Baltic Dry Index. 1476 -71 Brent Crude 64.50
Bah humbug!
Ebenezer Squid.
In the stock markets
run down to the Christmas – New Year subdued holiday trading season, the US tax
cut hype seems to have been fully priced in. Not to worry, the week is ending
with new concerns rising for 2018.
Catalans go to the
polls today, on what is effectively a referendum on splitting or staying with
Spain. Before pre-election polling entered the quiet period, polling suggested
the vote could go either way. A roll of the dice for Spain. Either way, there
doesn’t seem to be a good outcome.
In South Africa the
ruling ANC party elected a new pro-business leader, who is expected to become
the next RSA president at some point next year. But the ANC also voted to
change the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation.
After land theft, what assets are next in line for theft? Why invest in theft
prone South Africa, when next door Zimbabwe is so much cheaper and turning over
a new leaf.
Below, some of this
morning’s concerns.
Asian Equities Mixed as Cheer Ebbs Over Tax Cuts: Markets Wrap
By Boris Korby
Updated on 21 December 2017, 06:09 GMT
Stocks
in Asia were mixed after U.S. equities dipped in the wake of congressional
passage of U.S. tax cuts, suggesting investors see
the growth-boost narrative from the corporate and individual rate reductions as
having played out.
Benchmark gauges in Sydney and Seoul fell, while those in Hong Kong and
Shanghai rose. The S&P 500 Index gave back a rally of as much as 0.4
percent to close down for the session in New York. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index
was down 0.1 percent. Treasuries declined Wednesday, with 10-year yields
touching 2.5 percent for the first time since March before slipping back
Thursday. The euro is within a cent of its high for the month.
"It seems that for the moment stock traders appear to feel the good
news is priced in," Greg McKenna, Sydney-based chief market
strategist at CFD and FX provider AxiTrader, said of the tax cuts.
The
Bank of Japan left monetary stimulus unchanged in the final policy meeting of
2017. Governor Haruhiko Kuroda holds a press conference at 3:30 p.m in Tokyo,
and traders will be eager for insights into the policy path for 2018, as well
as any hints as to whether he wants to stay at the helm after his term ends in
April. Taiwan is also expected to leave interest rates unchanged.
Elsewhere,
investors will be watching the outcome of regional elections in Catalonia
on Thursday that give voters another chance to express their view on whether
the region should press ahead with its fight to break away or remain within
Spain. South Africa’s rand continued to whipsaw investors, reversing gains of
as much as 1.1 percent after the ruling African National Congress agreed to
seek a change in the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land
without compensation.
More
Greek Shipper Bets $1 Billion on Fuel Rule Upending World Trade
By Firat Kayakiran
A Greek shipowner is predicting new rules for marine fuel will put
thousands of the world’s merchant vessels out of business in the next two
years, roiling global trade. In fact, he’s wagering $1.1 billion on it.
Evangelos Marinakis, chairman of Capital Maritime & Trading Corp.,
based near Athens, says his company has invested that much in the last 18
months to upgrade its 71 ships spanning from oil tankers to container carriers.
The rules, designed to clean up vessel emissions, will benefit more modern
vessels and contribute to sending many older ones to the scrapyard, Marinakis
said.
“As much as a quarter of the current fleet could be scrapped,” Marinakis
said in an interview in London, where he also has an office. More than 20
percent of the 95,000-ship global fleet is over 15 years old, too old for
additional investments. “This could have an adverse impact on world trade,”
added Marinakis, who founded his first shipping company in 1991 at the age of
24.
It’s
a bold prediction -- one critics say is overblown -- but something is clear:
the changes are creating expensive complications for owners. As of Jan. 1,
2020, the entire fleet, handling about 90 percent of global trade, must reduce
the amount of sulfur vessels belch into the atmosphere, under rules adopted
last year by the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency.
----The
shipping industry sees challenges on several fronts, noting that few vessels
have been equipped with the scrubbers needed to reduce sulfur pollution and too
few refineries churn out enough of the cleaner fuel needed to meet demand.
More
In cryptocurrency
mania news, has bitcoin entered a bear market?
Did North Korea steal South Korea’s bitcoins? If so, what does that say
about the safety of cryptocurrencies? Could America’s NSA or GB’s GCHQ do the
same if ordered to?
Is Bitcoin in a Bear Market When It's Still Up 1,600% for Year?
By Eric Lam
Bitcoin has yet to redefine the global payments system. But it
could raise questions about how to define a bear market.
Stock strategists -- and financial journalists -- typically use a 20
percent tumble from a high as the trigger for calling a bear market. Bitcoin at
one point on Wednesday met that description, according to Bloomberg’s composite
price. The low for the day was 20 percent below the record, set way back ... on
Monday.
It marks the first time for bitcoin to slide into bear-market territory
since last month. There have now been three bear-market dips for bitcoin just
since August.
By contrast, the S&P 500 Index of stocks last saw a bear market in
2009. When Wells Fargo & Co., the American bank with a market
capitalization roughly the size of bitcoin, last saw a bear market for its
shares the drop took more than a year to materialize -- from July 2015 to
October 2016.
The
latest bitcoin slide comes amid a whirlwind of news in crypto-land,
including a rising profile for rival bitcoin cash and the bankruptcy of a South
Korean exchange that suffered a cyber attack. For those who bought at the start
of the year, the consolation for being in a bear market is that they’re still
up more than 1,600 percent.
North Korea Is Suspect in Hack of Seoul Bitcoin Exchange
By Kanga KongYapian, the owner of bitcoin exchange Youbit, said Tuesday that it would close and enter bankruptcy proceedings after a cyberattack that claimed 17 percent of its total assets. It was also hit by an attack in April that local media have linked to North Korean hackers.
Police investigators and the Korea Internet and Security Agency are viewing the case as an extension of the April attack, according to the person, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. While they aren’t ruling out North Korea as a suspect, they are also open to all other possibilities, the person said.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that investigators saw telltale signs that North Korea was behind the Youbit attack. Spokespersons for both the police and Korea’s internet security body couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
North Korea has used an army of hackers to try and raise cash as the U.S. has stepped up sanctions in a bid to thwart Kim Jong Un’s push for the ability to strike the American homeland with a nuclear weapon. Earlier this week, the U.S. blamed North Korea for the WannaCry ransomware attack that affected hundreds of thousands of computers globally this year.
More
E*Trade to Let Clients Trade Cboe Bitcoin Futures Contracts
By Annie MassaCboe futures are “now available,” the New York-based online brokerage wrote on its website late Wednesday. A spokesman confirmed the move.
Cboe and CME Group Inc., two of the largest U.S. exchange operators, introduced futures based on bitcoin over the past two weeks. TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. and Ally Financial Inc.’s Ally Invest already said they will let users invest in contracts. Interactive Brokers Group Inc. facilitates both long and short positions, letting clients bet prices may rise or fall.
More
Christmas
is coming and the geese are getting fat, Please put a trillion in the bitcoin
hat. If you haven’t got a trillion a billion will do, If you haven’t got a
billion, God damn you!
Ebenezer
Squid.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, something to make you wonder. Bullish or bearish for the
cryptocurrencies? Since I think they are
a scam, I think you can guess why I think we will see more insiders cashing
out.
Litecoin Founder Cashes Out, Sells Entire Stake After 9,300% Rally
Dec
20, 2017 8:13 AM
Charlie
Lee, the creator of the world’s fifth-biggest cryptocurrency, Litecoin,
announced shortly after midnight that he was cashing in his profits after a
torrid, 9,300% rally in the past 12 months. In a post on reddit, the San
Francisco-based software engineer who founded litecoin in 2013, said that he
sold and donated all of his holdings over the past few days.
"Litecoin has been very good for me financially, so I am well off
enough that I no longer need to tie my financial success to Litecoin’s success.
For the first time in 6+ years, I no longer own a single LTC that’s not stored
in a physical Litecoin" Lee said in the post.
Lee explained that his liquidation was aimed at preventing a “conflict
of interest” when the creator of what is known as "Bitcoin Silver"
makes comments on twitter about the digital currency - something he tends to do
with chronic zeal - that could influence its price, he said. That said, Lee
declined to comment in the post on how many coins he sold or at what price, and
asked readers to please "don’t ask me how many coins I sold or at what
price. I can tell you that the amount of coins was a small percentage of
GDAX’s daily volume and it did not crash the market."
Litecoin, which was trading at $3.67 on December 20, 2016, and $4.40 at the start of the year, has climbed 9,300% in the past 12 month. It tumbled on Wednesday, following most digital currencies lower after a flash crash in bitcoin after Coinbase announced it would finally transact in Bitcoin Cash which led to a brief avalanche of selling as traders repositioned.
However, Lee insisted in his post that his sale wasn’t a sign that he has lost faith in the cryptocurrency: “I will still spend all my time working on litecoin,” he said. “When litecoin succeeds, I will still be rewarded in lots of different ways, just not directly via ownership of coins.”
How does it feel to take profits on a high from the crypto boom that has been described as the biggest financial bubble of all time? “Weird” but also “somehow refreshing,” Lee wrote.
His full post below:
This is the way things are,
and the Game has been so successful that, like everything, it will get more and
more successful until it stops being successful.
George
Goodman, aka Adam Smith, The Money Game. 1968.
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?
Getting under graphite’s skin: method of layering metals with 2D material may lead to new properties
Date:
December 17, 2017
Source:
Ames Laboratory
Summary:
Scientists have discovered a new process to sheathe metal under a single layer
of graphite which may lead to new and better-controlled properties for these
types of materials.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have
discovered a new process to sheathe metal under a single layer of graphite
which may lead to new and better-controlled properties for these types of
materials.
Graphene -- two-dimensional graphite -- was first produced in 2004, and
because electrons move rapidly along its surface, holds great promise as a useful
material in applications as diverse as quantum computing, solar cells,
catalysis, and sensing. In order for graphene to live up to that potential,
fundamental discovery science at Ames Laboratory is working to master its
assembly in combination with other materials -- a tricky, delicate process
performed in ultra-high vacuum lab environments at the atomic scale.
The researchers encapsulated dysprosium, a magnetic rare-earth metal, by
bombarding the top layer of bulk graphite with ions to create defects on its
surface, followed by high-temperature deposition of the metal. It resulted in
"mesas" or islands of dysprosium underneath a single layer of
graphene. The formations are significantly different than anything the
Laboratory's two-dimensional materials experts have ever seen.
"It's well-known that certain metals can be embedded between bulk
graphite layers," said Research Assistant Ann Lii-Rosales. "But these
mesas form at the top graphite surface only, and they are pure metal composed
of multilayers, which is a first. The combined properties of the metal plus
graphene may be very different than other, previously produced materials.
That's something we're exploring now."
The researchers were also able to achieve the same mesa-like formations
with two transition metals, ruthenium and copper.
"That suggests we have a very adaptable recipe for producing this
kind of surface material, which makes its discovery very exciting in terms of
potential applications," said Pat Thiel, an Ames Laboratory scientist and
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at
Iowa State University. "If we can control the process so that we can
deliberately pattern the formation of these little metal slabs, perhaps we can
harness and control their magnetic and electronic properties."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171217073937.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to
do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.
George Bernard Shaw, Man
and Superman, 1903.
Once again another year draws
to a close. If you are one of the regular readers of this six days a week
update that helps support my efforts with the occasional donation via the
Paypal button, once again I sincerely thank you. If you are a regular reader
who finds the LIR informative, interesting, occasionally amusing or
entertaining, please consider making a small donation via the Paypal button on
the LIR website. For obvious reasons in our new age of almost rampant fake
news, I want to keep the LIR advertising free. But in any event thank you for
reading and sending in helpful suggestions.
Set in Camelot, Arthur and Guinevere have a daughter. At the
Blessing of Princess Aurora, Janet Yellen arrives and sets an evil curse on the
child, forcing the child into paying off the exploding national debt. Lurking
darkly in the White House, President Trump promises to double it. With apologies to Richard Gauntlett author of pantomime scripts.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November
DJIA: 24,272 +243 Up. NASDAQ: 6,874 +289 Up. SP500: 2,648 +189 Up.
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