Baltic Dry Index. 519 -18 Brent Crude 44.47
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
Mark Twain.
God’s work returned to Wall Street this week. The Great Disconnect is back on steroids. No news and bad news is all now good news again, in the central bankster fuelled, crony casino, gambling dens, aka stock markets. The Fedsters’ are going all in via the NYC team of riggers and fix-its. Christmas is coming and it’s time to rig up this year’s ending. Shame about Glencore, the BRICs, and Main Street though. Still, who needs them? They got what they deserved!
Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat, Please put a billion in the bankster’s hat, If you haven’t got a billion, a million will do, If you haven’t got a million, then God damn you!
Ebenezer Squid.
U.S. stocks rally after Fed signals rate hike on the table
Published: Nov 18, 2015 4:58 p.m. ET
Renewed terror fears rattled European markets
U.S. stocks rose sharply on Wednesday after the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s October policy meeting confirmed that a majority of policy makers were open to an interest-rate hike in December.The main indexes booked most of their solid advances in the final two hours of trading.
The S&P 500 SPX, +1.62% closed 33.14 points, or 1.6%, higher at 2,083.58, its biggest gain in four weeks. The S&P 500 has registered gains in two of the past three sessions. All 10 main sectors on the S&P 500 closed higher, led by health-care, up 2%. Financials, which should benefit from higher rates in the future, gained 1.8%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.42% rallied 247.66 points, or 1.4%, to finish at 17,737.16., extending a three-day ascent for the blue-chips gauge, which has seen a nearly 500- point, or 2.9%, gain since Nov. 16., according to FactSet data.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.79% ended the day up 89.19 points, or 1.8%, at 5,075.20, logging its largest point and percentage gain since Oct. 23, FactSet data show.
“Most participants” in the Fed’s meeting on monetary policy anticipated that the conditions for beginning to raise interest rates “could well be met by the time of the next meeting,” the minutes said.
At first glance, the fact that stock markets rallied and Treasury yields were flat after the release of hawkish Fed minutes could look like a contradiction. Ultraloose Fed monetary policy has been associated with fueling a multiyear bull market in stocks.
But analysts said investors may be reading the Fed minutes as signaling that the U.S. economy is improving. “The fact that the Fed feels confident in the market’s stability, makes investors more comfortable buying stocks and other risky assets,” said Robert Tipp, Prudential Fixed Income’s chief investment strategist.
Other market participants said that the economy is due for a rate hike.
“Markets are rising after news that a rate hike in December is coming and they should. The rates should be higher in the current economy. When the cost of money is finally lifted, good investments will be made,” said James M. Meyer, chief investment officer at Tower Bridge Advisors.
More
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wall-street-eyes-wary-start-as-terror-worries-continue-fed-minutes-loom-2015-11-18?link=MW_popular
Can Glencore be saved? Who knows, but in the ever growing commodities depression, Glencore is merely the flagship leading the flotilla of ever sinking commodity behemoths. Decades of central bankster induced, commodity malinvestment was built on Himalayas of increasingly unrepayable debt. In commodities, it was ever boom and bust. Never try to catch a falling sword. Pick up the sword after it embeds itself in the floor. I suspect that commodities are still a long way off from the floor.
Glencore's Renewed Slide Pressures Glasenberg Debt-Cut Plans
November 18,
2015 — 12:01 AM GMT Updated on November 18, 2015 — 10:20 AM GMT
For a while it looked like Glencore Plc had turned the tide.
Billionaire Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg’s $10 billion
debt-cutting plan, vivified with asset sales and output cuts, breathed life
into a collapsing share price. Now with the stock falling again, pressure
is back on to drive those efforts harder and faster.
Before today, the Swiss firm had dropped for nine straight days in
London, the longest streak on record. That 29 percent slump, as prices for
the copper and zinc that Glencore produces reached six-year lows, wiped about
$8 billion off the mining and trading company’s value.
“If all else remains unchanged, it’s going to be back to the drawing
board,” said Marc Elliott, the mining analyst at Investec Plc whose
bearish research note seven weeks ago was a spur for a record daily decline in
Glencore’s shares. “Perhaps not to the same degree, but they’re going to have
to take more action.” Elliott advises investors to sell.
Glencore has lost $45 billion in market value this year amid a commodities
rout that’s crushing prices from aluminum to oil and tin, and presenting
Glasenberg with his greatest challenge since becoming CEO in 2002. While
he’s hitting debt-cutting milestones -- a $2.5 billion share sale, a $900
million asset disposal, $2.4 billion saved by halting dividends, progress
offloading a stake in its agriculture business -- the question is whether
tumbling demand in China, the biggest commodity consumer, won’t overcome all
endeavors.----Copper is down 10 percent since Glencore announced its $10 billion debt-reduction program on Sept. 7 and was at a six-year low as of Tuesday. Zinc has fallen 14 percent and thermal coal, of which Glencore is the No. 1 exporter, has sunk 7.6 percent. That hurts its income, but also the value of mines and stockpiles it uses to calculate net borrowings.
The company’s 400 million euros ($427 million) of 3.7 percent bonds
maturing in October 2023 dropped 2.3 cents on the euro this month to an almost
seven-week low of 82.1 cents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The
yield has risen to 6.7 percent, the data show.
Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-18/glencore-s-renewed-slide-pressures-glasenberg-debt-cutting-plans
In EUSSR news, the migrants will soon be heading the other way. Europe’s gravy train runs out. More fool Finland for going along with Russian sanctions following America’s botched coup in Kiev. Buy more stocks!!!
Finland's depression is the final indictment of Europe's monetary union
Finland has lost a quarter of its industry since 2008 even though it is the poster-child of EMU competitiveness
Finland is sliding deeper into economic depression, a prime exhibit of
currency failure and an even more unsettling saga for theoretical defenders of
the euro than the crucifixion of Greece.
A full six-and-a-half years into the current global expansion, Finland's
GDP is 6pc below its previous peak. It is suffering a deeper and more
protracted slump than the post-Soviet crash of the early 1990s, or the Great
Depression of the 1930s.
Nobody can accuse Finland of being spendthrift, or undisciplined, or
technologically backward, or corrupt, or captive of an entrenched oligarchy,
the sort of accusations levelled against the Greco-Latins.
The country's public debt is 62pc of GDP, lower than in Germany. Finland
has long been held up as the EMU poster child of austerity, grit, and
super-flexibility, the one member of the periphery that supposedly did its
homework before joining monetary union and could therefore roll with the
punches.
Finland tops the EU in the World Economic Forum’s index of global competitiveness. It comes 1st in the entire world for primary schools, higher education and training, innovation, property rights, intellectual property protection, its legal framework and reliability, anti-monopoly policies, university R&D links, availability of latest technologies, as well as scientists and engineers.
Its near-perfect profile demolishes the central claim of the German finance ministry - through its mouthpiece in Brussels - that countries get into bad trouble in EMU only if they drag their feet on reform and spend too much.
The country has obviously been hit by a series of asymmetric shocks: the collapse of its hi-tech champion Nokia, the slump in forestry and commodity prices, and the recession in Russia.
The relevant point is that it cannot now defend itself. Finland is trapped by a fixed exchange rate and by the fiscal straightjacket of the Stability Pact, a lawyers' construct that was never intended for such circumstances.
The Pact is being enforced anyway because rules are rules and because leaders in the Teutonic bloc have an idee fixee that moral hazard will run rampant if any country in the EMU core sets a bad example.
Finland's output shrank a further 0.6pc in the third quarter and the country's three-year long recession is turning into a fourth year. Industrial orders fell 31pc in September. "It's spooky," said Pasi Sorjonen from Nordea.
We end for the day with the moment Turkey lost all chance of ever joining the dying EUSSR Bilderberger project. There likely goes much of the Turkish tourist industry too. 129 dead in Paris and Turkey roared its approval! No French President will ever not veto Turkey.
Video: Turkey Fans Boo Moment of Silence for Paris Attacks, Then Break Out Into This Chant
Nov. 17, 2015 6:58pmA moment of silence for the victims of the Paris attacks was booed by Turkish fans Tuesday during a friendly game against Greece, Reuters reported.
Reuters reporter Ece Toksabay tweeted that the fans booed the minute of silence before breaking out into a chant of “Allah Akbar.”
Video posted online showed the disruption and seemingly captured the chant (see the two minute mark of the YouTube video below).
99.8 percent of the Turkish population is Muslim, according to the CIA World Factbook.
The disruption came at a game attended by both the Turkish and Greek prime ministers.
The terror attacks in Paris left at least 129 dead and scores more injured. It was the deadliest violence to strike France since World War II.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/11/17/video-turkey-fans-boo-moment-of-silence-for-paris-attacks-then-break-out-into-this-chant/
Islamic State Shows Image of Bomb Said to Down Russian Plane
November 18, 2015 — 3:31 PM GMT Updated on November 18, 2015 — 4:50 PM
GM
Islamic State published a picture of the bomb it said was used to down a
Russian plane which crashed over the Sinai Peninsula last month, killing all
224 passengers on board.
The image was shown in the latest online issue of Dabiq, the Islamic State’s
magazine. The bomb, hidden in a soft-drink can, was smuggled onto the plane
after the group breached security at Sharm El-Sheikh airport, Islamic State
said. The information couldn’t be independently verified.
Islamic State said Russia was chosen as a target in retaliation for its intervention against militants in Syria, which began in September. “This was to show the Russians and whoever allies with them that they will have no safety in the lands and airspace of the Muslims,” the magazine article read.
The Sinai bombing, together with last week’s attacks in Paris, have pushed Russia and Western nations toward joint action in Syria, overcoming a history of disagreement over who to support in the civil war.
---- The group also published a photo of what it claimed are passports belonging to plane passengers. Islamic State said it had initially planned to target planes from countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition which has been bombing jihadist targets in Syria and Iraq since last year, but switched to the Russian jet instead.
The plane crash led Russia and the U.K to evacuate their citizens from
Egypt, hitting the country’s tourism sector, a major source of foreign currency
that the North African country banked on to revive its economy.
The IS
affiliate in Sinai has stepped up its campaign against Egyptian authorities,
killing hundreds of security personnel, since the 2013 military-led ouster of
Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-18/islamic-state-shows-image-of-bomb-said-to-down-russian-plane
At the Comex silver depositories
Wednesday final figures were: Registered 43.34 Moz, Eligible 117.61 Moz, Total
160.95 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, so you want to be a hedge fund manager in
China? With fear spreading and hedgies disappearing for a talk with the
authorities or worse, Shanghai stocks may never fall again! So far, no one at
Credit Swiss or JP Morgan have been called to discuss their oh so clever,
“synthetic shorts.” Unsurprisingly, no one at either firm wanted to comment to
Bloomberg. Uncertainty and anxiety rule the day. Red capitalism 21st century style.
Fear Spreads as China's Finance Firms Face Arrests
The high-drama highway arrest of a prominent hedge fund manager. Seizures of computers and phones at Chinese mutual funds. The investigations of the president of Citic Securities Co. and at least six other employees. Now, add the probe of China’s former gatekeeper of the IPO process himself.The arrests or investigations targeting the finance industry in the aftermath of China’s summer market crash have intensified in recent weeks, creating a climate of fear among China’s finance firms and chilling their investment strategies. At least 16 people have been arrested, are being investigated or have been taken away from their job duties to assist authorities, according to statements and announcements compiled by Bloomberg News.
The authorities’ goal is to root out practices such as insider trading as part of China’s anti-corruption campaign, and a desire by "some in the political leadership to find scapegoats to blame" for the market crash, according to Barry Naughton, a professor of Chinese economy at the University of California in San Diego.
“Together these are creating uncertainty and anxiety that can only undermine the effort to make these markets work better,” he said by e-mail.
Chinese authorities have long encouraged funds and brokerages to create new investment products to keep the finance industry along a development path. Now that’s been halted by regulators’ raids, arrests by police and anti-corruption investigations of even regulators themselves by the Communist Party’s disciplinary committee. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG have scaled back products that allowed foreign investors to bet on stock declines. At least one Chinese research firm has withdrawn information it used to provide to the market, calling it "too sensitive."
The government’s response to the market crash was intervention: state-directed purchases of shares, a ban on initial public offerings and restrictions on previously allowed practices, such as short selling and trading in stock-index futures. Next, high-ranking industry figures came under scrutiny as officials investigated trading strategies, decried “malicious short sellers” and vowed to “purify” the market.
Policy makers say “now we’re innovating, so you can all come in -- using high-frequency trading, hedging, whatever -- to play in our markets,” Gao Xiqing, a former vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, told a forum in Beijing on Nov. 6. “A few days later, you say no, the rules we made are not right, there are problems with your trading, and we’re putting you in jail for a while first.”
----In the latest probe announced last week, Yao Gang, a vice chairman at the CSRC, is under investigation for “alleged serious disciplinary violations,” the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said. Known as China’s "King of IPOs," he supervised China’s initial public offerings until earlier this year, when he changed to approve bonds and futures, according to Caixin magazine. He joins two other CSRC officials being investigated, one of whom, Zhang Yujun, was formerly the general manager of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges.
The securities regulator carried out unannounced inspections of several Chinese investment firms including Harvest Fund Management earlier this month, taking away hard drives and mobile phones, according to people familiar with the seizures. Police in Shanghai also confiscated computers and froze $1 billion of shares in listed companies connected to Xu Xiang, the manager of Zexi Investment known as “hedge fund brother No. 1,” who was arrested Nov. 1 on a highway between Shanghai and Ningbo.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-17/fear-spreads-in-china-finance-amid-unprecedented-arrests-probes
Giant Vampire Squid is causing havoc. He’s eating all the livestock and demanding extortionate bailouts via his henchman the horrible Talking Chair from the G-20. Bankrupt Old King Glencore Coal has decided to marry off his daughter to a rich Prince from a Chinese land far away….
Apologies to Richard Gauntlett.
http://www.panto-scripts.co.uk/html/pantomime-script.html
Solar & Related Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this new section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?
Below, the race for
Iranian contracts is well underway.
German Company Plans 1.25 GW Solar Power Capacity In Iran
November 18th, 2015
Iran continues to attract global interest in its
largely under-developed renewable energy sector.
According to the Iranian news agency, Mehr, the Iran
Energy Ministry has recently signed a deal with a German company to build 1,250
MW of solar
power plants in the Tehran province.
While not naming the German company, the news agency
stated that the company will develop a number of solar power projects across
several provinces in Iran.
Under the deal, 500 MW of solar projects will be
built in Tehran province — including 150 MW in Kahrizak, 200 MW in Varamin, and
150 MW in Malard. Additionally, 750 MW of projects will be constructed in the
central Isfahan and north-western Tabriz regions. The construction of the first
project is expected to commence in early 2016 with expected completion by May
2016.
The German company will be responsible for fully
financing the projects in exchange for long-term power purchase agreements
(PPAs) and 20 years land lease at low rates.
“The envisaged plan is to increase power generation capacity during
the post-sanction era by various means including foreign direct investment,
construction of new solar, wind and incinerator plants as well as building
small-scale plants with distributed generation,” managing director of
the Great Tehran Electrical Distribution company stated.
This deal is a part of Iranian’s government goal to install 5 GW of renewable capacity by 2020. The implementation of 500 MW wind energy
capacity and 100 MW biomass projects has already started.
Several foreign
companies are looking to invest in largely un-tapped
renewable energy market of Iran. A consortium of Iranian, Indian and South
Korean companies aims to set up an energy park in the Khuzestan province in a
$10 billion project consisting of 1 GW of solar power capacity. Also,
German companies are expected to begin building wind
farms in Iran from next year.
https://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/18/german-company-plans-1-25-gw-solar-power-capacity-iran/
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October
DJIA: +31 Down. NASDAQ:
+125 Down. SP500: +53 Down.
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