Baltic Dry Index. 1395 +55 Brent Crude 77.25
People who enjoy meetings
should not be in charge of anything.
Thomas Sowell
Today it’s likely to
be all about Car Crash Canada. President Trump barely conceals his contempt of host
Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau, but then again he barely conceals his contempt
for nearly everyone. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel suggests a new European
leadership role in the world, centred around France and its UN Security Council
veto. Given the civil war state of the dying EUSSR, Italy, Spain and Deutsche
Bank, good luck with that.
Below, Asia’s markets
drift awaiting news from Canada.
Asian markets slide lower, dragged by tech stocks
Published: June 7, 2018 11:15 p.m. ET
Asian markets were drifting lower in early Friday trading, with China and
Hong Kong leading the way with declines around 1%. Korea and Taiwan were down
about half that level, following the pullback in the fellow tech-heavy Nasdaq
in the U.S. overnight. Chinese stocks added to Thursday’s weakness, extending recent underperformance in the region. The Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, -1.25% was off 0.9% in early trading, dragged down by real estate, financials and utilities. Small caps were down similarly despite news that the U.S. has reached a deal with China to allow ZTE to get back to business.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng HSI, -1.23% was off 1.1% after logging a sixth-straight day of gains Thursday. Tech giant Tencent 0700, -2.70% fell more than 2%.
The yen pulled back some following overnight gains as risk aversion cooled again. The dollar USDJPY, -0.04% reached session highs of ¥109.85 versus ¥109.75 at Tokyo’s stock-market open.
Still, the Nikkei NIK, -0.38% was trading down slightly.
South Korean stocks SEU, -0.57% dropped, with Samsung Electronics 005930, -1.48% down more than 1%. Singapore STI, -0.56% , Taiwan Y9999, -0.83% and Australia XJO, -0.04% also fell.
‘Something lurking out there’ will upset the stock market, says Blackstone’s Wien
Published: June 7, 2018 5:28 p.m. ET
Blackstone’s Byron Wien says investors enjoying a recent rally in the stock
market shouldn’t get too comfortable, even if the Wall Street veteran is
optimistic about the domestic economy over the next two or three years.“My feeling is that there’s something lurking out there, Carl, that is going to upset the market and it’s probably a geopolitical event. Maybe the upcoming North Korea summit,” Wien said during a CNBC interview with anchor Carl Quintanilla Thursday morning.
A vice chairman of Blackstone Group L.P.’s BX, +0.12% private wealth group, Wien’s comments come as the Cboe Volatility Index VIX, +4.21% one measure of Wall Street fear that tends to fall as stocks rally and surge as they tumble, hit its lowest level since late January.
The so-called VIX, which reflects bullish and bearish options bullish and bearish options bets on the S&P 500 SPX, -0.07% had been mostly dormant in 2017, until jumping by 116%, the most in its history back in early February, as the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.38% began a retreat into correction territory. A correction is usually defined as a drop of at least 10% from a recent peak.
Although the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.70% on Thursday was pulling back, the broader market has seen a resurgence in market optimism and decline in volatility underpinned by gains in technology and internet stocks.
Even as Wien thinks that investors shouldn’t get too complacent about the possibility of a return to jittery markets that have characterized the recent market regime after the VIX’s surge, he thinks the economy is on a firm footing.
”There will be 10% corrections along the way” he told CNBC but said “generally, we are in a period of low volatility because there isn’t a recession in sight. My view is the earliest we’re gonna have a recession is 2021.”
More
And in Canada Car
Crash news, why is this summit being held at all? Given President Trump’s
outright disdain for Prime Minister Trudeau bordering on contempt, and decision
to leave the summit early, Trudeau should take a leaf out of Trump’s North
Korean playbook and just disinvite him citing his “hostility.”
Meetings are indispensable
when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
June 8, 2018 / 3:53 AM
G7 leaders set to clash with combative Trump over tariffs, trade
QUEBEC
CITY (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Seven rich nations are set to clash
with a combative U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday when they pressure him
to lift sanctions on steel and aluminum they fear could lead to a trade war.
The confrontation threatens to rupture a body that during its 43-year
history has traditionally sought to find consensus on the economy and other
issues.
Trump, who aides say has little interest in multilateralism, twice
attacked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Twitter on Thursday and
officials concede the mood is likely to be exceptionally tense.
“There
will be some serious disagreements on a lot of things,” a Canadian official
told reporters late on Thursday.
Although Trump says the tariffs are necessary to protect U.S. industry,
Canada and the European Union have denounced them as illegal and are preparing
retaliatory measures.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday leaders needed to be
civil at the summit but he is clearly losing patience with the U.S. President,
suggesting the other six members of the G7 could form their own grouping if
necessary.
British Prime Minister Theresa May took a more measured tone, telling
reporters she wanted the European Union to use restraint in its retaliation to
the U.S. tariffs and that the response must be proportionate and legal.
Trump showed no sign of backing down on Thursday, first taking to
Twitter to accuse both France and Canada of imposing massive tariffs on U.S.
goods and then accusing Trudeau of “being so indignant.”
In response, the Canadian official replied that “the prime minister and
the president have very frank, direct, candid, honest conversations.” Trudeau
and Trump are due to meet on Friday “and they will have lots to talk about,”
the official added.
The White House subsequently announced the president would be leaving on
Saturday, before the summit formally ends, to fly to Singapore for a meeting
with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
More
Trudeau Looks to Salvage the G-7 and His Image
By Josh Wingrove, Kitty Donaldson, and Helene Fouquet
Updated on 8 June 2018, 05:00 GMT+1
It’s set to be the most acrimonious world summit in years, with President
Donald Trump facing off against six other leaders in need of
a standard-bearer. If Justin Trudeau is looking for a chance at redemption,
this is it.With the world on the brink of a trade war, the stakes are high for when the Group of Seven meet in Canada with the symbol of postwar collaboration under threat by an aggressive strain of American unilateralism that’s ripped up international agreements and undermined multilateral institutions.
Enter Trudeau, the photogenic prime minister whose brand of “progressive” trade has fallen flat amid foreign flops that wounded his image. In private conversations, some G-7 officials express reservations about the 46-year-old. They may have little choice than to embrace him.
As host, he’s in the spotlight to somehow salvage a summit pitting irate Europeans against Trump with Japan’s Shinzo Abe falling in the middle. France and Germany are warning they won’t bow to Trump just to show unity, while many wonder if the U.S. president will leave early.
In the past, Trudeau tried being a Trump whisperer. But his year of diligent appeasement ultimately failed. Tariffs hit Canada, along with everyone else. Trudeau has finally quit playing nice with Trump.
“I expect a very acrimonious summit,” says Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “I expect nothing of substance to be agreed. In fact, I think the best you can hope for is for them to agree to continue talking.”
Trudeau “needs to clearly adopt a different style because he has found out, just like Macron did and just like Abe did, that all this personal chemistry, cozying-up bromance stuff didn’t get them anywhere,” Kirkegaard says.
The star power has faded for Trudeau, the son of a former prime minister. At home, his polling lead has evaporated on the heels of a disastrous trip to India, and he now trails the main opposition party in some polls ahead of an election next fall. Abroad, a French official was at pains to play down the much-talked about bromance between Emmanuel Macron and Trudeau on display at the G-7 in Italy a year ago.
-----Macron began his trip to Canada by visiting Trudeau in Ottawa, and emerged with a warning for Trump. “None of us are eternal,” Macron said. He later tweeted: “The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be.”
Trump responded on Twitter after the meeting of the two other leaders,
which included a lengthy private dinner: “Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau
and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create
non-monetary barriers,” he wrote. “Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.”
In a follow-up tweet, Trump accused Trudeau of “being so indignant”
given that Canada protects its dairy sector with high tariffs. When asked for a
response to Trump’s remarks, a senior Canadian official said at a press
briefing in Quebec on Thursday said that the countries can manage their
differences through discussions.
More
Merkel Urges Europe to Step Up in Trump’s New World Order
7 June 2018, 12:42 PM
The German leader again questioned the durability of trans-Atlantic relations by referring to eye-raising comments she made over a year ago in which she said that “the times when we could fully rely on others are to some extent over.” Those words, spoken at a beer-tent election rally, were a reaction to Trump hectoring European leaders for not spending enough on defense at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Brussels. Since then, more fuel has been added to the fire.
“That was my takeaway from the NATO summit, and in the meantime I continue to feel confirmed by my statement,” Merkel said in Munich on Wednesday, this time to a meeting of the European People’s Party, a grouping of center-right parties in the European Parliament.
In addition to the disruptive effects of the rift in NATO and Trump’s exit from the Paris global climate treaty, Merkel pointed to the fresh conflict over trade and the U.S. leader’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord last month.
“All of that confirms the assessment that the world is being reorganized,” Merkel told the EPP.
The German chancellor has taken a firmer stance leading up to the two-day G-7 gathering in Canada, which starts Friday. Earlier on Wednesday, Europe’s most experienced government leader vowed to challenge Trump on trade and climate, saying the lack of room for compromise means leaders may fail to agree on a final statement.
Trump’s “America First” doctrine shows that “we have a serious problem with multilateral agreements,” Merkel told German lawmakers, adding that failure to reach common ground could lead to the highly unusual step of host Canada issuing a concluding statement not agreed to by all participants.
With Trump’s unpredictable leadership and the U.S. turn toward isolationism, Merkel said that the European Union needs to hone its response to a raft of issues in an environment in which global institutions need to be “newly proven.”
More
"Sorry
losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest - and you all know it!
Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."
Donald
Trump
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today modern Russia. President Putin does a live TV question and answer session
for four hours twenty minutes. Follow that May, Merkel, Trump.
June 7, 2018 / 1:04 AM
Putin, on living standards drive, tells Russians economy set for growth
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin, on a drive to boost living
standards at the start of a new presidential term, tried to reassure Russians
about their economy on Thursday in a live TV question-and-answer marathon.
Putin, who easily won re-election in March, has since 2001
used the annual phone-in with citizens to cast himself as a decisive
troubleshooter on the home front and a staunch defender of Russia’s interests
on the world stage.
Critics say the event, being held days before Russia hosts the soccer
World Cup, is a stage-managed piece of theater designed to let Russians let off
steam and fleetingly feel as if they can influence a bureaucratic top-down
system. Putin and his aides say it is an indispensable tool to gauge public
sentiment and learn about people’s real problems.
“We are heading in the right direction,” said Putin. “We are on a
trajectory of stable economic growth. Yes, it’s modest growth, but it’s not
falling.”
Putin told a man who phoned in from the wheel of his truck that he
agreed with him that petrol prices were rising too fast.
“It’s unacceptable,” said Putin.
The Russian central bank forecasts economic growth at between 1.5 and 2
percent this year.
At last year’s phone-in, the president, now 65, pledged to eradicate
spiraling poverty, fielding almost 70 questions in just under four hours in an
event that Kremlin-watchers liken to a tsar listening to his petitioners.
This year, Putin dispensed with his usual studio audience, fielded text
and video questions, and was poised to hand out real-time orders to regional
governors, government ministers and state company heads who were shown on giant
TV monitors sitting at their desks across Russia waiting for his instructions.
Members of the public had submitted around 2 million questions, state TV
reported, many of them visible on a website set up for the event.
Questions posted ahead of the event included whether Putin planned to
meet U.S. President Donald Trump this year, whether relations with the West
would improve anytime soon, and how he planned to reduce poverty.
Putin, who is at the start of a new six-year term, always fields a
smattering of foreign policy questions, which he typically uses to lash out at
the West, with whom Moscow’s relations are at a post-Cold War low.
"Our country is in
serious trouble. We don't have victories any more. We used to have victories
but [now] we don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating,
let's say, China, in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All
the time."
President Trump.
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?
Vattenfall’s Formula for Low-Cost Energy Storage Deployment
Co-locating wind and battery plants can help cut the cost of both.
Jason DeignJune 04, 2018
Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has found a way to further cut the cost of grid-scale energy storage: share the infrastructure with a wind farm.
The company has announced the commissioning of what it said was “the largest co-located battery installed in the United Kingdom” — a 22-megawatt plant, which shares electrical plans with the Pen y CyMoedd wind farm in Wales.
Developers of many current and upcoming wind projects are studying energy storage as a way of earning extra revenue from arbitrage, by storing power until it can be sold for a higher price. But in Vattenfall’s case, the wind and battery plants will operate independently.
The 76-turbine wind farm, which is Vattenfall’s largest onshore project and also the biggest in England and Wales, delivers up to 228 megawatts of power direct to the U.K. grid.
Pen y Cymoedd is capable of meeting the equivalent electricity needs of more than 13 percent of households in Wales and displaces an average of around 331,000 tons of carbon dioxide from fossil-fueled generation every year, said Vattenfall in a press release.
The GBP £400 million ($532 million) project was officially opened in September 2017.
The battery system, meanwhile, shares electrical infrastructure with the wind farm but earns its keep by delivering ancillary services, and specifically enhanced frequency response, to electricity network operator National Grid.
The battery system is made up of six shipping-container-sized units, five of which house 500 i3 BMW-manufactured battery packs. Each of the new BMW lithium-ion batteries has a capacity of 33 kilowatt-hours and is adapted for stationary storage applications, Vattenfall said.
In March last year, Vattenfall inked a deal with BMW Group for a supply of batteries originally destined for the i3 electric vehicle series. The energy company committed to buy 1,000 of the lithium-ion batteries.
The first project to benefit from the deal was the 122-megawatt Princess Alexia onshore wind farm near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Vattenfall added 3.2 megawatts of energy storage capacity to the site, making it the company’s first large battery project in the country.
Vattenfall is also planning to co-locate a battery plant next to a Nordex wind farm in Hamburg-Bergedorf as part of a project called "Norddeutsche Energiewende NEW 4.0" with the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.
More
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/vattenfall-formula-for-low-cost-energy-storage-deployment?utm_source=Storage&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GTMStorage#gs.5wNb0N8
Another weekend and what a weekend it’s likely to be. The media full of the aftermath of the Canadian Car Crash, the upcoming Trump – Kim summit, and Thursday’s start of the World Cup in Russia. Have a great weekend everyone.
"Get a good night's sleep and don't bug anybody without asking me."
Richard M. Nixon, 37th President, to his re-election campaign manager John Mitchell.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May.
DJIA: 24,416 +201 Down. NASDAQ:
7,442 +276 Down. SP500: 2,705 +180 Down.
All
three slow indicators moved down in March and have continued down in April and
May. For some a new bear signal, for others a take profits and get back to cash
signal.
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