Monday 3 December 2018

A Relief Rally. But For How Long?


Baltic Dry Index. 1231 -50   Brent Crude 62.35

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

Hubert H. Humphrey.

Today, and probably for most of this week, a relief rally for global stocks, following the America v China trade war truce agreed between Presidents Trump and Xi after the G-20 meeting. If nothing else it allows America to get past Christmas and the New Year, while allowing China to get past the Chinese New Year early next year.

China will now probably buy a few cargoes of US soybeans and US oil, while both countries hold trade talks and prepare for new hostilities to resume on April Fool’s Day 2019. President Trump says that China’s agreed to reduce or drop tariffs on US car exports.

Is a climb down by either country likely during the pause? Not really without some unforeseen shock hitting the global economy. That in the next four months seems unlikely. The existing tariffs though bad, haven’t yet done enough damage to the global economy.

So, to this old dinosaur commodities trader, any relief rally in stocks is likely to be a final exit rally. One last time to sell out to a greater fool buyer.

Below storm clouds still continue to grow. Our long in the tooth recovery from the Great Recession, is just about played out and coming to its end. My guess is that the “everything bubble” bursts in 2019.

Politics have no relation to morals.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Asia's outlook darkens as factory activity slips, new orders fall

December 3, 2018 / 3:46 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asia’s economic prospects looked gloomy as factory activity and export orders weakened across the region in November with analysts expecting no quick rebound amid simmering global trade frictions.

In a sign corporate sentiment was taking a hit from worries over protectionism, manufacturers’ activity slipped in November in countries as varied as Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea the IHS Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index showed on Monday. 

While factory activity rose slightly in China, new export orders extended their decline in a further blow to a sector already hurt by Sino-U.S. trade frictions.

The IHS Markit survey results came on the heels of data out earlier on Monday showing a sharp slowdown in Japan’s capital expenditure, which had been considered a key driver of the export-reliant economy.

Asian shares rallied on Monday after U.S. and Chinese leaders meeting at the G20 summit in Argentina agreed on a truce in their trade conflict, offering some reassurance on the global economic outlook.

But analysts said the 90-day deadline the two sides agreed upon to reach a deal meant a conclusive resolution of the row remained distant.

“There’s a quite huge risk the Sino-U.S. trade war will intensify again after the 90-day truce, weighing on the global economy,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief market economist at SMBC Nikko Securities.

“The Sino-U.S. trade war remains the biggest risk for global economic prospects,” he said.

China’s manufacturing sector activity grew slightly in November but new export orders shrank, reflecting weakening global demand, a private survey showed.

The downbeat readings backed Friday’s official PMI survey for November showing growth in China’s vast factory sector sliding to its lowest in more than two years.

South Korean factory activity in November contracted again after two brief months of growth as new export orders shrank by the most in over five years, a sign of increasing pressure on businesses from slowing global demand.

A revised survey showed Japan’s manufacturing activity expanded in November at the slowest pace in more than a year as growth in new orders slowed, a worrying sign that economic expansion may be muted in the fourth quarter.
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Stocks Jump With Bond Yields on Trade-News Relief: Markets Wrap

By Adam Haigh
Updated on 3 December 2018, 04:21 GMT
Risk appetite returned to markets on Monday, as U.S. equity futures climbed alongside Asian stocks, the Australian dollar and the Chinese yuan, after a truce between Washington and Beijing emerged from the Group-of-20 summit. Oil surged on signs a supply glut may ease.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to pause the introduction of new tariffs and intensify their trade talks. S&P 500 Index futures jumped over 1.5 percent, while the Aussie and the currencies of South Africa, Turkey and Mexico all rose. Shares from Sydney to Shanghai gained and the 10-year Treasury yield jumped back above 3 percent. The greenback traded lower against most of its large developed-market counterparts. Crude climbed following a Saudi Arabia-Russia agreement and plans for a supply cut from Canada’s Alberta province.

“This is the best outcome that we had hoped for out of this meeting,” said Frances Cheung, head of Asia macro strategy at Westpac Banking Corp.

While far from resolved, the easing in tensions between the leaders of the world’s largest economies goes some way to lifting sentiment that’s been weighed down by concerns the trade war is damaging global economic growth. Last week, dovish comments from the Federal Reserve helped propel a revival in risk taking.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-02/trade-truce-brings-relief-as-aussie-yuan-gain-markets-wrap

Factbox - Contrasting Chinese, U.S. statements on trade war agreement

December 3, 2018 / 3:38 AM
(Reuters) - China and the United States agreed on Saturday to a truce in their trade war following talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina.

However, there are differences in both countries’ official accounts of what was agreed. Here are some of the key differences:

QUALCOMM-NXP

The White House said Xi said he was open to approving the previously unapproved Qualcomm-NXP deal should it again be presented to him. 

Senior Chinese officials did not mention this deal in a news conference. However, at least one major Chinese state media outlet mentioned it on its account on Chinese social media platform WeChat, referring to the White House statement.

The White House said Trump and Xi agreed to immediately begin negotiations on structural changes with respect to forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cyber theft, services and agriculture.

The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, was less specific, telling reporters China will import more products, based on market demand, from the United States in efforts to gradually ease imbalances in two-way trade.

Wang added that the two also agreed to open markets to each other, and that China will work to gradually resolve U.S. concerns in the process of further opening-up.

On Monday, influential Chinese tabloid the Global Times said it understood China and the United States will further discuss moves at expanding market access, intellectual property protection, avoiding compulsory technology transfers, and joint control of cyber crime.

90-DAY TIMEFRAME FOR TALKS

The White House said talks would take place to resolve within the next 90 days specific U.S. complaints like forced technology transfer, or else existing 10 percent tariffs would go up to 25 percent. They had been scheduled to increase to 25 percent on Jan. 1 but were postponed as part of the agreement.

Wang did not mention this timeframe, though Chinese state media has. Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen told reporters that China and the United States would step up talks to remove the existing 25 percent tariffs (on some other products), but gave no timeframe.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trade-china-factbox/factbox-contrasting-chinese-u-s-statements-on-trade-war-agreement-idUKKBN1O206J?il=0

Oil Surges on Saudi-Russia Agreement, Alberta Production Curb

By Heesu Lee
Updated on 3 December 2018, 02:43 GMT
Oil rebounded from the biggest monthly loss in a decade after Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to extend their deal to manage the crude market into 2019 and Canada’s largest producing province ordered an unprecedented output cut.


Brent rose as much as 5.3 percent in London, after prices collapsed more than 20 percent last month. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the extension after a meeting Saturday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, though Moscow and Riyadh have yet to confirm any fresh output cuts. Oil also gained after Alberta ordered curbs of 325,000 barrels a day in an effort to ease a crisis in the nation’s energy industry and after the U.S. and China agreed to pause new tariffs.

Crude collapsed into a bear market last month on fears over a supply glut after America granted waivers to some nations to keep importing Iranian oil. Traders have been watching closely if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners will curb output at their meeting this week in Vienna to stabilize prices. While OPEC delegates said the leaders have given their political blessing for an agreement, plenty of work is left, including on the size of any potential output cut.

“While we still need to know by how much OPEC will curb its production, Putin’s comment does clear a barrier for OPEC in stabilizing prices as Russia has been ambiguous about its stance,” Ahn Yea Ha, a commodities analyst at Kiwoom Securities Co., said by phone from Seoul. “At the same time, oil’s being supported by easing trade tensions between the U.S. and China as it’s improving investor sentiment for risk assets.”

---- Alberta’s decision to curtail output gave a further boost to prices. The unprecedented step, announced Sunday, will reduce production of raw crude and bitumen by 8.7 percent starting in January until the levels of excess oil in storage are drawn down. The reduction would then drop to 95,000 barrels a day until the end of next year at the latest.

The amount being cut is more than the total production of each of OPEC’s three smallest members: Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of Congo.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-03/oil-jumps-after-saudi-arabia-and-russia-agree-to-extend-pact?srnd=premium

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner


The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.  

Today, the “war” in near earth space. What goes up isn’t always what it seems.

Russia Just Launched Five Objects Into Space. One Problem, There Were Supposed To Be Four

The available information suggests that the Russians may have put yet another secretive "killer satellite" into orbit.

By Joseph Trevithick November 30, 2018
The Russian military says it successfully placed three classified communications satellites into orbit today, along with the upper stage of the rocket that put them there.  But according to the U.S. military's Combined Space Operations Center, or CSpOC, a fifth object, possibly another, unannounced satellite, may have hitched a ride into space on the launch.

The Rokot/Briz-KM launch vehicle blasted off from Pad 3 at Site 133 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Western Russia at just before 5:30 PM local time on Nov. 30, 2018, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. At approximately 7:12 PM, the three Rodnik communications satellites had deployed into their assigned orbits. Russia has named the trio of satellites Kosmos-2530, Kosmos-2531, and Kosmos-2532.

This would all be rather banal had the CSpoC, as well as the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), not recorded the launch slightly differently. Information on Space-Track.org, a U.S. government website that publicly releases data on space launches from the CSpoC and NORAD, listed Objects A through E as resulting from the launch from Plesetsk. This would include the three satellites and the upper stage, but the fifth object is unexplained.

It is possible that the upper stage simply fragmented into multiple pieces that were large enough for the U.S. military to track independently. Three of the objects – A through C – have essentially same perigee, the point in their orbit at which they are nearest to the earth. The other two objects – D and E – share a different general perigee.

But there is also the distinct possibility that this could be yet another so-called "inspector satellite." More on that later, but we've actually seen almost exactly the same thing happen at least once before.

On May 23, 2014, another Rokot/Briz-KM launch vehicle put three Rodnik communications satellites into orbit. Again, the U.S. military tracked five objects, with Object E, in that case, turning out to be an inspector satellite known as Kosmos-2499. The perigees and other data for the five objects are extremely similar in both cases.

----So, what is an inspector satellite? They ostensibly do just that, inspect other objects in space. From a benign perspective, this makes good sense, since it gives personnel on the ground a means of investigating damaged or malfunctioning objects in space remotely before deciding how best to proceed with repairs or replacement. 

There have even been proposals to give these maneuverable satellites their own limited ability to perform repairs. The United States and China, as well as Russia, have all be developing these types of satellites.

----However, as we at The War Zone have noted on multiple occasions in the past, these same orbital inspectors could double as orbital spies or weapons. The craft are, by definition, capable of precise maneuvering to get close to the object of interest, have cameras, and may have small manipulator arms to help with their work. This would just as easily allow them to gather intelligence on foreign satellites or possibly disable or destroy them. They might even carry their own electronic warfare suites or other systems to blind or jam their targets.

They might offer the Russians a way to locate top-secret spy satellites that certain countries, such as the United States, might not even acknowledge exist and that might be otherwise shielded from detection. We at The War Zone have previously explored the compelling information available that the U.S. government has been actively developing stealth satellites, or is at least very interested in the applicable technology, specifically to shield its space assets from potential terrestrial and space-based threats.
More. Much more.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

Joseph Stalin

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?

Artificial magnetic field produces exotic behavior in graphene sheets

Date: November 29, 2018

Source: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

Summary: Theoretical physics discovery paves the way for future technological applications.

A simple sheet of graphene has noteworthy properties due to a quantum phenomenon in its electron structure named Dirac cones in honor of British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933.

The system becomes even more interesting if it comprises two superimposed graphene sheets, and one is very slightly turned in its own plane so that the holes in the two carbon lattices no longer completely coincide.

For specific angles of twist, the bilayer graphene system displays exotic properties such as superconductivity (zero resistance to electrical current flow).

A new study conducted by Brazilian physicist Aline Ramires with Jose Lado, a Spanish-born researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), shows that the application of an electrical field to such a system produces an effect identical to that of an extremely intense magnetic field applied to two aligned graphene sheets.

An article on the study has recently been published in Physical Review Letters and was selected to feature on the issue's cover. It can also be downloaded from the arXiv platform.

Ramires is a researcher at São Paulo State University's Institute of Theoretical Physics (IFT-UNESP) and the South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR). She is supported by São Paulo Research Foundation -- FAPESP through a Young Investigator grant.

"I performed the analysis, and it was computationally verified by Lado," Ramires told. "It enables graphene's electronic properties to be controlled by means of electrical fields, generating artificial but effective magnetic fields with far greater magnitudes than those of the real magnetic fields that can be applied."
---"The artificial magnetic fields proposed previously were based on the application of forces to deform the material. Our proposal enables the generation of these fields to be controlled with much greater precision. This could have practical applications," Ramires said.
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"In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension."

John Kenneth Galbraith.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November.

DJIA: 25,538 +157 Down. NASDAQ: 7,331 +205 Down. SP500: 2,760 +129 Down. 
Though a strong attempt was made of Friday to dress up the month-end figures to prevent November becoming a second down month in a row, the Coppock Indicators still moved down suggesting that there’s still more of the correction to come. But was the month-end dress up enough to prevent a massive wave of year-end stock fund redemptions? Probably, after Presidents Trump and Xi found a way to defer by 90 days the January 1st increase in US tariffs. But beware the end of March 2019 redemptions if the US v China trade talks fail.

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