Baltic Dry Index. 1490 +06 Brent Crude 77.24
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin told
Bloomberg that the days of explosive growth in
the blockchain industry have likely come and gone.
We open the new week
with more of the same from Donald Trump and his dodgy trade war team. Don’t
like our Chinese tariffs, well shift manufacturing back to the USA, Trump told
Apple. Apple, wisely said nothing.
With the critical for
President Trump, mid-term elections just under two months away, Trump’s trade
war against China and Canada, is likely to go into overdrive as it plays well
with Trump’s core support. Europe is likely to get added to the firing line
too, the nearer we get to November. President Trump will likely double down on “MAGA”
and getting his base support out in the cause of the promised land.
“The
moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
Peter Pan
September 10, 2018 / 2:03 AM
Asian shares on slippery slope as Trump ups ante in trade war
SYDNEY
(Reuters) - Asian shares started the week in the red on Monday, faltering for
the eighth straight day while the dollar climbed as U.S. President Donald Trump
raised the stakes in the heated trade dispute with China.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was last down 0.6 percent, extending losses from last week when it dropped 3.5 percent for its worst weekly showing since mid-March.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 opened lower but quickly pared losses after revised second-quarter gross domestic product data showed the world's third-biggest economy grew at its fastest pace since 2016.
Chinese shares weakened, with the blue-chip index .CSI300 off 0.6 percent while Shanghai's SSE Composite .SSEC stumbled 0.4 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index .HSI slipped 0.8 percent.
On Friday, Wall Street stocks ended lower while world share indexes
registered their biggest weekly declines in almost six months after Trump
threatened tariffs on a further $267 billion worth of Chinese imports, on top
of earlier promises to levy duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Beijing has warned of retaliation if Washington launches any new
measures, but it is running out of room to match them dollar-for-dollar,
raising concerns it could resort to other measures such as weakening the yuan
or taking action against U.S. companies in China.
“The overall sense is that the United States will continue to escalate
the pressure until China submits to U.S. demands which does not seem likely any
time soon,” JPMorgan said in a note.
“Overall, the impact of tariffs and high levels of uncertainty will both
continue to weigh on markets into the end of the year.”
Chinese
trade data released on Saturday could give Trump more reason to turn up the
heat. China’s trade surplus with the United States widened to a record in
August.
More
September 8, 2018 / 9:04 PM
Trump tells Apple to make products in U.S. to avoid China tariffs
(Reuters)
- U.S. President Trump tweeted on Saturday that Apple Inc (AAPL.O)
should make products inside the United States if it wants to avoid tariffs on
Chinese imports.
The
company told trade officials in a letter on Friday that the proposed tariffs
would affect prices for a “wide range” of Apple products, including its Watch,
but it did not mention the iPhone.
Trump,
speaking on Friday aboard Air Force One, said the administration had tariffs
planned for an additional $267 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Trump tweeted that “Apple prices may increase because of the massive
Tariffs we may be imposing on China - but there is an easy solution where there
would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United
States instead of China. Start building new plants now.”
Apple declined to comment.
The technology sector is among the biggest potential losers as tariffs
would make imported computer parts more expensive. Apple’s AirPods headphones,
some of its Beats headphones and its new HomePod smart speaker would also face
levies.
“The burden of the proposed tariffs will fall much more heavily on the
United States than on China,” Apple said in its letter.
It was
a bad news weekend too, for collapsing emerging market economies and
currencies, and a shot across many deeply indebted stocks too. The Fed is
starting to think in terms of higher for longer for interest rates, which will
likely drive the dollar higher yet again.
The puzzle
now is which emerging market economy will be the first one to default. From
Argentina, via Turkey, via South Africa, to Indonesia, there’s plenty of choice
out there.
September 10, 2018 / 5:04 AM
Stronger U.S. economy may warrant 'restrictive' rates - Boston Fed's Rosengren
Eric
Rosengren switched from advocating low interest rates to tighter monetary
policy, he argued it was time to start crawling back toward “normal” rates even
with 5 percent unemployment and weak growth and inflation.
Two years later, Rosengren has joined colleagues in beginning to lay the
groundwork for those rate hikes to potentially continue longer and to a higher
level than currently expected as the outlook for the economy strengthens.
Rates may not only need to become “restrictive,” but the definition of
that may be moving up as well, Rosengren said in an interview with Reuters on
Saturday following an economic conference here.
“This is not hair on fire. There is upward pressure on inflation, and
given that we are already at 2 percent, labour markets are already tight ...
that is going to be a situation where we start persistently having inflation
above what our target is,” Rosengren said. “There is an argument to normalize
policy and probably be mildly restrictive.”
----He said the Fed does not need to move faster than the current gradual pace, which has translated into roughly one rate hike per quarter, with the next expected later this month. That steady pace is a luxury gained by starting early, he said, skirting the need to move more quickly and catch up with a tightening economy.
But the terrain has shifted since. Between growth hovering around 3
percent, roughly full employment, and risks that global trade tensions could
“embed” faster price hikes, Rosengren said “we have a pretty good idea what the
path will be if we don’t have a big surprise.”
More
In EUSSR news, yet
another nation has swung right. Mrs Merkel’s Mad Migrant policy of 2015, seems
to have brought down another centre left government, opening up a whole lot
more trouble for the dead hand of Brussel’s bureaucrats. Soon, add Sweden to
the awkward division of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Holland and
Italy.
Sweden Headed for Political Gridlock After Inconclusive Election
By Rafaela Lindeberg, Amanda Billner, and Niklas Magnusson
9 September 2018, 19:34 GMT+1 Updated on 10 September 2018, 06:27 GMT+1
Sweden may face weeks or even months of political gridlock after an
inconclusive election result left the biggest Scandinavian economy without a
clear candidate to form a government.
Neither the Social Democrat-led coalition of Prime Minister Stefan
Lofven nor the opposition Alliance bloc won enough votes to form majority
governments.
Sweden
is the latest European country in which a populist surge fueled by
anti-immigration sentiment is changing the political landscape. Though Lofven
has presided over an economic upswing that has fed a rise in employment,
Sunday’s vote shows many Swedes were more concerned about tackling a record
influx of foreigners after about 600,000 immigrants entered the country of 10
million over the past five years.
A
near complete preliminary count of electoral
districts gave Lofven’s parties 144 seats in the 349-member parliament, and the
Alliance 143 seats. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which aren’t part of
either bloc, were poised to get about 62 seats, not quite as many as some
pre-election polls indicated but significantly better than in 2014.
The
result is set to trigger a potentially bitter contest between Lofven and Ulf
Kristersson, who leads the Moderate Party that dominates the Alliance bloc.
Lofven has made clear he rejects the nationalist agenda of the Sweden
Democrats, ruling out cooperation with the party. Kristersson has been less
clear. The 54-year-old former gymnast, who has led the Moderates for a little
less than a year, was quick to call on Lofven to step down after the vote count
became clear.
At
Nordea Bank AB, the biggest Nordic lender, economist Andreas Wallstrom warned
that the result sets the stage for a protracted period during which the main
parties will fight to form a viable government.
More
Rounding out a bad
start to the new week, the price of unicorns keeps falling. It looks like a
rocky road all round, as President Trump, leads his supporters to “MAGA,” the
Promised Land.
Crypto Wipeout Deepens to $640 Billion as Ether Leads Declines
By Adam Haigh and Eric Lam
10 September 2018, 01:06 GMT+1 Updated on 10 September 2018, 05:47 GMT+1
The cryptocurrency bear market plumbed a fresh 10-month low, led by a
tumble in Bitcoin’s biggest rival.
Ether slumped 9.5 percent from its level at 5 p.m. New York time on
Friday, according to Bloomberg composite pricing. Bitcoin lost 2.5 percent,
while the market capitalization of digital assets tracked by CoinMarketCap.com
shrank to $197 billion, down about $640 billion from its January peak.
Cryptocurrencies
have declined for five of the past six weeks amid concern that a broader
adoption of digital assets will take longer than some had anticipated. That
worry was underscored over the weekend after the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission temporarily suspended trading in two securities
linked to cryptocurrencies and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin told
Bloomberg that the days of explosive growth in the blockchain industry
have likely come and gone.
----Cryptocurrencies remained under pressure on Monday despite reports that Citigroup Inc. has developed a new mechanism for investing in the space. The U.S. bank plans to act as an agent issuing so-called digital asset receipts, or DARs, to enable trading by proxy without direct ownership of the underlying coins, a person with knowledge of the plans said.
The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index of major virtual currencies dropped 4.5 percent at 12:44 p.m. in Hong Kong, heading for its lowest close since mid-November.
Ether has tumbled faster than Bitcoin in recent months on concern that blockchain-related firms are cashing out of the second-biggest cryptocurrency. Many startups that raised Ether from investors in their initial coin offerings will eventually need to sell their holdings to cover expenses like salaries and development costs.
More
“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
Peter
Pan
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, yet another sign of
trouble directly ahead. A less than perfect time to expand the all against all
Trump trade wars. Time to declare victory and get global supply chains working
again. Some chance before the US November mid-term elections, now about 60 days
away.
“To die
will be an awfully big adventure.”
Peter Pan
The Trade Slowdown Has Already Begun
As tariffs pile up, the world economy is starting to look holed below the waterline.By David Fickling
7 September 2018, 07:25 GMT+1
One of the paradoxes of this year’s trade tensions is that in many
parts of the world, it doesn’t yet feel like a crisis.For all the turmoil in emerging-market currencies, equity investors in major markets seem ... relaxed? The milestone passed with little fanfare, but the S&P 500 index closed at a record high of 2,914.04 on Aug. 29. The day before, India’s Nifty 50 did the same. Other indexes in developed markets are only moderately below their January peaks.
With President Donald Trump expected to start implementing the next
round of tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods within hours, it’s tempting
to think the global economy is riding out the turmoil. Tempting, but
mistaken. Look closely: The slowdown has begun.
Take trade volumes. It’s been extraordinarily unusual for the momentum
of global commerce to head anywhere but up in recent decades. The only
notable occasions when the world trade monitor compiled by the CPB
Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis has turned down in a sustained
way since 2000 have been on the eve of the 2001 and 2008 recessions, and
during the 2015 commodity slump.
You
can now add 2018 to that list, with the index coming in negative
throughout the second quarter of this year. That drop is particularly
striking given that commodities, one of the largest and most volatile subsets
of globally traded goods, have been doing quite well — the CPB’s indexes
of fuels and non-fuel commodities both reached the highest levels
since 2014 in May. The weakness is coming not from materials but
from manufactured goods, as global supply chains seize up.
That’s consistent with the picture emerging on the ground. U.S. manufacturers “reported higher prices and supply disruptions that they attributed to the new trade policies,” according to the Federal Reserve’s July Beige Book, in addition to “higher input prices and shrinking margins.” The next edition, due out next week, is likely to show further impact, judging by the warnings from business leaders on the eve of the current round of levies.
Even that probably understates the extent of the underlying slowdown. In the U.S., port traffic has been running at record levels in recent months, suggesting the effect of tax cuts and a favorable monetary policy are more than making up for any trade jitters. However, a chunk of the movements probably relate to businesses stocking up early in order to beat the tariffs, according to the National Retail Federation, an industry group.
----For a better
picture of what lies ahead, have a look at the way the world’s
container-shipping lines are planning for the future. Order books that ran in
excess of 1,000 vessels before the 2008 financial crisis haven’t cracked
one-fifth of that level since Trump came to power. If the global economy is
going to ride out this latest round of tension, the merchant fleets on which
trade depends aren’t seeing it.
If all
else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth
Galbraith.
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?
Researchers use graphene to detect mid-infrared light at room temperature and convert it into electricity
Posted: Sep 04, 2018
Researchers
from ICFO and Yale have used graphene to efficiently detect mid-infrared light
at room temperature and convert it into electricity. Detecting infrared light
is of major importance for current applications in spectroscopy, materials
processing, chemical, bio-molecular and environmental sensing, security and
industry since the mid-infrared spectral region is the range where
characteristic vibrational transitions and rotational excitations of many
important molecules occur.
These vibrational and rotational excitations of many molecules,
including hazardous and biological molecules, have frequencies that are found
in the mid-infrared, which can be monitored by observing the absorption of
light in this specific spectral range. However, currently available
mid-infrared detectors are very inefficient, except those that can operate at
cryogenic temperatures, because they incorporate superconducting elements.
Thus, this low temperature limitation is a major drawback in having detectors
integrated in devices for consumer products.
Now, ICFO researcher Renwen Yu, led by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Javier García
de Abajo, in collaboration with Prof. Fengnian Xia’s group Yale University,
have demonstrated that graphene can be used to fabricate very efficient
mid-infrared detectors operating at room temperature.
The researchers have proposed and experimentally demonstrated that the
collective oscillations of charge carriers – known as graphene plasmons — are
capable of boosting the sensitivity by making use of the resonant coupling
between mid-infrared light and those plasmons.
In their study, the team fabricated a device on a CVD graphene wafer
composed of graphene-disk plasmonic resonators connected by quasi-1D graphene
nanoribbons. They then shined mid-infrared light (12,2 mm
wavelength) onto the setup and observed the excitation and high
room-temperature absorption of IR plasmons on the surface of the graphene
resonators and nanoribbons. They also observed that, thanks to the graphene
nanostructures, the absorption of light that was being converted into an
electrical responsivity was strongly linked to the level of the plasmonic
absorption, with response times enabling detection at GHz speeds.
The
results of this study show graphene to be an excellent material for ultrafast conversion
of light to electrical signals at room temperature, triggering the development
of very small-sized detectors that could be easily integrated into
high-resolution mid-infrared cameras or high density integrated infrared
photonic circuits aimed for applications such as security, bioassays or air
quality monitoring, among others.
ICFO.
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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