Baltic
Dry Index. 1458
+13
Brent Crude 63.62
Today,
another stock market wobble or the start of something more? I
suspect something more, but it
all depends on whether you’re in the business to make your money by
peddling stocks to
greater fools,
or analysing stocks for investment rather than gambling speculation.
But
on the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, communist money, August
15, 1971, insane leveraged derivatives gambling, asset stripping, and
debt driven stock buyback manipulation, and
central bankster rigged markets long
ago trumped everything else. Central bankster corporate socialism,
long ago replaced capitalism, with not altogether happy results. Is
2018 the year financial Armageddon arrives?
Sadly,
I suspect that the answer is yes.
Normal
service resumes tomorrow, if Microsoft ever get my Office 365 suite
to work again. On to day 6 using LibreOffice. There
is nothing like a work around challenge.
Asian shares fall from decade peak as China falters
November
28, 2017 / 12:54 AM .
SYDNEY
(Reuters) - Asian shares stepped back from decade highs on Tuesday as
Chinese stocks stumbled for a second straight session, while the U.S.
dollar trod water ahead of a crucial Senate vote on tax reform.
Investor
confidence in China has been dented by rising bond yields as Beijing
steps up its crackdown on shadow banking and other risky forms of
financing. Higher borrowing costs threaten to squeeze corporate
profits.
Mainland stocks have jumped 22
percent in 2017, with the gains concentrated in a handful of large
index-weighted stocks. The index was down 0.3 percent while
Shanghai’s SSE Composite index slipped 0.2 percent at 0221 GMT.
“The aspect of poor breadth and
participation was actually the point for Chinese authorities who have
been concerned with the equity market continually heading higher on
very low participation,” said Chris Weston, Melbourne-based chief
strategist at IG Markets.
“The question is whether further
downside in Chinese mainland equities continues in the session ahead
and will there be a spillover into Hong Kong and potentially even
Japan, Korea and Australia?”
MSCI’s broadest index of
Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.3 percent from last
week’s high of 570.21 points. It was on track to end November in
the black.
The index has been on an uptrend most
of this year, posting a monthly loss only once in 2017.
Australian shares were flat while
Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.2 percent.
Wall Street had been mixed on Monday,
with the S&P 500 off a touch, the Nasdaq losing 0.1 percent and
the Dow up 0.1 percent.
More
Market's Numbness to Risk Reminds of Calm Before Storm: Axioma
By Andrew Janes
November
28, 2017, 3:18 AM GMT
There’s “somewhat of a numbness”
to risk among investors right now that’s reminiscent of pre-crisis
periods in the past, according to Olivier d’Assier, head of applied
research for Asia Pacific at Axioma Inc.
Singapore-based d’Assier, who
develops stress tests around various scenarios for clients of the
investment risk-management firm, points to the lack of reaction to
the recent jump in the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s SPX
Volatility Index. The gauge, known as the VIX index, surged from
10.18 percent at the end of October to as high as 14.51 percent on
Nov. 15, a three-month intraday high.
“A couple of years ago, when there
was a 6, 9, 10 percent increase in the VIX Index, everybody
panicked,” he said. But “nobody cared, everybody jumped in”
when the measure shot up this month, d’Assier said.
D’Assier shared his views in an
interview last week:
Why is the market so risk-tolerant right now?
-
“We started the year with a very, very heavy geopolitical agenda” including elections in France, Holland, Germany. “All of these things were on the agenda and all of these things had the possibility to go wrong,” because the market got Brexit and Trump’s election wrong. “Volumes kept going down until after the French elections when, suddenly, it’s OK, it’s not as bad as it could have been”
-
“Now, everybody is risk-tolerant. There’s hardly any risk-averse people in the market.” Cash positions are at 3, 4, 5 percent, compared with 20 percent at the start of the year
more
Back
in the EUSSR, situation normal. Rules optional, political
interference in judicial matters, unstable government. In
Brexit, it’s become starkly obvious to all, Juncker and Barnier are
simply not up to the job. What’s
not to dislike about the unreformed, unreformable, wealth
and jobs destroying EUSSR.
November
27, 2017 / 12:32 PM .
EU Council says ECB does not have mandate for its bad loan measures.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European
Central Bank does not have the mandate for its plan to ask euro area
banks to set aside more cash to cover bad loans, the European Union
Council said in a legal opinion, in a further blow to the ECB
proposal.
To
prevent a pile-up of new bad debt on top of an existing stock of sour
loans worth nearly 850 billion euros (£760.01 trillion), the ECB
wants to introduce new guidelines including a two-year deadline for
lenders to raise provisions from January for any newly classified
non-performing unsecured debt.
The draft plan is out for public
consultation until next week and has run into opposition from various
quarters including the European parliament and now the EU Council,
the bloc’s other legislative body which represents its members’
governments.
The council’s non-binding document,
seen by Reuters and dated Nov. 23, said the law governing the ECB’s
supervisory powers over euro zone banks “prevents the ECB from
adopting instruments of soft law, such as the draft addendum to the
ECB guidance to banks on non-performing loans.”
The ECB cannot adopt measures
“intended to ensure compliance by banks of criteria for minimum
provisioning which are not, or not yet, the object of harmonisation
by the EU legislator,” it said.
This
echoes the stance of the European Parliament’s legal services that
the ECB would be overstepping its authority with its proposed
guidelines.
EU rules say supervisors can impose
binding capital measures on specific banks but not on the entire
banking system.
The chair of the ECB supervisory
body, Daniele Nouy, said guidelines do not equate with laws. She has
defended her plan but hinted at the possibility of postponing its
entry into force.
The document will be discussed by EU
states’ economic envoys on Tuesday when they meet to prepare the
monthly gathering of EU finance ministers, EU officials said.
More
November
27, 2017 / 11:00 AM .
Ireland on the verge of snap election as crisis deepens
DUBLIN
(Reuters) - Ireland was on the verge of a snap election on Monday
after the opposition party propping up the minority government said
the deputy prime minister’s refusal to quit would force the country
to the polls next month.
The
political crisis that deepened dramatically late on Monday has left
the country’s two main parties with less than 24 hours to head off
a general election in a dispute that cast a shadow over a key Brexit
summit next month.
Ireland
will play a major role at the meeting, telling EU leaders whether it
believes sufficient progress has been made on the future of the
border between EU-member Ireland and the British province of Northern
Ireland.
The pressure on Deputy Prime Minister
Frances Fitzgerald of Varadkar’s Fine Gael party mounted on Monday
following the release of fresh documents about her disputed handling
of a police whistleblower who alleged corruption in the force.
Fianna Fail, whose backing Varadkar
requires from the opposition benches to keep his government
functioning, has said it will move a motion of no confidence in
Fitzgerald at 2000 GMT on Tuesday unless she quits, a position that
hardened on Monday.
----Varadkar has insisted that if the
motion is not withdrawn, he will be forced to hold an election before
Christmas, a prospect EU officials say would complicate the EU Brexit
summit on Dec. 14-15.
A compromise had appeared possible
earlier in the day when senior members of both parties struck a more
conciliatory tone, but the momentum shifted instantly upon the
release of the new documents.
----However some Fine Gael members
who spoke on condition of anonymity were livid, and local media
reported that a number of the party’s ministers privately said she
must step down.
The headline on the front page of
Tuesday’s Irish Examiner newspaper read, “Ministers desert
Fitzgerald as pressure rises.”
More
SocGen to Take Fourth-Quarter Charges of as Much as $678 Million
By Fabio Benedetti Valentini
November
27, 2017, 9:18 PM GMT Updated on November 27, 2017, 9:57 PM GMT
Societe
Generale SA expects to book exceptional charges of about 570
million euros ($678 million) in the fourth quarter, related to
tax changes and a plan to cut additional jobs in France.
As many as 900 job cuts may take
place at its domestic retail banking business, resulting in a charge
of about 400 million euros, Societe
Generale said in a statement late on Monday. That’s on the top
of the 2,550 positions the bank has already said it will eliminate.
SocGen will take another exceptional expense related to three tax
changes.
The
bank announced the surprise charges as SocGen Chief Executive Officer
Frederic Oudea presents his third set of financial targets since the
global credit crisis to investors in Paris on Tuesday. He’s betting
that a push in tech investments and mobile banking will bolster
revenue and profitability. The new targets envisage progressive
growth of the dividend and improved profitability with “strictly
managed” market risks, according to a separate statement.
“ In a European banking sector
undergoing radical industrial change, the group is ready to enter
into a new phase of its development and transformation,” Oudea, 54,
said.
The bank’s new targets include the
goal to generate 3.6 billion euros of additional revenue within three
years as it prioritizes key clients. It also plans to close or sell
some businesses and reduce by about 15 percent its banking branch
network in France.
More
Norway Wants Michel Barnier to Recognize the Special Status of Britain’s Top Gas Supplier
By Sveinung Sleire
November
27, 2017, 2:20 PM GMT Updated on November 27, 2017, 11:01 PM GMT
As
it girds for the possibility that Britain and the EU won’t reach a
Brexit deal before the end of the year, Norway wants Europe’s chief
negotiator, Michel Barnier, to acknowledge the special status of the
U.K.’s biggest gas supplier.
“Things are time-critical and it’s
important to secure real agreements over the days and weeks we have
up to the EU summit in the middle of December,” Marit Berger
Rosland, Norway’s EU and EEA Affairs Minister, said in an interview
at the Foreign Ministry in Oslo. But comments by Barnier also suggest
“we have to be prepared for a no-deal scenario.”
Scandinavia’s richest country and
western Europe’s biggest oil and gas exporter is working hard to
ensure it doesn’t lose out in any transitional accord struck
between the EU and Britain once it leaves the bloc. Norway provides
about 40 percent of the U.K.’s energy needs, and is keen to defend
its access to the EU’s single market as a member of the European
Economic Area.
“Our
core message to Barnier is that Norway isn’t just any ordinary
third-party country,” she said.
Reiterating a position held
by her predecessor, Rosland said there was an understanding in
Oslo that “any transition solutions will also be applied to
Norway.” The 39-year-old minister says her message to the U.K.
government is that it should work to “safeguard its interests with
key partners, including Norway.”
Norway is also doing what it can to
prepare for the possibility that Brexit talks won’t end in an
agreement.
More
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The
bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Presented
without need for comment, still just imagine if a US company was
caught employing 800 illegals in the EUSSR.
Chicago Immigration Raid Leaves Swiss Baker Scrambling to Restaff
By Thomas Mulier
November
27, 2017, 11:02 AM GMT Updated on November 27, 2017, 12:02 PM GMT
A
Swiss maker of hamburger buns for McDonald’s
Corp.
said it’s struggling to run a Chicago bakery after it lost a
third of its workers in a clampdown on 800 immigrants without
sufficient documentation.
About 35 percent of the workers at
Cloverhill Bakery
had to be replaced, according to Zurich-based Aryzta
AG. The company, which makes baked goods for fast-food chains and
supermarkets, said the employees were supplied by a job-placement
agency that faced federal audits earlier this year.
“It’s proceeding very, very
slowly because it’s like having a brand new factory and a brand new
workforce,” Chief Executive Officer Kevin Toland said on a call
with analysts. “That’s presenting a lot of challenges, as you can
imagine.”
The
raid on workers at Cloverhill is one of the biggest U.S. employment
headaches reported by a European company so far as President Donald
Trump has made curbing undocumented immigration a centerpiece of his
presidency. Aryzta said it faces challenges in retaining staff in the
U.S. and pressure to raise wages.
The Cloverhill issues led to a 7
percent decline in Aryzta’s sales from North America in the three
months through October. The increase in employment costs -- which is
affecting retailers and restaurants nationwide -- will eventually
lead to higher consumer prices, Toland said.
Aryzta wasn’t able to verify
that the workers had the necessary documents to work because they
were brought in by a staffing agency, interim Chief Financial Officer
David Wilkinson said
in September. He also said the board wasn’t aware of the extent of
the risk that existed to the business. The company first reported the
loss of 800 workers at that time.
The Swiss company didn’t name the
staffing company.
Technology Update.
With
events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene,
I’ve added this 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?
Shooting electrons at diamonds can introduce quantum sensors into them
- Date: November 22, 2017
- Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Summary: Researchers have discovered that dense ensembles of quantum spins can be created in diamond with high resolution using an electron microscopes, paving the way for enhanced sensors and resources for quantum technologies. This work demonstrates an improvement in the densities of Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in a variety of diamond types, foreshadowing future improvements in the sensitivity of diamond magnetic measurements, as well as promising directions in the study of solid state physics and quantum information theory.
Researchers
have discovered that dense ensembles of quantum spins can be created
in diamond with high resolution using an electron microscopes, paving
the way for enhanced sensors and resources for quantum technologies.
Diamonds are made of carbon atoms in
a crystalline structure, but if a carbon atom is replaced with
another type of atom, this will result in a lattice defect. One such
defect is the Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV), where one carbon atom is
replaced by a nitrogen atom, and its neighbor is missing (an empty
space remains in its place).
If this defect is illuminated with a
green laser, in response it will emit red light (fluoresce) with an
interesting feature: its intensity varies depending on the magnetic
properties in the environment. This unique feature makes the NV
center particularly useful for measuring magnetic fields, magnetic
imaging (MRI), and quantum computing and information.
In order to produce optimal magnetic
detectors, the density of these defects should be increased without
increasing environmental noise and damaging the diamond properties.
Now, scientists from the research
group of Nir Bar-Gill at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Racah
Institute of Physics and Department of Applied Physics, in
cooperation with Prof. Eyal Buks of the Technion -- Israel Institute
of Technology, have shown that ultra-high densities of NV centers
can be obtained by a simple process of using electron beams to kick
carbon atoms out of the lattice.
This work, published in the
scientific journal Applied Physics Letters, is a
continuation of previous work in the field, and demonstrates an
improvement in the densities of NV centers in a variety of diamond
types. The irradiation is performed using an electron beam
microscope (Transmission Electron Microscope or TEM), which has been
specifically converted for this purpose. The availability of this
device in nanotechnology centers in many universities in Israel and
around the world enables this process with high spatial accuracy,
quickly and simply.
----"This
work is an important stepping stone toward utilizing NV centers in
diamond as resources for quantum technologies, such as enhanced
sensing, quantum simulation and potentially quantum information
processing," said Bar-Gill, an Assistant Professor in the Dept.
of Applied Physics and Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew
University, where he founded the Quantum Information, Simulation and
Sensing lab.
"What is special about our
approach is that it's very simple and straightforward," said
Hebrew University researcher Dima Farfurnik. "You get
sufficiently high NV concentrations that are appropriate for many
applications with a simple procedure that can be done in-house."
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October
DJIA:
23,277 +233 Up.
NASDAQ:
6,728 +284 Up.
SP500:
2,575 +183 Up.
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