed stepping back,” the IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told
CNBC’s Karen Tso Saturday in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
The Federal
Reserve in a May banks report warned that lenders are worried
about conditions ahead, as trouble
in mid-sized financial institutions in the U.S. caused banks to
tighten lending standards for households and businesses.
The Fed’s loan officers added that they expect the
issues to continue over the next year due to lowered growth forecasts and
concerns over deposit outflows and reduced tolerance for risk.
Georgieva told CNBC: “I cannot
stress enough that we are in an exceptionally uncertain environment. Therefore
pay attention to trends and be agile, adjusting — should
the trends change.”
The IMF’s commentary on the pace of
a slowdown in global lending comes after its Chief
Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told CNBC in April that
banks are now situated in a “more precarious situation” that would pose a risk
to the international organization’s world growth forecast of 2.8% for this
year.
More
Kristalina
Georgieva: IMF chief says there's no slowdown in US lending (cnbc.com)
Billionaire investor Cliff Asness talks stocks, recession, Warren Buffett, and commercial real estate in a new interview. Here's the 8 best quotes.
Sat, 3 June 2023 at 7:45 pm BST
Buoyant stocks may have lost touch with economic reality, bond markets are screaming recession, and commercial real estate could be in trouble, Cliff Asness has warned.
The billionaire investor and AQR
Capital Management founder is also fearful of a financial crisis, sees parallels between Warren Buffett and quantitative traders,
and expects cheap stocks to outperform in the years ahead.
He made the comments during
a recent episode of "Bloomberg Wealth with David
Rubenstein."
Here are Asness' 8 best quotes, lightly edited for length and
clarity:
-----3. "My biggest concern is stocks and bonds seem
to be taking a very, very different view. Bonds are pricing in multiple, severe
cuts over the next year to two years. That is a forecast for a recession, and
not a mild one. Equities are whistling past the graveyard."
4. "If inflation stays sticky, or it comes down
because we enter a non-trivial recession, it's equities that I think are a
scary place. They're not priced very consistently with bonds, and we're going
to find out who's right in the next year."
5. "I worry about a financial crisis because
they're very unpredictable. I don't think anyone wants a financial crisis. You
think you'll do well, and something happens that boomerangs, and you
don't."
6. "Commercial real estate, and banks that deal
in that, may be a more nerve-wracking place — how that shakes out in cities.
I'm worried enough to put it on my worry list."
More
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Hmm. Now who would benefit from discrediting Hydroxychloroquine?
Study Linking Hydroxychloroquine
to Increased Deaths Frequently Cited Even After Retraction
Jun 2 2023
An investigation has found that
among the hundreds of COVID-19 research papers that have been
withdrawn, a retracted study linking the drug hydroxychloroquine to increased
mortality was the most cited paper.
With 1,360 citations at the time
of data extraction, researchers in the field were still referring to the paper
“Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of
COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” long after it was retracted.
Authors of the analysis involving
the University of Wollongong, Linköping University, and Western Sydney
Local Health District wrote (pdf) that “most researchers who cite retracted
research do not identify that the paper is retracted, even when submitting long
after the paper has been withdrawn.”
“This has serious implications for
the reliability of published research and the academic literature, which need
to be addressed,” they said.
“Retraction is the final safeguard
against academic error and misconduct, and thus a cornerstone of the entire
process of knowledge generation.”
Scientists Question Findings
Over 100 medical professionals
wrote an open letter, raising ten major issues with the paper.
These included the fact that there was “no ethics review” and “unusually small reported variances in baseline variables, interventions and outcomes,” as well as “no mention of the countries or hospitals that contributed to the data source and no acknowledgments to their contributions.”
Other concerns were that the average daily doses of hydroxychloroquine
were higher than the FDA-recommended amounts, which would present skewed
results.
They also found that the data that was reportedly from Australian patients did not seem to match data from the Australian government.
Eventually, the study led the World Health Organization to temporarily suspend the trial of hydroxychloroquine on COVID-19 patients and to the UK regulatory body, MHRA, requesting the temporary pause of recruitment into all hydroxychloroquine trials in the UK.
France also changed its national recommendation of the drug in COVID-19 treatments and halted all trials.
Currently, a total of 337 research papers on COVID-19 have been retracted,
according to Retraction Watch.
Further retractions are
expected as the investigation of proceeds.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The
Spectator Covid-19
data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section. Updates as they get reported.
Light-Speed
Advances: Graphene Nanoprocessing With a Femtosecond Laser
By
Researchers
at Tohoku University used a femtosecond laser to successfully
micro/nanofabricate graphene films, creating multi-point holes
without damage and removing contaminants. The technique could replace
traditional, more complex methods, offering potential advancements in quantum
materials research and biosensor development.
Discovered in 2004, graphene has revolutionized various scientific
fields. It possesses remarkable properties like high electron mobility,
mechanical strength, and thermal conductivity. Extensive time and effort have
been invested in exploring its potential as a next-generation semiconductor
material, leading to the development of graphene-based transistors, transparent
electrodes, and sensors.
But to render these devices into practical application,
it’s crucial to have efficient processing techniques that can structure
graphene films at micrometer and nanometer scale. Typically, micro/nanoscale material
processing and device manufacturing employ nanolithography and focused ion beam
methods. However, these have posed longstanding challenges for laboratory
researchers due to their need for large-scale equipment, lengthy manufacturing
times, and complex operations.
Back in January, Tohoku
University researchers created a technique that could micro/nanofabricate
silicon nitride thin devices with thicknesses ranging from 5 to 50 nanometers.
The method employed a femtosecond laser, which emitted extremely short, rapid
pulses of light. It turned out to be capable of quickly and conveniently
processing thin materials without a vacuum environment.
By applying this method to an ultra-thin atomic layer of graphene, the same
group has now succeeded in performing a multi-point hole drilling without
damaging the graphene film. Details of their breakthrough were reported in the
journal Nano Letters on May 16, 2023.
“With proper control of the input energy and number of laser shots, we
were able to execute precise machining and create holes with diameters ranging
from 70 nanometers – much smaller than the laser wavelength of 520 nanometers –
to over 1 millimeter,” says Yuuki Uesugi, assistant professor at Tohoku
University’s Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials,
and co-author of the paper
More
Light-Speed
Advances: Graphene Nanoprocessing With a Femtosecond Laser (scitechdaily.com)
Solar panels - an
eco-disaster waiting to happen?
4 June, 2023
While they are being promoted
around the world as a crucial weapon in reducing carbon emissions, solar panels
only have a lifespan of up to 25 years.
Experts say
billions of panels will eventually all need to be disposed of and replaced.
"The world
has installed more than one terawatt of solar capacity. Ordinary solar panels
have a capacity of about 400W, so if you count both rooftops and solar farms,
there could be as many as 2.5 billion solar panels.," says Dr Rong Deng,
an expert in solar panel recycling at the University of New South Wales in
Australia.
According to
the British government, there are tens of millions of solar panels in the UK.
But the specialist infrastructure to scrap and recycle them is lacking.
Energy experts
are calling for urgent government action to prevent a looming global
environmental disaster.
"It's
going to be a waste mountain by 2050, unless we get recycling chains going
now," says Ute Collier, deputy director of the International Renewable
Energy Agency.
"We're
producing more and more solar panels - which is great - but how are we going to
deal with the waste?" she asks.
It is hoped a
major step will be taken at the end of June, when the world's first factory
dedicated to fully recycling solar panels officially opens in France.
ROSI, the
specialist solar recycling company which owns the facility, in the Alpine city
of Grenoble, hopes eventually to be able to extract and re-use 99% of a unit's
components.
As well as
recycling the glass fronts and aluminium frames, the new factory can recover
nearly all of the precious materials contained within the panels, such as
silver and copper, which are typically some of the hardest materials to
extract.
More
Solar panels -
an eco-disaster waiting to happen? - BBC News
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving
that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
