Baltic Dry Index. 1023 -08 Brent Crude 66.48
Stocks take an escalator up and an elevator down.
Wall Street Saying.
Since
stocks are clearly in an elevator and have been for several weeks, the big questions
are, where and when will the elevator stop?
Of lesser importance for now, is why? But if the elevator doesn’t stop
soon, the answer will likely be the basement rather than the 11th
floor, as a bear market will likely trigger massive year end fund redemptions,
and massive money manger attempts to sell off losers to dress up the yearend
holdings.
Happily
for now, the USA is in holiday shortened Thanksgiving Day week, which ought to
produce some short covering, or even for the very daring, an attempt at bottom
fishing, aka trying to catch a falling knife.
But
with US Vice President Pence, on behalf of his boss President Trump, having just
given a “Glasgow kiss” to China at the weekend APEC meeting, a trade war U-turn
by President Trump at the G-20 meeting in Argentina on November 30th
seems unlikely.
A very
difficult 2019 lies directly ahead, with an increasing possibility of the next global
recession arriving. More and more stock analysts are calling for President
Trump to declare trade war victory, and start working to head off recession.
But is
it already too late? Since starting his trade war against NATO, NAFTA and
China, the price of most stocks, bonds, many commodities and all
cryptocurrencies have all gone into the elevator, have we already destroyed too
much global “wealth” to service the last decade’s explosion of debt?
Below the
elevator still falling.
Clack clack clack clack clack clack.
Stock markets tumble on tech sell-off, dollar sags
November 20, 2018 / 12:55 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian stock markets
skidded on Tuesday, extending sharp losses on Wall Street as technology firms
bore the brunt of worries about slackening demand, while the dollar sagged
after weak U.S. data further sapped confidence in the currency.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific
shares outside Japan dropped 0.9 percent.
The Shanghai Composite Index retreated 1 percent, Australian stocks lost
0.9 percent and tech-heavy South Korean shares dropped 0.8 percent.
In Seoul, Samsung Electronics fell 1.8 percent and SK Hynix Inc dropped
2.8 percent, while Japan’s Tokyo Electron was down 1.4 percent, Advantest lost
1.2 percent and Sony Corp shed 2.6 percent.
Japan’s Nikkei slipped 0.9 percent. Shares of Nissan Motor Co tumbled
4.3 percent after its
Chairman Carlos Ghosn was arrested on Monday for alleged
financial misconduct and will be fired from the board this week.
“By under-reporting his corporate salary, he basically deprived Nissan’s
shareholders of opportunities to judge if the amount of his salary was
appropriate,” said Toru Ibayashi, executive director of Wealth Management at
UBS Securities Japan.”This incident will make investors review if Japanese
corporate governance is working.”
U.S. stocks came under heavy selling on Monday, with Nasdaq tumbling 3
percent, as investors dumped Apple, internet and other technology shares.
Conflicting signals between the United States and China on their trade dispute
added to caution. [.N]
More
Dow closes down nearly 400 points as tech losses batter stock market
Published: Nov 19, 2018 4:26 p.m. ET
Stocks retreated sharply lower Monday, with shares of technology and
internet-related companies dragging the market lower. The main equity
benchmarks saw losses accelerate in morning trade after a report showed
home-builders’ confidence plummeted in November.U.S. financial markets will be closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -3.03% led the markets lower, closing down 219.4 points, or 3%, to 7,028.48. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.56% tumbled 395.8 points, or 1.6%, to 25,017.44, and the S&P 500 index SPX, -1.66% retreated 45.5 points, or 1.7%, at 2,690.73
Last week, the Dow posted a weekly decline of 2.2%, the S&P 500 index declined by 1.6% while the Nasdaq shed 2.2%.
Investor anxiety, evidenced by last week’s declines, continued Monday, following a report on home-builder confidence that showed sector executives less upbeat than at any point in more than two years.
See: Home builder confidence tumbles the most since 2014 as headwinds catch up
Trade issues have been a key driver of volatility, as investors consider the possibility that U.S. tariff rates on a swath of Chinese goods could rise from 10% to 25% in January, as they will under current policy, absent a resolution. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet in Buenos Aires later this month, a summit investors hope will lead to a new trade deal, or at least the delay in tariff hikes.
Trade concerns weighed on the technology sector in particular, as the supply chains of multinational tech firms rely heavily on U.S.-China trade flows.
Meanwhile, investors also keyed in on other political narratives, including Brexit and the Italian budget crisis, which have contributed to market volatility of late. British Prime Minister Theresa May is slated to take her plan to take the U.K. out of the European Union to Brussels after seemingly avoiding a leadership challenge — at least for now.
Italian and EU officials remain in a protracted deadlock over the Italian government’s budget plans, which Brussels said run afoul of the bloc’s rules, setting up a clash between the two that could prove disruptive to markets.
More
Here's What Wall Street Hopes Will Stem the Sell-Off in Equities
By Vildana Hajric, Sarah Ponczek, and Elena Popina
Weeks have become months in measuring stock market pain. What can heal
it? It’s easier to list the things that have failed.
Lines on charts didn’t work. A favorite boundary for bulls, the 200-day
average in the S&P 500, is a distant memory. Earnings have come and gone --
they made things worse. Midterms? Nope. Falling yields? Haven’t helped. The
decline showed no sign of abating Monday as the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.3 percent to
the lowest since April.
Trade War
Ryan Nauman, market strategist at Informa Financial Intelligence:
"No. 1 could be trade. At the G20 summit, if we get some good news
out of there and maybe some optimism building on the trade front, that could
potentially give us a boost. In order for the markets to get to the next level
and break through this range we’re in, the trade issue will have to be
resolved. And once that is -- if it is -- then markets will break through with
some optimism."
Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco Ltd:
“This sell-off is largely driven by growing concerns over the trade
situation and therefore it will take a positive development in trade to take
pressure off markets. Now, that’s somewhat simplistic, since there is certainly
concern over the slowdown that we are seeing globally but that slowdown is
relatively modest. I believe it has been partially caused by concerns over
trade and the economic policy uncertainty that comes with it. In my view, a
positive trade development would likely be the easiest way to end this
sell-off.”
More
Chicago skyscraper elevator falls 84 floors; 6 occupants rescued after 3 hours
By Alexandra
Klausner November 19, 2018 | 11:28am
An elevator in a Chicago skyscraper plummeted 84 floors with six terrified
passengers inside — and it took three hours to rescue the victims, who were
trapped with no food or water.The riders — who included a pregnant woman, Northwestern law students, and tourists from Mexico — had hopped in the elevator after dining at the famed Signature Room in the John Hancock Center at 12:30 a.m. Friday, when hell broke loose.
“At the beginning, I believed we were going to die,” Jamie Montemayor, who was visiting Chicago from Mexico City, told CBS.
“We were going down and then I felt that we were falling down and then I heard a noise — clack clack clack clack clack clack.”
More
In
other news, the Danske Bank money laundering scandal grows and grows. But with
to big to fail Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and JP Morgan now involved, will
all involved get a slap on the wrist and a walk?
Poor banksters, they can resist anything except temptation.
With apologies to Oscar Wilde.
Danske whistleblower says big European bank handled $150 billion in payments
November 19, 2018 / 10:28 AM
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The whistleblower
who revealed alleged money laundering involving Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO) said on Monday that a major
European bank helped process up to $150 billion in suspicious payments, or
nearly two-thirds of the transactions under scrutiny.
Howard Wilkinson, who was head of Danske Bank’s trading unit in the Baltics from 2007 to 2014, did not name the bank, but a source with direct knowledge of the case said he was referring to Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), which was one of the lenders clearing dollar transactions for Danske’s Estonian branch.
A Deutsche Bank spokesman confirmed in a statement to Reuters the lender acted as a correspondent bank for Danske in Estonia.
“Our role was to process payments for Danske Bank. We terminated the relationship in 2015 after identifying suspicious activity,” the spokesman said.
Wilkinson said two U.S. banks were also involved in handling dollar payments for Danske in Estonia, without identifying them. Alongside Deutsche, JPMorgan (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N) cleared dollar transactions for Danske’s Estonian branch, sources have told Reuters.
JPMorgan ended the correspondent banking relationship with Danske in 2013 on grounds that transactions did not comply with anti-money laundering rules, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Bank of America declined to comment.
Authorities in Denmark, Estonia, Britain and the United States are
investigating payments totalling 200 billion euros ($228.5 billion) made
through Danske Bank’s tiny Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015 in a growing
global scandal.
----
“No one really knows where this money went. All we know is that the last people
to see it was these three large banks in the U.S. They were the last check, and
when that failed, the money was into the global financial system,” Wilkinson
said.
----
Wilkinson said that he had been offered cash by Danske Bank not to speak out,
but had got a waiver last month allowing him to talk to some U.S. authorities,
adding that he did not expect investigations into the “dirty money” to bear
fruit.
More
Finally,
China 40 years on from Deng and 1978. Are Trump’s trade war hooligans about to
wreck it all?
40 years of reform and opening up
If all
else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth
Galbraith.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
No crooks today, they’ll be
back tomorrow, you just can’t keep them down. Today more sunspot news. Will it
be a cold Northern Hemisphere winter in western Europe and North America? The opening signs seem, early, average, and perhaps long.
A SUNSPOT FROM THE NEXT SOLAR CYCLE:
November
19 2018
Over
the weekend, a small sunspot materialized, then, hours later, vanished again.
Such an occurrence is hardly unusual during solar minimum when sunspots are
naturally small and short-lived. However, this ephemeral sunspot was noteworthy
because its magnetic field was reversed. Here is a Nov. 17th magnetic map from NASA's
Solar Dynamics Observatory with visible sunspots inset:
---- Sunspot AR2727 is a member of decaying Solar Cycle 24. Compare its magnetic polarity to that of the other, unnumbered sunspot. They are opposite. According to Hale's Law, this means they are from different solar cycles. The brief weekend sunspot appears to be a harbinger of Solar Cycle 25.
Solar cycles always mix together at their boundaries. Ephemeral sunspots from Sunspot 25 have already been reported on Dec. 20, 2016, and April 8, 2018. Now add Nov. 17, 2018 to list. The slow transition between Solar Cycle 24 and Solar Cycle 25 appears to be underway.
Arctic Oscillation and Polar Vortex Analysis and Forecasts
November 12, 2018
----
It seems to me that the models will likely
struggle with the placement of the blocking in the North Atlantic. This
needs to be watched carefully with different scenarios possible based on the
exact location of the blocking, but high latitude blocking on either side of
the North Atlantic raises the risk of severe winter weather for both the
Eastern US and northern Eurasia including Europe.
Near Term Conditions
1-5 day
The AO is currently negative (Figure 1), reflective of mostly
positive geopotential height anomalies across the Arctic and mixed geopotential
height anomalies across the mid-latitudes of the NH (Figure 2).
Geopotential height anomalies are slightly positive across Iceland and
Greenland (Figure 2), however mostly positive geopotential height
anomalies across the mid-latitudes of the North Atlantic are contributing
to a positive NAO. During the week the NAO will trend to negative as
positive geopotential heights slowly consolidate closer to Greenland.
---- Equatorial
Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) anomalies have continued to warm and
have crossed the threshold into El Niño conditions (Figure 13),
and the forecast is for likely weak to possibly moderate El Niño conditions for
this winter. Observed SSTs across the NH remain well above normal
especially in the North Pacific though below normal SSTs exist
regionally. Well above normal SSTs in the northern North Pacific near
Alaska are reminiscent of the "blob" winters of 2013/14 and
2014/15 and could support mid-tropospheric ridging in the coming months. Cold
SSTs south of Iceland and in the subtripcs of the North Atlantic with above
normal SSTs in the mid-latitudes are supposed to favor a positive winter NAO.
---- Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover
Snow cover advance continues its climb out of the basement across
Eurasia and now is near decadal means. Snow cover advance could pick up
more speed as cold temperatures start spreading to the west towards Europe this
week. Above normal snow cover extent this past October, favors a strenghtened
Siberian high, cold temperatures across northern Eurasia and a weakened polar
vortex/negative AO this upcoming winter followed by cold temperatures across
the continents of the NH.
The
rate of North American snow cover advance continues at a blistering rate and
remains near decadal highs. With continued cold air across Canada and the
Northern US, North America snow cover will likely continue further.
If snow and cold establish a foothold across Canada this fall, it could support
an early start to winter across the Northern US.
More
Thanksgiving's High Temperatures Could Be Among the Coldest on Record in Parts of the Northeast
By Chris Dolce 16 hours ago weather.com
·
An arctic air mass will engulf the Northeast
late this week.
·
Temperatures in some cities on Thanksgiving Day
could be among the coldest on record for the holiday.
·
Low temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees below
average.
High temperatures on Thanksgiving Day could rank among the coldest on
record for some Northeast cities as early-season arctic air engulfs the
region late this week.
A strong area of high pressure from the Arctic Circle will descend
southward across Canada and into the Northeast, sending temperatures plummeting
toward levels more common on New Year's Day, not Turkey Day.
For some Northeast cities, high temperatures on Thanksgiving could be close to the coldest on record no matter what day of the month the holiday was celebrated (e.g. Nov. 22, Nov. 24, Nov. 26, etc.).
New York City has only had three Thanksgivings dating to 1870 when the high temperature failed to rise out of the 20s, according to National Weather Service statistics. The coldest was a high of 26 degrees on Nov. 28, 1901.
While this year may not touch that record in the Big Apple, it could still be just the fourth time when the high on Thanksgiving is only in the 20s.
In southern New England, Boston could come within a couple of degrees of its coldest Thanksgiving high of 24 degrees, also set Nov. 28, 1901.
More
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
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?
The Short-Term Economics Of A Tesla-Powered Solar Home
November 18th, 2018 by Bob Borsh
We went “live” with our solar installation on April 9, 2018. To recap, we’ve got 8.125 kW of generation capacity from our roof-mounted array of 25 panels, each capable of 320 watt gross output with a Powerwall 2 and a 240V Tesla car charging station.
Since it has primarily just been my wife and I in the house full time
for the last several years, our average monthly electric bill has been
approximately $100–110 based on usage of around 550–600 kWh per month. The
house is located in West Woodstock, Vermont, proving full well that you don’t
have to be in Arizona or California to have a successful solar generation
system.
Green Mountain Power (GMP), our utility provider, is currently charging
a flat rate of $0.17 per kWh. As part of our 10 year fixed credit net metering
contract, we are paid $0.04 per kWh generated. That is every kWh
generated by our array, whether it goes to charge our battery, power our home,
or back to the grid. We were also charged $110 as an upfront cost from GMP to
install our “Gross Solar Meter,” even though Tesla Energy did 99% of the work
by installing the meter bucket and all associated wiring and the utility showed
up for just about 10 minutes to install the meter.
---- I’ve included a few of our monthly utility bills on the bottom of this article for you to review. For the usage period of 4/25/2018 thru 10/26/2018, our total amount paid to GMP was $231.03. This reduces to an average monthly charge of $38.51. The lowest monthly bill was $18.80, the highest $69.32. During the same period, our total energy used was 7506 kWh, while our total solar generated was 5409 kWh.
Not bad, you say? But wait. It gets better. The spike in usage through
those six months was due to the fact that I was charging our Model S every
weekday night from Sunday through Thursday (at a minimum) — on average from 20%
to 90%. My commute is 190 miles a day round trip. Yeah, I know. However, I
refer you back to the first paragraph. We are in VERMONT! That’s the Green
Mountain State. Also can be referred to as the No Industry State. Bring your
trust fund, buy your second (or third, or fourth) home. But I digress.
Back to the economics lesson. So, our average monthly utility cost was
reduced by approximately 60%, while our average monthly usage increased by a
little more than 100%. Concurrently, I pretty much parked my 2013 Golf TDI for
the same period. So, the approximate 22,800 miles driven commuting saved an
average of $309.61 per month in diesel fuel costs. The basis for this
calculation was an average fuel economy of 40 mpg for the Golf and an average
local diesel cost of $3.259 per gallon. (That’s 22800/40 x $3.259.)
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October.
DJIA: 25,116 +176 Down. NASDAQ:
7,306 +232 Down. SP500: 2,712 +146 Down. All three slow indexes went sharply down in
October, suggesting there’s more of the correction to come.
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