Baltic Dry Index. 1524 +21 Brent Crude 81.73
The market, like the Lord, helps those who
help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
Warren Buffett.
We have reached the
end of the week, month and quarter, time to dress up the stock market closes to
improve money manager bonuses. Never mind that the Fed and other central banks
are tightening interest rates, never a positive for most stocks. Never mind
that President Trump has unleashed the first trade war since the 1930s against
friend and foe alike, with especial vitriol against poor Canada. Never mind that the 1930s precedent ended
badly for all, this time it’s different, right? Never mind that stocks are just
about to enter the traditional, historical crash season. Never mind that we are
also in the midst of an all against the US dollar currency war.
This time round our
new world prosperity is entirely built on central bank, rigged low interest
rate, unrepayable debt. What could possibly go wrong?
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
Asia Stocks Rise; Dollar Holds Post-Fed Advance: Markets Wrap
By Adam Haigh
Updated on 28 September 2018, 04:18 GMT+1
Asian stocks rounded out a volatile month with gains on Friday, with
Japanese shares outperforming thanks to a slide in the yen to the weakest level
this year. The yen’s drop was part of a broader advance in the dollar after the
Federal Reserve’s meeting.Equities in Hong Kong and Australia also gained, with Chinese shares, though Korean equities slipped. U.S. stocks rose overnight. The dollar hit a two-week high after the Fed raised its key interest rate and lifted its long-term estimate for the benchmark. That came even as Treasury yields retreated some after the meeting. Italian assets may be under pressure after the government set a wider budget-deficit target than some had expected.
While
U.S. investors have a raft of economic data due Friday including consumer
spending, Asian traders will turn their focus to Tokyo. Traders will be
watching whether the Bank of Japan tapers purchases of super-long bonds in its
plan for October, out Friday afternoon. Analysts say the bank may indicate it
will buy less of the debt due in more than 10 years at each operation, while
keeping the number of purchase days the same as September.
Elsewhere,
oil rose a day after the U.S. Energy secretary ruled out tapping the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve, compounding concerns that sanctions on Iran will tighten
markets.
More
In other news, the
sky just fell in on Elon Musk, Tesla, and his August short squeeze on Tesla
stock. A countdown clock is now ticking away on Tesla. An outlier for the rest
of the market perhaps?
The
moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.Peter Pan.
U.S. regulator sues Musk for fraud, seek to remove him from Tesla
September 27, 2018 / 9:15 PM
NEW
YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on
Thursday accused Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk of fraud and sought to
remove him from his role in charge of the electric car company, saying he made
a series of “false and misleading” tweets about potentially taking Tesla
private last month.
Musk, 47, is the public face of Tesla and losing him would be a big blow
for the money-losing car maker which has a market value of more than $50
billion, chiefly because of investors’ belief in Musk’s leadership.
The Department of Justice, which has the authority to press criminal
charges, has also questioned the company about Musk’s tweets, the company said
this month.
Tesla shares tumbled 12 percent in after-hours trading.
“Elon is Tesla and Tesla is Elon and that’s great when Elon is scoring
touchdowns and grand slams but not so great when there are negative things tied
to him,” said Karl Brauer, executive publisher at car research firm Kelley Blue
Book.
Musk said he had done nothing wrong. “This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed,” he said in a statement. “Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”
Tesla’a board said they are “fully confident” in Musk.
The SEC’s lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, caps a tumultuous two months set in motion on Aug. 7 when Musk told his more than 22 million Twitter followers that he might take Tesla private at $420 per share, with “funding secured.”
On Aug. 24, after news of the SEC probe had become known, Musk blogged here that Tesla would remain public, citing investor resistance.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the SEC filed the lawsuit after a proposed settlement with Musk fell apart. The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment late on Thursday.
More
In inflation news, Trump’s
war on Iran’s oil sales has a downside for oil consumers. But if inflation
returns, what will that do for over priced stocks?
Oil prices edge up amid uncertainty over fallout from Iran sanctions
September 28, 2018 / 3:07 AM
BEIJING
(Reuters) - Oil prices inched up on Friday, with investors trying to gauge the
potential impact on supply from looming U.S. sanctions on Iran’s crude exports.
The
most-active Brent crude futures contract, for DecemberLCOZ8, had risen 18
cents, or 0.22 percent, to $81.56 per barrel by 0126 GMT. That was close to a
four-year high of $82.55 struck on Tuesday.
With the expiration of the Brent November futures contract LCOX8 later
on Friday, the front-month LCOc1 contract will become the December contract.
U.S futures CLc1 were up 21 cents, or 0.29 percent, at $72.33 per
barrel, on track for a weekly gain.
“The market has been focusing on trading headlines on the Iran sanctions
for a whole week. But views on how much OPEC and Russia can make up for the
losses vary,” said Chen Kai, head of commodity research at Shenda Futures.
The
sanctions kick in on Nov. 4, with Washington asking buyers of Iranian oil to
cut imports to zero to force Tehran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement and to
curb its influence in the Middle East.
----
Two sources familiar with OPEC policy said Saudi Arabia and other producers
discussed a possible production increase of about 500,000 barrels per day (bpd)
among the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC
allies.
However, ANZ said in a note on Friday that major suppliers were unlikely
to offset losses due to the sanctions estimated at 1.5 million bpd.
At its 2018-peak in May, Iran exported 2.71 million bpd, nearly 3
percent of daily global crude consumption. The nation is OPEC’s third-largest
producer.
More
Finally, why
President Trump & his not so merrie olde men, are so hopelessly wrong on
Canadian Aluminium. In making aluminium, the USA is far too expensive to
compete.
Oh, the cleverness of me.
President Trump, with apologies to Peter Pan.
The Metal That Started Trump’s Trade War
The president’s aluminum tariff is bad for America—and great for Switzerland’s Glencore.
September 27, 2018, 4:00 AM EDT
----The Hawesville smelter makes some of the world’s highest-purity aluminum, and it’s the only one in the U.S. that mass-produces the military-grade kind needed for fighter jets and tanks. Yet the method it uses isn’t that different from how aluminum was made in 1886, when Charles Martin Hall, an Alcoa Corp. co-founder, first shot an electrical current through a mineral bath of aluminum oxide. The process has become more efficient over time, but no one’s figured out a better way to separate oxygen atoms from aluminum atoms. The business is stubbornly dirty, expensive, and dependent on human labor.
It’s also incredibly energy-intensive. At full capacity, the Hawesville plant uses as much electricity as the entire city of Louisville (population 620,000), about 70 miles away. Not that the plant is at full capacity these days. This smelter was built in 1969, on the banks of the Ohio River, in a region that used to be the aluminum industry’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. Cheap coal dug out of the Appalachians and barged down the river was used to power half a dozen smelters clustered around Kentucky, Ohio, and Western Pennsylvania.
As recently as 2000, the U.S. was home to 23 aluminum smelters. Today there are six. Aluminum companies decided a long time ago that it was cheaper to produce the raw metal in areas outside the U.S. that had easy access to cheap hydro, thermal, and petroleum power—Canada, Iceland, Russia, and the Middle East. As aluminum became less expensive to make elsewhere, American companies focused on more profitable products made with low-cost imported raw ingot.
That’s been great for companies that use the metal: carmakers, airplane builders, brewers (all those cans), and aluminum sheet manufacturers. But the smelting business in the U.S. has been crushed, shedding two-thirds of its jobs over the past five years. Of the remaining smelters, Century owns three, including Hawesville. As aluminum prices sank, so did Century’s profits, to the point that by the end of 2015 the entire U.S. smelting industry was on the brink of extinction. Century lobbied the government and laid off about a third of its workers as its U.S. plants inched toward oblivion. Then Donald Trump got elected, and everything changed.
In March 2018, Trump fired the first major shot of his international trade war when he announced a 25 percent tariff on foreign steel and 10 percent on aluminum. The result has been chaos on both fronts, but particularly with the latter. The U.S. still produces two-thirds of the steel it uses, but it imports 85 percent of its raw aluminum. Through Sept. 19, companies have had to pay $625.4 million in aluminum tariffs, as they can’t find enough domestic supply. Canada has retaliated with its own tariffs. Since a piece of aluminum can take as many as five round trips across the U.S.-Canada border on its journey from ingot to finished product, what used to be the free passage of goods between two friendly nations has become an expensive logjam.
MillerCoors LLC says the tariffs will cost it $40 million in profit this year. Coca-Cola Co. is raising prices. Ford, General Motors, and Boeing have all said this is bad for business. So does most of the U.S. aluminum industry: Alcoa lowered its profit forecasts; trade groups claim that by trying to save low-margin smelters, Trump will hurt the more profitable segments of the business, killing more jobs than he creates.
More
Town that aluminum built hopes to join World Heritage list
SAGUENAY, QUE.
Published November 12, 2010 Updated May 2, 2018
To stand in the heart of Arvida, with its plume-spewing smokestacks
looming nearby, it's tough to feel you're getting a glimpse into a modern-day
Eden.
Yet this remote Quebec community was born as a model city and
cutting-edge town, a Silicon Valley of its day. And now, local residents are
dreaming big: They want Arvida, an industrial "utopia" carved out of
the Saguenay plain, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Boosters say history has forgotten Arvida. After the Great Wall of
China, the Taj Mahal and Versailles, could it be Arvida's turn for UNESCO
glory?
"The people want it," says local councillor Carl Dufour, who
is spearheading the effort, "and history wants it. Arvida was one of the
most ambitious projects of its time."
To boosters, Arvida deserves a place on the map, nearly a century after
a hot-tempered, fist-pounding American industrialist literally put it there.
Arvida was the creation of Alcoa (later Alcan) and its president, Arthur
Vining Davis, a Massachusetts-born financier who gave the town his imprint as
well as his name, at least the first two letters of each part of it.
Mr. Davis had set his sights on a corner of Quebec's Saguenay where
abundant hydroelectric power could be used to create the magical metal of its
time, aluminum. This was to be no ordinary boom town. By the 1920s, Mr. Davis
recruited a New York planner and shaped both a company town and a model
metropolis, 240 kilometres north of Quebec City.
----The
tidy "workmen's" homes built as part of Arvida's original scheme
still rise on spacious lots on winding, tree-lined streets - no grid-like
monotony here. Each house was built with a garden and distinctive architectural
style. Arvida was planned down to compulsory dog licences. The town got
schools, churches and a way of life that included free Saturday night dances
for the workers.
It
became known as the City Built in 135 Days, trumpeted later by the New York
Times as "a model town for working families" on "a North Canada
steppe."
----Arvida turned into the biggest aluminum
production centre in the Western world, so critical to the Allied effort during
the Second World War that the wartime city was guarded by anti-aircraft
batteries.
"Bill Gates is cutting-edge technology in 2005. Arvida was
cutting-edge technology in 1945," says John Hartwick, who grew up in
Arvida and is now an economics professor at Queen's University. "People
visited the place with their mouths open. There was pride in the community. It
was the Microsoft of 1947," said Prof. Hartwick, author of the book, Out
of Arvida.
----In its day, Arvida's industrial might lured
graduates from McGill, Princeton and M.I.T. As some recall, their
English-speaking world of curling clubs, balls and operettas didn't much mix
with the French-speaking neighbours. In the years before the Quiet Revolution,
Quebec company towns like Arvida stood as a symbol of Anglo dominance over a
French-speaking work force.
Today the families from what was known as the Quartier des Anglais
have scattered, and reunions these days happen over lunch in spots like
Kingston, Ont. "They still have the Arvida glow," Prof. Hartwick
says.
Now part of the amalgamated city of Saguenay, Arvida has about 12,000
residents, and the smelter and other related plants, now part of Rio Tinto
Alcan, are still in operation. This month, Mr. Dufour and other organizers will
present their case for recognition to Parks Canada, a critical first step
before reaching UNESCO.
Arvida
Located
in Saguenay, Quebec, the Arvida smelter began operations in 1954 and employs
1000 people. It has 6 lines of pre–bake reduction cells and produced 173,000
tonnes of primary aluminium in 2015. The aluminium produced at the Arvida
smelter is cast as value-added billets for markets worldwide or sold in liquid
form directly to customers.
Dreams
do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You will have everything in life.President Trump, with apologies to Peter Pan.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
In trade wars, as in China, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Sail on sailor, there’s no room in Hong Kong under President Trump.
China denies request for Hong Kong port call by American warship
The refusal follows exchange of trade tariffs and US sanctions on a Chinese defence ministry unit over purchase of Russian weapons
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 25 September, 2018, 6:06pm UPDATED :
Tuesday, 25 September, 2018, 11:42pm
China has rejected a request for a US warship to make a port
call in Hong Kong, the US consulate in Hong Kong said on Tuesday, amid rising
tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
“The Chinese government did not approve a request for a port visit to
Hong Kong by the USS Wasp. We have a long track record of successful port
visits to Hong Kong, and we expect that to continue,” the consulate said.
The amphibious assault ship had been due to stop in Hong Kong next
month, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed US
military officials.
The Chinese foreign ministry declined to comment on the refusal, saying
only that China approved port visits on a case-by-case basis. The vessel is
part of a group based in Sasebo in Japan and operating in the Indo-Pacific
region.
In 2016, China denied a request for a US carrier strike group led by the
USS John C Stennis to visit Hong Kong during heightened tensions over the South
China Sea.
This time the rejection comes as China and the United States are locked
in a trade war, with the US and then China imposing tariffs on each other’s
goods.
In New York, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a gathering of US
business representatives that Washington’s repeated attacks on Beijing
threatened the “total destruction” of four decades of gains in China-US
relations.
Washington also decided last week to impose sanctions on a unit of the
Chinese defence ministry and its director for buying advanced weapons from
Russia.
In response, China recalled a navy commander from a visit to the US and
postponed a military dialogue between the two countries.
Beijing also summoned US ambassador to China Terry Branstad and acting
US defence attaché David Menser to protest against the sanctions.
The ministry said the US had no right to interfere in defence
cooperation between China and Russia, and the US sanctions had seriously
damaged China-US military relations.
Beijing has also protested against a US proposal to sell US$330 million
in arms to Taiwan.
Shen Dingli, an international relations professor at Fudan University in
Shanghai, said the rejection was a way for China to express its
dissatisfaction.
Shen said nationalistic voices would grow resentful if Beijing did not
take tough action against the US.
Xi Jinping says trade war pushes China to rely on itself and ‘that’s not a bad thing’
Factory workers and farmers in China’s rust belt first to hear how the country will respond to rising protectionism
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 26 September, 2018, 7:45pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 26
September, 2018, 11:27pm
Chinese President Xi Jinping says rising “unilateralism and
protectionism” is forcing China to rely more on itself for development and
“it’s not a bad thing”, reflecting a determination to fight a protracted trade
war with the US if necessary.
Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, said it was time for
China to cut its dependence on foreign technologies and others in his first
clear statement on how China would cope with the trade war.
Speaking from one of China’s biggest state-owned factories, Xi
emphasised the value of self-reliance, according to People’s Daily, the
mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party.
“Internationally, it’s becoming more and more difficult [for China] to
obtain advanced technologies and key know-how. Unilateralism and trade
protectionism are rising, forcing us to adopt a self-reliant approach. This is
not a bad thing,” Xi said.
“Rising protectionism” is a euphemistic reference to the tariff conflict
between Beijing and Washington.
“Ultimately, China depends on itself” for development, Xi said.
----Xi made the
comments during a visit to China First Heavy Industries, a state-owned
machinery maker in Qiqihar of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang – a
factory which can trace its roots to the early 1950s, when it weathered China’s
worst economic days of isolation from the rest of the world.
Ding Yifan, a senior researcher with Tsinghua University’s National
Strategy Institute, said Xi’s emphasis on “self-reliance” showed that Beijing
was ready to dig in its heels.
“The spirit of self-reliance is the same as the old days,” said Ding.
“But the implications can be very different – if China can weather the trade
war to secure a leading edge in technology and manufacturing, China will become
number one and invincible.”
Xi said China was a big country which must “depend on itself for food
supply, depend on itself for economic development, and depend on itself for
manufacturing”.
More
"The world urgently needs to create a
diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order
that is not dependent on the United States."
Shi
Jianxun. China People’s Daily. September 16, 2008
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?
Shedding light on -- and through -- 2D materials
High-performance computing helps to survey optical qualities of atom-thick materials for optoelectronics
Date:
September 24, 2018
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Scientists use a computational method to calculate the optical properties of
two-dimensional materials. Their work promises to simplify the process of
identifying the right materials for next-generation optoelectronic devices.
The ability of metallic or semiconducting materials to absorb, reflect
and act upon light is of primary importance to scientists developing
optoelectronics -- electronic devices that interact with light to perform
tasks. Rice University scientists have now produced a method to determine the
properties of atom-thin materials that promise to refine the modulation and
manipulation of light.
Two-dimensional materials have been a hot research topic since graphene,
a flat lattice of carbon atoms, was identified in 2001. Since then, scientists
have raced to develop, either in theory or in the lab, novel 2D materials with
a range of optical, electronic and physical properties.
Until now, they have lacked a comprehensive guide to the optical
properties those materials offer as ultrathin reflectors, transmitters or
absorbers.
The Rice lab of materials theorist Boris Yakobson took up the challenge.
Yakobson and his co-authors, graduate student and lead author Sunny Gupta,
postdoctoral researcher Sharmila Shirodkar and research scientist Alex Kutana,
used state-of-the-art theoretical methods to compute the maximum optical
properties of 55 2D materials.
"The important thing now that we understand the protocol is that we
can use it to analyze any 2D material," Gupta said. "This is a big
computational effort, but now it's possible to evaluate any material at a
deeper quantitative level."
Their work, which appears this month in the American Chemical Society
journal ACS Nano, details the monolayers' transmittance, absorbance and
reflectance, properties they collectively dubbed TAR. At the nanoscale, light
can interact with materials in unique ways, prompting electron-photon
interactions or triggering plasmons that absorb light at one frequency and emit
it in another.
Manipulating 2D materials lets researchers design ever smaller devices
like sensors or light-driven circuits. But first it helps to know how sensitive
a material is to a particular wavelength of light, from infrared to visible
colors to ultraviolet.
"Generally, the common wisdom is that 2D materials are so thin that
they should appear to be essentially transparent, with negligible reflection
and absorption," Yakobson said. "Surprisingly, we found that each
material has an expressive optical signature, with a large portion of light of
a particular color (wavelength) being absorbed or reflected."
The co-authors anticipate photodetecting and modulating devices and
polarizing filters are possible applications for 2D materials that have
directionally dependent optical properties. "Multilayer coatings could
provide good protection from radiation or light, like from lasers,"
Shirodkar said. "In the latter case, heterostructured (multilayered) films
-- coatings of complementary materials -- may be needed. Greater intensities of
light could produce nonlinear effects, and accounting for those will certainly
require further research."
More
Another weekend, and an American tongue twister to
amuse the children and grandchildren. Have a great weekend everyone. The
traditional stock market crash season resumes on Monday.
"How
much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood."
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August.
DJIA: 25,965 +207 Down. NASDAQ:
8,110 +265 Up. SP500: 2,902 +168 Up.
All
three slow indicators moved down in March, but the S&P and NASDAQ have now turned
up. September will be critical for
confirmation of this change.
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