Baltic Dry Index. 1434 +21 Brent Crude 81.46
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative
tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results
far much less.
It is day one of Fed
Week again, time to wake up the Fedster’s to see if they have any more of a
clue as to what’s really happening in their massively interest rate suppressed
world, than the rest of us. Just how much mal and misinvestment have they
caused in the US and global economy? In our new Trumpian “trust no one, and
bash everyone” world, I suspect we will not have to wait very long to find out.
With Trumpian America
busy tearing up treaties at will, launching trade wars and economic sanctions
on friend and foe alike, more and more of the world isn’t listening to Trump’s
Washington, District of Crooks, and incentivised to work around Washington, is
starting to do just that.
The Saudis, the rest
of OPEC, and OPEC tag along, Russia, all chose to ignore the latest Trumpian
twitted order on oil prices.
"We protect the
countries of the Middle East, they would not be safe for very long without us,
and yet they continue to push for higher and higher oil prices! We will
remember. The OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!"
That tweet alone,
probably forced OPEC into doing nothing.
While the cure for
high oil prices is high oil prices, it forces marginal demand down, encourages
exploration and yet more fracking, spurs substitution, none of those things
happen overnight. For the immediate future, higher crude oil prices, and higher
inflation. It is highly improbable that President Trump will do a U-turn over
Iran oil sales between now and November 4th.
Oil near four-year high as producers resist output rise to offset Iran sanctions
September 25, 2018 / 1:58 AM
SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - Oil prices on Tuesday were within reach of four-year highs hit in
the previous session, as looming U.S. sanctions against Iran and unwillingness
by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to raise output
supported the market.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $81.45 per barrel at 0421 GMT, up 25
cents, or 0.3 percent, and close to the intraday peak touched the previous day
at $81.48, the highest level since November 2014.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $72.27 a
barrel, up 19 cents, or 0.3 percent from their last settlement
The United States from Nov. 4 will target Iran’s oil exports with sanctions,
and Washington is putting pressure on governments and companies around the
world to fall in line and cut purchases from Tehran.
“Iran will lose sizeable export volumes, and given OPEC+ reluctance to
raise output, the market is ill-equipped to fill the supply gap,” Harry
Tchilinguirian, global head of commodity markets strategy at French bank BNP
Paribas, told the Reuters Global Oil Forum on Tuesday.
While
Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran on Tuesday said they were
determined to develop payment mechanisms to continue trading despite the
sanctions by the United States, most analysts expect Washington’s actions to
knock between 1 million and 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil
supplies out of markets.
“We
view Brent’s rally above $80 per barrel as fundamentally justified,” said Fitch
Solutions in a note.
U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that OPEC and Russia
increase their supplies to make up for the expected fall in Iranian exports.
Iran is the third-largest producer in OPEC.
OPEC and Russia, however, have so far rebuffed such calls.
“Any formal decision on oil output by the producer group, barring an
extraordinary meeting, will only take place at the December meeting. Thus the
window period for oil prices to potentially extend gains is quite wide as Iran
loses exports and OPEC+ remains on standby,” Tchilinguirian said.
Ashley Kelty, oil analyst at financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald
said crude could soon hit $90 per barrel.
“We don’t believe OPEC can actually raise output significantly in the
near term, as the physical spare capacity in the system is not that high,”
Kelty said.
More
Oil at four-year high after OPEC rebuffs Trump, fails to raise output
September 24, 2018 / 1:58 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices jumped more
than 2 percent to a four-year high on Monday after OPEC declined to announce an
immediate increase in production despite calls by U.S. President Donald Trump
for action to raise global supply.
---- “This is the oil market’s response to the OPEC+ group’s refusal to
step up its oil production,” said Carsten Fritsch, commodities analyst at
Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and its biggest oil-producer ally outside the
group, Russia, on Sunday ruled out any immediate extra increase in output,
effectively rebuffing a call by Trump for action to cool the market.
“I do not influence prices,” Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told reporters
as OPEC and non-OPEC energy ministers gathered in Algiers for a meeting that
ended with no formal recommendation for any additional supply boost.
Trump said last week that OPEC “must get prices down now!”, but Iranian
Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said on Monday OPEC had not responded positively to
Trump’s demands.
“It is now increasingly evident, that in
the face of producers reluctant to raise output, the market will be confronted
with supply gaps in the next 3-6 months that it will need to resolve through
higher oil prices,” BNP Paribas oil strategist Harry Tchilinguirian told
Reuters Global Oil Forum.
Commodity traders Trafigura and Mercuria said on Monday that Brent could
rise to $90 per barrel by Christmas and pass $100 in early 2019, as markets
tighten once U.S. sanctions against Iran are fully implemented from November.
J.P. Morgan said U.S. sanctions on Iran could lead to a loss of 1.5
million bpd, while Mercuria warned that as much as 2 million bpd could be
knocked out of the market.
More
Vitol to stop business with Iran when U.S. sanctions kick-off - executive
September 25, 2018 / 4:39 AM
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Vitol [VITOLV.UL] will stop doing business with
Iran after the United States reimposes sanctions on Tehran’s oil trade from
Nov. 4, a senior executive with the commodity merchant said on Tuesday.
“Business with Iran or anything to do with Iran has to come to an end,”
said Mike Muller, who handles business development for Vitol, on the sidelines
of the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference (APPEC) in Singapore.
“We have a long-standing relationship with Iran and clearly I look
forward to when trade can be resumed, but for now, one needs explicit waivers
from the U.S., and not just the U.S. but the global banking community and
everything else,” he said.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-asia-oil-appec-vitol/vitol-to-stop-business-with-iran-when-u-s-sanctions-kick-off-executive-idUKKCN1M50BU?il=0
U.S.-China trade war poses oil demand shock in 2019 - BP
September 25, 2018 / 4:25 AM
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions on
Iran will tighten global oil supplies sharply until the end of the year, but a
threat to world demand looms in 2019 from the U.S.-China trade war, the head of
BP’s oil trading in Asia said.
“We’re moving into the tightest part of
2018 ... the re-imposition of Iran sanctions is the main factor as the market
will tighten substantially from now to year-end,” Janet Kong, chief executive
of Integrated Supply and Trading Eastern Hemisphere at BP (BP.L) told Reuters.
Saudi Arabia and Russia won’t add significantly more oil to the market
because of a lack of capacity, a top Iranian official said on Monday,
predicting prices will probably rise further.
Sanctions on Venezuela are also exacerbating a production decline there,
while outages in Nigeria and Libya have further crimped supplies, Kong said,
with Brent LCOc1 supported at above $80 a barrel.
“The market fundamentals in the short term look very bullish and
positive due to supply shocks, but over time, when supply catches up and the
shock to demand becomes more evident, the market will go through another round
of re-balancing next year,” she said.
The world’s two largest economies, China and the United States, have
imposed tariffs on each other’s imports in an escalating trade war that has
rattled global markets and raised concerns of a slowdown in world economies and
commodities demand next year.
“Going into 2019, I worry about the impact of the U.S.-China trade war,
manifesting itself slowly,” Kong said.
“The trade war impact has not really shown up in the data anywhere, but
it will show up gradually over time. So the supply shock is very sharp and
prompt, while the impact from trade war is boiling over slowly.”
Analysts and the International Monetary Fund have forecast a 0.5 percent
to 1 percent drop in world gross domestic product growth next year, she said.
The International Energy Agency said in its monthly oil report that
global oil demand is set to top 100 million bpd next year, although emerging
market crises and trade disputes could dent this figure.
More
Finally,
in emerging market news, the dollar crisis continues tightening. But which
country will be the first to crack, and when?
Argentina In Discussions With IMF to Increase Credit Line
By Patrick Gillespie and Erik Schatzker
Updated on 24 September 2018, 22:52 GMT+1
Argentine President Mauricio Macri said a revised agreement with the
International Monetary Fund will help shore up investor confidence in the
nation after a currency rout pushed South America’s second-largest economy into
recession.
“We are working with the IMF and we are going to present something that
will bring confidence,” Macri said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in New
York. “We will have more support from them.”
Macri declined to provide specifics, but added that a new deal should be
expected “in a couple of days.” He said there’s no chance Argentina will fail
to pay its debts given the Fund’s support -- a question that keeps haunting
investors since the government defaulted in 2001 following a smaller IMF loan.
Argentine
officials are negotiating an increase in the $50 billion credit line with the
IMF, said a government official with direct knowledge of the discussions. An
increase of $3 billion to $5 billion is more likely than the additional $15
billion to $20 billion in funds that were reported by local media last week,
according to the official who requested anonymity as the talks are not public.
---- Economy Minister Nicolas Dujovne, who accompanied Macri, told Bloomberg in a separate interview that Argentina made a mistake by setting overly ambitious inflation targets. Consumer prices are expected to rise 40 percent this year, according to a central bank survey of economists. The government’s target at the beginning of the year was 15 percent.
“There’s a need for a revamp in how we see monetary policy," said
Dujovne.
More
John Kenneth Galbraith
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Day two of the real USA v China trade war, and both sides are settling
in for a long term, trench warfare, war, WW1 style, i.e. repeated damaging
frontal assaults on each other in a long term war of attrition. It won’t be
over by Christmas, perhaps not even Christmas 2019.
How long before something important blows up, is anyone’s guess, but in
the current fragile state of the global economy, this old dinosaur market
watcher thinks it will be far sooner, rather than later, as our complacent
stock markets think.
Hopefully, whatever blows up will be big enough to force sanity back on
to the USA side, but not big enough to generate real lasting damage, let alone
another 2008-2009.
China says trade war to 'certainly' hurt U.S. exporters, create opportunities to others
September 25, 2018 / 4:04 AM
BEIJING
(Reuters) - China is being forced to retaliate against the United States in their
trade dispute, and U.S. exporters including suppliers of liquefied natural gas
would “certainly” be hurt, said Chinese vice commerce minister Wang Shouwen.
But
Beijing’s retaliation would provide opportunities to other LNG-exporting
countries, Wang said at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that Australia is
an important source of the fuel for China.
---- The United States stands to gain more from Sino-U.S. trade, China’s international trade representative Fu Ziying, said at the same press conference.
While China has a trade surplus with the United States, it’s the latter
that has a profit surplus with China, said Fu, who is also a vice commerce
minister.
Strong economy and stock market may lead Trump to ‘major miscalculation’, say JPMorgan analysts
By MarketWatch Published: Sept 24, 2018 5:00 p.m. ET
The stock market has been mostly enjoying a uptrend, shaking off elevated
tariff tensions between the U.S. and its global counterparts. However, JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.96% analysts, led by cross-asset strategist John Normand, in a Sept. 21 note, say investors should brace for the possibility of a “major miscalculation” by President Donald Trump’s administration, as it relates to the U.S.-China conflict (see excerpt from report below):
|
The other concern is that US economic and equity market resilience despite tariffs will embolden the President on all geopolitical fronts—autos, NAFTA and particularly Iran—and thus risk a major miscalculation from sanctions that are tough to calibrate. |
One
key consideration, the JPMorgan analysts express, is that the Trump
administration, emboldened by a healthy economy and stock market, ratchet trade
tensions ever higher, entering what the bank describes as “Phase III” of trade
disputes in 2019, which would result in weaker China growth, and directly
impact an “incipient recovery” for the commodity complex.
More
China says U.S. trying to force it to submit on trade as new tariffs kick in
September 24, 2018 / 3:19 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and
China imposed fresh tariffs on each other’s goods on Monday as the world’s
biggest economies showed no signs of backing down from an increasingly bitter
trade dispute that is expected to knock global economic growth.
Soon after the new duties went into effect, China accused the U.S. of
engaging in “trade bullyism” and said it was intimidating other countries to
submit to its will, the official Xinhua news agency said, reiterating China’s
willingness to fight if necessary.
But Beijing also said it was willing to restart trade negotiations with
the United States if the talks are “based on mutual respect and equality,”
Xinhua said, citing a white paper on the dispute published by China’s State
Council.
---- For U.S. consumers, the new
duties could translate into higher prices for Chinese products ranging from
vacuum cleaners to technology gear such as home modems and routers, while U.S.
goods targeted by Beijing include liquefied natural gas and certain types of
aircraft.
---- The U.S. administration “has brazenly preached unilateralism, protectionism and economic hegemony, making false accusations against many countries and regions, particularly China, intimidating other countries through economic measures such as imposing tariffs,” Xinhua quoted the State Council’s white paper as saying.
Several rounds of Sino-U.S. trade talks in recent months have yielded no major breakthroughs and attempts at arranging another meeting in coming weeks have fallen through.
---- Economists warn that a protracted dispute will eventually stunt growth across the globe. Companies on both sides of the Pacific are already reporting disruptions to their operations and are reviewing investment plans.
The trade tensions have also cast a pall over broader relations between
Beijing and Washington, with the two sides butting heads on a growing number of
issues.
China summoned the U.S. ambassador in Beijing and postponed military
talks in protest against a U.S. decision to sanction a Chinese military agency
and its director for buying Russian fighter jets and a missile system.
Rob Carnell, ING’s chief Asia economist, said in a note to clients that
in the absence of any incentives Beijing would likely hold off on any further
negotiations for now.
“It would look weak both to the U.S. and at home,” he said, adding that
there is “sufficient stimulus in the pipeline” to limit the damage of the
latest tariffs on China’s economy.
“The U.S.-China trade war has no clear end in sight.”
China may also be waiting for U.S. mid-term elections early next month
for any hints of changes in Washington’s policy stance, Carnell added.
“With generic polls favoring the Democrats, they may feel that the trade
environment will be less hostile after November 6.”
Bloomberg reported that the China Daily, Beijing’s official English
newspaper, paid for a four-page advertising supplement on Sunday in the Des
Moines Register - the largest newspaper in the politically important state of
Iowa - that highlighted the impact of the trade war on soybean farmers.
----China imports far less from the United States, making a dollar-for-dollar match on any new U.S. tariffs impossible.
Instead, it has warned of “qualitative” measures to retaliate.
Though Beijing has not revealed what such steps might be, business
executives and analysts say it could withhold exports of certain products to
the U.S. or create more administrative red tape for American companies
operating in China.
Some analysts say there is also a risk that China could allow its
currency to weaken again to cushion the blow to its exporters.
More
"As fewer and fewer people have confidence in paper as a store of value, the price of gold will continue to rise. The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register."
Hans F. Sennholz
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?
Spray-on antennas could unlock potential of smart, connected technology
Drexel researchers develop antennas made from mxene 'spray paint'
Date:
September 21, 2018
Source:
Drexel University
Summary:
Engineering researchers report a method for spraying invisibly thin antennas,
made from a type of two-dimensional, metallic material called MXene, that
perform as well as those being used in mobile devices, wireless routers and
portable transducers.
The promise of wearables, functional fabrics, the Internet of Things,
and their "next-generation" technological cohort seems tantalizingly
within reach. But researchers in the field will tell you a prime reason for
their delayed "arrival" is the problem of seamlessly integrating
connection technology -- namely, antennas -- with shape-shifting and flexible
"things."
But a breakthrough by researchers in Drexel's College of Engineering,
could now make installing an antenna as easy as applying some bug spray.
In research recently published in Science Advances, the group
reports on a method for spraying invisibly thin antennas, made from a type of
two-dimensional, metallic material called MXene, that perform as well as those
being used in mobile devices, wireless routers and portable transducers.
"This is a very exciting finding because there is a lot of
potential for this type of technology," said Kapil Dandekar, PhD, a
professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering,
who directs the Drexel Wireless Systems Lab, and was a co-author of the
research. "The ability to spray an antenna on a flexible substrate or make
it optically transparent means that we could have a lot of new places to set up
networks -- there are new applications and new ways of collecting data that we
can't even imagine at the moment."
The researchers, from the College's Department of Materials Science and
Engineering, report that the MXene titanium carbide can be dissolved in water
to create an ink or paint. The exceptional conductivity of the material enables
it to transmit and direct radio waves, even when it's applied in a very thin
coating.
"We found that even transparent antennas with thicknesses of tens
of nanometers were able to communicate efficiently," said Asia Sarycheva,
a doctoral candidate in the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute and Materials
Science and Engineering Department. "By increasing the thickness up to 8
microns, the performance of MXene antenna achieved 98 percent of its predicted
maximum value."
Preserving transmission quality in a form this thin is significant
because it would allow antennas to easily be embedded -- literally, sprayed on
-- in a wide variety of objects and surfaces without adding additional weight
or circuitry or requiring a certain level of rigidity.
"This technology could enable the truly seamless integration of
antennas with everyday objects which will be critical for the emerging Internet
of Things," Dandekar said. "Researchers have done a lot of work with
non-traditional materials trying to figure out where manufacturing technology
meets system needs, but this technology could make it a lot easier to answer
some of the difficult questions we've been working on for years."
More
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment