Wednesday 16 May 2018

Is It All Over?


Baltic Dry Index. 1468 -06     Brent Crude 78.22

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.

Is it all over?  Have we passed peak global recovery? Passed peak stocks? Passed the low of ZIRP? Passed the low of low oil prices? Passed peak détente with North Korea? Passed the last chance of avoiding the all against all war in the Middle East? Passed Pax 
Americana?

While the jury’s still out, it’s risk off in a hurry and then some this morning. Suddenly Germany and Japan are slowing. US preconditions are jeopardising next month’s Trump v Kim summit in Singapore. The Middle East is stumbling towards its next war. The Great Global Trump Trade War is just two weeks away. Bunker time.

May 16, 2018 / 4:33 AM

Japan's economy shrinks in first quarter, ends 2-year run of growth

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s economy contracted more than expected at the start of this year, suggesting growth has peaked after the best run of expansion in decades, unwelcome news for a government struggling to get traction for its reflationary policies.

Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, shrank by 0.6 percent on an annualized basis, a much more severe contraction than the median estimate for an annualized 0.2 percent decline.

The contraction, which was driven by a decline in investment and consumption and weaker exports, comes as Japan Inc worries about the possible effect of U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies on global trade.

Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said there was no change to the government’s view that the economy was recovering moderately, predicting a resumption in growth to be driven mainly by private consumption and capital expenditure.

“But we need to be mindful of the impact of overseas economic uncertainty and market volatility,” he said.

External demand - or exports minus imports - added 0.1 percentage point to first-quarter GDP, as imports slowed more than exports.
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May 16, 2018 / 3:57 AM

Nikkei falls as US yield spike, North Korea worries weigh; MUFG tumbles

TOKYO, May 16 (Reuters) - Japanese stocks edged lower on Wednesday morning as sentiment was knocked by a surge in U.S. Treasury yields to seven-year highs and after Pyongyang called off talks with Seoul, throwing a major U.S.-North Korean summit into question.

Data earlier showing the world’s third-biggest economy suffered a deeper-than-expected contraction in the first-quarter also checked buyers.

The Nikkei declined 0.3 percent to 22,747.92 in midmorning trade, with the banking sector underperforming, falling 1.2 percent.

Japan’s economy contracted a more than expected 0.6 percent in the January-March period on an annualised basis, putting an end to eight straight quarters of expansion.

In the U.S. market overnight, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes jumped to its highest level since July 2011, driven by upbeat consumer spending and factory data.

“Overseas stocks are weaker, yields are higher while gold prices were lower... very unstable moves, and these price moves are making investors risk-averse,” said Yoshinori Shigemi, global markets strategist JP Morgan Asset Management. Investors were also cautious about developments on the Korean peninsula, after North Korea cancelled high-level talks with Seoul, denouncing military exercises between South Korea and the United States.

That has raised doubts about the planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart leader Kim Jong Un scheduled next month

Wednesday’s big losers included Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, which slumped more than 5 percent after the bank’s annual net profit missed analyst estimates and on disappointment over the size of a share buyback plan.
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May 15, 2018 / 8:06 PM

North Korea says may reconsider summit with Trump, suspends talks with South

The North’s official KCNA news agency said earlier on Wednesday Pyongyang had called off high-level talks with Seoul in the first sign of trouble in what had been warming ties.

Citing first vice minister of foreign affairs Kim Kye Gwan, KCNA also said the fate of the U.S.-North Korea summit, as well as bilateral relations, “would be clear” if Washington spoke of a “Libya-style” denuclearisation for the North.

“If the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit,” Kim Kye Gwan said, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We have already stated our intention for denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and made clear on several occasions that precondition for denuclearisation is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail of the United States,” he said.

The statements, combined with joint military drills by South Korean and U.S. warplanes, mark a dramatic reversal in tone from recent months when both sides embraced efforts to negotiate.

North Korea had announced it would publicly shut its nuclear test site next week. Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet in Singapore on June 12.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday the United States would agree to lift sanctions on North Korea if it agreed to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.

However, Kim Kye Gwan’s statement appeared to reject such an arrangement, saying North Korea would never give up its nuclear programme in exchange for economic trade with the United States.
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The true costs of very low interest rates

Artificial distortions can cause ‘clusters of errors’ by businesses
Caitlin Long  August 11, 2010

Markets tend to cheer falling interest rates. Low interest rates, however, can entail real economic costs that become evident over time.

During the earlier period of monetary stimulus, from 2001-04, many businesses made economic calculation errors that later led to losses. Examples include investments in housing, commercial real estate and mining exploration, as well as the provision of defined benefit pensions to employees.

Interest rates are the most important prices in the economy, according to Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek, because they reflect the collective time preference of individuals to consume either now or later. Accordingly, interest rates co-ordinate allocation of capital across the economy by signalling to businesses whether they should invest. Distortions in interest rates can cause “clusters of errors” in which large swathes of businesses unwittingly miscalculate at the same time.
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Next, curiouser and curiouser. Someone is rigging Wall Street’s “Fear Index.” Cui bono? The New York Fed? How? Well, you didn’t think Wall Street was honest, did you?

Wall Street’s ‘fear index’ is giving stock-market investors a wrong reading, says Goldman

Published: May 15, 2018 10:09 a.m. ET
Something is off with one measure of volatility on Wall Street.

According to Goldman Sachs strategists, the Cboe Volatilty Index VIX, +9.20% often referred to as Wall Street’s “fear index,” is too low given the recent gyrations of the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.54%
Goldman analysts Rocky Fishman and John Marshall said that the VIX, which uses options bets on the S&P 500 to reflect expected volatility over the coming 30 days, has been hovering at or below 13, marking its lowest level since around January (though it is tipping up in Monday trade). Its current level takes the gauge of implied volatility, which tends to rise when stocks fall and vice versa, well below its historic average at about 19.5 since the fear index ripped higher in February.

The VIX’s surge about three months ago ushered in an abrupt end to a protracted period of calm that had persisted among a series of repeated records for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.64% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.70% in 2017 and the first month of 2018.

In a Friday note, Fishman and Marshall wrote that “there is a mismatch between how little SPX options cost (June straddle with over five weeks to maturity costs 3%) and how much the SPX has been moving (3.5% rally over the past five trading days). The VIX is in the 13’s, yet economic data are consistent with a VIX over 15, and its normal relationship with realized volatility would put it above 18.”

----In the research note, Fishman and Marshall also measure the difference between the VIX and realized volatility, and conclude that the volatility index is low compared with the actual level of volatility in the market.

Moreover, although this disconnect appears to be happening with other indexes across the globe, it appears to be prominent in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, they said (see chart below):

----The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the number of VIX futures contracts outstanding has declined precipitously since early February. That is despite what has been perceived as a pickup in volatility, as Goldman notes. The Journal reported that average daily volumes “slumped in April to the lowest level in more than a year, even as trading of futures and options in other markets rose.”

What’s more, regulators including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority all have opened investigations into VIX trading, seeking evidence of alleged manipulation.

A spokeswoman at Cboe declined to comment.
Check out: How Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ is being rigged, according to one whistleblower


Finally, the bureaucrats paradise of the EUSSR. Despite Brexit, the EU’s slowing and in trouble.  “Don’t worry, it’s a temporary thing,” say all the European experts who’ve never seen a recession coming, nor ever seen a top in the stock market as it was forming. But what if they’re wrong. Well Holger at Berenberg Bank has a cover position; blame it all on President Trump!
“The international environment remains fairly good unless Trump totally spoils it, the domestic environment is very good,” said Holger Schmieding at Berenberg Bank in London. “The German economic outlook looks good despite a dent now.”

German Economy Stumbles as Europe Suffers Setback in Growth

By Piotr Skolimowski
15 May 2018, 07:12 GMT+1 Updated on 15 May 2018, 12:34 GMT+1
Economic growth slowed across Europe at the start of the year, with Germany seeing its pace of expansion cut in half amid weaker trade.

The 0.3 percent increase in Europe’s largest economy was softer than forecast and the weakest in more than a year. Dutch and Portuguese growth also cooled more than expected in the first quarter, while a similar trend was seen across central and eastern Europe.

A deceleration in euro-area momentum to 0.4 percent was confirmed, while investors’ expectations for the outlook remained close to the lowest since 2016. That raises the question for the European Central Bank whether this is merely a soft patch or indicative of something more alarming.
So far, officials have largely dismissed the sluggish start to the year -- blaming factors such as colder weather -- and expressed confidence that weakness will dissipate. Speaking on Monday, ECB Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau argued that euro-area growth remains solid and broad-based and that policy makers were still likely to halt asset purchases this year.
The European Commission has also downplayed concerns and this month maintained its forecast that full-year growth will almost match the decade-high pace hit in 2017. Still, there are threats, including rising trade protectionism and a stronger euro that could act as dampers on the expansion in Germany and the euro zone.

Some of those issues were highlighted by the International Monetary Fund in a report published Tuesday. While it sees “strong growth” for now, the “favorable outlook is subject to several risks that are mainly to the downside over the medium term.”

Germany’s statistics office said first-quarter growth was bolstered by a pickup in equipment investment and construction and a slight increase in private consumption. Government spending declined for the first time in almost five years, with exports and imports also down.

The Economy Ministry said on Tuesday that the upturn “remains intact.” Just last week, Siemens AG raised its outlook for full-year earnings, and HeidelbergCement AG said the economic upswing will boost construction activity in its major markets after a long winter held back first-quarter results.

While shrugging off the recent weakness, the ECB said last month that global risks have become “more prominent.” The ZEW institute said Tuesday that trade concerns, the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and higher oil prices are having a “negative impact” on the outlook.
“The international environment remains fairly good unless Trump totally spoils it, the domestic environment is very good,” said Holger Schmieding at Berenberg Bank in London. “The German economic outlook looks good despite a dent now.”
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“I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.”

 Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, those bent, seriously bent, and totally doubled over US banksters again. They can resist anything except the temptation to break the law with impunity. But is it banking and why do these criminals still have banking licences?
“George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two.”
Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat. Real banking.

Did Morgan Stanley Smith Barney File a Suspicious Activity Report on Michael Cohen’s Account?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 11, 2018
There’s a guy in Manhattan who’s sleeping about as well as Michael Cohen these days. That’s the broker at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney who opened the brokerage account for Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. According to a document posted at the Twitter page of Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, this fellow may have some explaining to do to the Feds if he didn’t file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) with the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known on the street as FinCEN.

Avenatti’s document shows the following regarding a Morgan Stanley Smith Barney account:
“From  July 13, 2017 through  September  8,  2017,  Mr. Cohen deposited three checks in the amounts of $505,000,  $250,000, and $250,000 in his Morgan  Stanley account.

“Each deposit was remitted from an account held at First Republic Bank in the name of Essential Consultants, LLC.”

Essential Consultants LLC is the account from which Cohen made the payment of $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels. It is also the account that was receiving over $3 million in corporate funds, including more than $1.6 million from two foreign companies and a company linked to the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, now on a U.S. sanctions list and closely tied to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Brokers on Wall Street are required to thoroughly understand the “Know Your Customer” rule. That means they must thoroughly understand how the client is earning the money he is depositing into the account to make sure it is coming from a legitimate source. Brokers must also take continuing education classes to stay abreast of the latest regulatory interpretations of the Know Your Customer rule and the anti-money laundering statutes.

If there is any one point that these continuing education courses overly emphasize, it is that the broker needs to be on extra high alert if their client is politically connected or a foreign entity. Obviously, that’s to guard against the potential for washing money.

FinCEN guidelines require that a Suspicious Activity Report must be filed where funds are suspected of involving any of the following circumstances:

---- Would a major U.S. financial institution ever actually facilitate criminal money laundering? The best person to ask about that is former Senator Carl Levin who previously chaired the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and took a hard look at the matter in the late 1990s.
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney resulted from Smith Barney being bought in several transactions by Morgan Stanley beginning in 2009 and finalizing in 2012. Morgan Stanley is one of the largest investment banks and brokerage firms on Wall Street. Smith Barney had been the brokerage subsidiary of Citigroup, parent of the large commercial bank, Citibank.

According to an investigation by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Citibank’s private bank has held accounts for what Levin called “a rogues’ gallery of private bank clients.” At a Subcommittee hearing in 1999, Levin detailed some of those clients as follows:
“– Raul Salinas, brother to the former President of Mexico; now in prison in Mexico for murder and under investigation in Mexico for illicit enrichment [Salinas had his murder conviction overturned on appeal];
“– Asif Ali Zardari, husband to the former Prime Minister of Pakistan; now in prison in Pakistan for kickbacks and under indictment in Switzerland for money laundering;
“– Omar Bongo, President of Gabon; subject of a French criminal investigation into bribery;
“– sons of the General Sani Abacha, former military leader of Nigeria; one of whom is now in prison in Nigeria on charges of murder and under investigation in Switzerland and Nigeria for money laundering;
“– Jaime Lusinchi, former President of Venezuela; charged with misappropriation of government funds;
“– two daughters of Radon Suharto, former President of Indonesia, who has been alleged to have looted billions of dollars from Indonesia; and, it appears,
“– General Albert Stroessner, former President of Paraguay and notorious for decades for a dictatorship based on terror and profiteering.”

Amy Elliott, a Relationship Manager at Citibank who handled the Raul Salinas account was portrayed in a dubious light during the hearing. Robert Roach, Counsel to the Senate investigation, testified that the Relationship Manager’s role is to function as “in-house advocates” for the interests of their clients. Roach explained the services provided to Raul Salinas as follows:

---- Other than Citigroup’s history, what else would make us think that this big Wall Street brokerage house might not have filed the mandated Suspicious Activity Report? Because that’s exactly what happened at the largest Wall Street bank, JPMorgan Chase, as it laundered money for Bernie Madoff for years.

On January 7, 2014 in a press conference called to announce two felony charges against JPMorgan Chase for its role in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos, and the Director of FinCEN, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, assailed JPMorgan Chase for standing idly by while brazen money laundering occurred under its nose in the business bank account it held for Bernard Madoff while also ignoring its legally mandated duty to file Suspicious Activity Reports.

The gross dereliction of its duty was illustrated in a 2011 court complaint filed against JPMorgan by 
Irving Picard, the trustee of the Madoff victims’ fund. Picard told the court that “during 2002, Madoff initiated outgoing transactions to [Norman F.] Levy in the precise amount of $986,301 hundreds of times — 318 separate times, to be exact. These highly unusual transactions often occurred multiple times on a single day. As another example, from December 2001 to March 2003, the total monthly dollar amounts coming into the 703 Account from Levy were almost always equal to the total monthly dollar amounts going out of the 703 Account to Levy. There was no clear economic purpose for such repetitive transactions that had no net impact on Levy’s account at BLMIS [Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities]. There was a huge spike in activity between Levy and the 703 Account in December 2001. In that month alone, Madoff engaged in approximately $6.8 billion worth of transactions with Levy…” (The term “703 Account” refers to Madoff’s primary business account at JPMorgan Chase which ended in the numbers “703.”)

And here was the final slap in the face to the U.S. Justice Department and FinCEN by JPMorgan Chase. The Bank did file a Suspicious Activity Report on the Madoff account with the U.K.’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) on October 28, 2008 — but it failed to file the same report with U.S. authorities.
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”
George Orwell. 1984.
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?

How a pinch of salt can improve battery performance

Date: May 14, 2018

Source: Queen Mary University of London

Summary: Researchers have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries.

They found that adding salt to the inside of a supermolecular sponge and then baking it at a high temperature transformed the sponge into a carbon-based structure.

Surprisingly, the salt reacted with the sponge in special ways and turned it from a homogeneous mass to an intricate structure with fibres, struts, pillars and webs. This kind of 3D hierarchically organised carbon structure has proven very difficult to grow in a laboratory but is crucial in providing unimpeded ion transport to active sites in a battery.

In the study, published in JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society), the researchers demonstrate that the use of these materials in Lithium-ion batteries not only enables the batteries to be charged-up rapidly, but also at one of the highest capacities.

Due to their intricate architecture the researchers have termed these structures 'nano-diatoms', and believe they could also be used in energy storage and conversion, for example as electrocatalysts for hydrogen production.

Lead author and project leader Dr Stoyan Smoukov, from Queen Mary's School of Engineering and Materials Science, said: "This metamorphosis only happens when we heat the compounds to 800 degrees centigrade and was as unexpected as hatching fire-born dragons instead of getting baked eggs in the Game of Thrones. It is very satisfying that after the initial surprise, we have also discovered how to control the transformations with chemical composition."

Carbon, including graphene and carbon nanotubes, is a family of the most versatile materials in nature, used in catalysis and electronics because of its conductivity and chemical and thermal stability.
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“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

George Orwell. 1984.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April.

DJIA: 24,163 +255 Down. NASDAQ: 7,066 +282 Down. SP500: 2,648 +188 Down.
All three slow indicators moved down in March and continued down in April. For some a new bear signal, for others a take profits and get back to cash signal. 

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