Baltic Dry Index. 1238 -24 Brent Crude 60.82
“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”King Henry VI, Part 2.
While the stock
market relief exit rally stalls over a lack of any meaningful details from the
USA v China trade talks, globally our world seems to be descending towards
anarchy. From North America, through Brexit Europe heading towards another
French Revolution, through the middle east being the middle east, to China
losing patience with Canada, this morning it’s hard to find any “normality.”
How long before
something or somewhere blows up? We are living on borrowed time, drinking in
the last chance saloon, betting on something turning up. As a game plan for
2019 it’s reckless to say the least.
Below, time to add a
little more stability from gold and silver.What looks like turning up isn’t likely
to help.
Asian markets mixed as China inflation data offsets trade-talk hopes
Asian stock markets were mixed in early trading Thursday, as optimism over the recently concluded U.S.-China trade talks were muted by a disappointing Chinese inflation report.Earlier, U.S. and Chinese officials said progress had been made during the three days of talks in Beijing. While major hurdles remain, the talks appeared to clear a path for higher-level negotiations that could further ease trade tensions before President Donald Trump’s March deadline, when he said he will raise tariffs on more than $200 billion in Chinese-made good from 10% to 25%.
“Although we were hoping for a more favorable statement from the U.S.-China trade talks which ended yesterday, it appears that at least on the surface that U.S.-China trade discussion remains a work in progress,” Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda, said in a Thursday research note. “Unquestionably markets were looking for something more concrete to sink their teeth into despite the statement chock-full of positives but lacking in the necessary specificity.”
Later, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said that producer-price inflation sharply slowed in December, suggesting slower economic growth.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index HSI, +0.02% made up early losses and was last up 0.3%. Financials lagged, while pharma companies CSPC 1093, +9.33% and Sino Biopharmaceutical 2922, +10.83% surged. Tencent 0700, +0.18% rose slightly, despite being left off a list of new videogame licensees by a Chinese regulator, according to the Financial Times.
The Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +0.04% also recovered from session lows, and was last up 0.2%, while the smaller-cap Shenzhen Composite 399106, +0.27% rose 0.4%.
Japan’s Nikkei NIK, -1.32% fell 1.1%, with robotics maker Fanuc 6954, -2.46% down 3.3% and Fast Retailing 9983, -2.14% slipping 1.4%. Takeda Pharmaceutical 4502, +3.24% rose 2.8%.
South Korea’s Kospi SEU, -0.06% was about flat, though Samsung 005930, +0.51% rose 1%. Australia’s ASX 200 XJO, +0.29% fell slightly, with bank stocks down. Benchmark indexes were up in Singapore STI, +0.52% but down in Taiwan Y9999, -0.39% .
On Wall Street, stocks rose for the fourth consecutive session after the trade talks were extended to a third day. Traders took this as a positive sign, but a partial government shutdown at home that appeared far from being resolved limited gains.
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/asian-markets-mixed-as-china-inflation-data-offsets-trade-talk-hopes-2019-01-09
Trump storms out of talks on shutdown, bemoans 'total waste of time'
January 9, 2019 / 6:09 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump stormed out of talks
with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday over funding for a border
wall with Mexico and reopening the government, complaining the meeting at the
White House was “a total waste of time.”
On the 19th day of a partial government
shutdown caused by the dispute over the wall, a short meeting that included
Trump, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic
leader Chuck Schumer ended in acrimony with no sign of a resolution.
“Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy,
a total waste of time,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I asked what is going to
happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border
Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier?” Trump wrote. “Nancy said, NO.
I said bye-bye, nothing else works!”
More
Fitch warns of possible downgrade to U.S. AAA credit rating if shutdown persists
By Rachel
Koning Beals Published: Jan
9, 2019 6:44 a.m. ET
The U.S. risks losing its pristine triple-A credit rating later this year if
the government shutdown persists and negatively impacts the country’s debt
ceiling, Fitch said Wednesday.The shutdown entered day 19 as a stalemate between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over a spending package to fund nine government agencies continues. Lawmakers and the White House are divided over the president’s demand for money for a border wall, a case he took to prime time television Tuesday night, stopping short of declaring an emergency as analysts had speculated.
“I think people are looking at the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) numbers. If people take the time to look at that you can see debt levels moving higher, you can see the interest burden in the U.S. government moving decidedly higher over the next decade,” James McCormack, Fitch’s global head of sovereign ratings told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Wednesday. He said analysts at Fitch want to see a fiscal adjustment to offset the borrowing burden.
At an event later in London, McCormack added, “If this shutdown continues
to March 1 and the debt ceiling becomes a problem several months later, we may
need to start thinking about the policy framework, the inability to pass a
budget... and whether all of that is consistent with triple-A,” CNBC reported
from the event.
Fitch had said in a recent report that its sovereign credit view of the
world’s largest economy hinged on whether the ongoing shutdown was likely to
devolve into a “more pronounced destabilization of fiscal policymaking.”
More
The government shutdown spotlights a bigger issue: 78% of US workers live paycheck to paycheck
•
The partial government shutdown, which began Dec. 22, has now stretched well
into the new year. President Donald Trump said Friday that it would continue for “months or even
years” until he receives the requested $5 billion in funding for a border
wall.The shutdown has left approximately 800,000 federal workers in financial limbo. Around 420,000 “essential” employees are working without pay, while another 380,000 have been ordered to stay home, according to calculations provided to CNBC by Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.
In some cases, the furloughs have forced government employees to tap into their savings, rely on credit cards or crowdsource funds to make ends meet.
Government workers are far from alone in feeling stressed about not getting paid. Nearly 80 percent of American workers (78 percent) say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2017 report by employment website CareerBuilder. Women are particularly vulnerable: 81 percent of them report living paycheck to paycheck, compared with 75 percent of men.
More
In other news, China’s mad with racist Canada, Mexico runs out of black market petrol, prepare for another crop disrupting El Nino.
China envoy accuses Canada of 'double standards' over Huawei arrest
January 10, 2019 / 4:52 AM / Updated an
hour ago
BEIJING/TORONTO
(Reuters) - China’s ambassador to Ottawa has accused Canada of “double
standards” and disregarding his country’s judicial sovereignty, in a diplomatic
row sparked by the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of
the United States
.
Beijing
denounced Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of
Huawei Technologies Co [HWT.UL] on Dec. 1 on a U.S. extradition warrant, and
threatened reprisals unless the case against Meng was dropped.
Days after the arrest, China detained two Canadian citizens -
businessman Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and an adviser
with the International Crisis Group - whom it is investigating for endangering
its national security.
In an article in the Ottawa-based Hill Times newspaper on Wednesday,
Ambassador Lu Shaye said Canada’s demands for the release of the two men
reflected “double standards” born of “Western egotism and white supremacy”.
Lu wrote, “It seems that, to those people, the laws of Canada or other
Western countries are laws and must be observed, while China’s laws are not,
and shouldn’t be respected.”
A lack of concern in Canada for Meng suggested that humanitarian
treatment was only deemed necessary for Canadian citizens, not Chinese people,
he added.
More
Mexican fuel shortage worries industry as lines grow in capital
January 9, 2019 / 9:02 PM
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gasoline shortages
in Mexico sparked by a government crackdown on fuel theft prompted warnings
from business leaders that industries like carmaking will suffer if the problem
persists, while lines at gas stations grew in the capital on Wednesday.
The drive to eradicate a crime that has drained billions of dollars from
state coffers is President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s first major move
against chronic corruption since taking office on Dec. 1.
Criminal groups have been tapping pipelines and stealing tanker trucks
laden with diesel and gasoline in the oil-producing country for years, often
operating with apparent impunity.
However, by closing off pipelines and refineries while it tracked
leakages, the government has triggered shortfalls and long lines at gas
stations in several states, angering consumers and risking economic damage.
Lopez Obrador said fuel theft has dropped to the equivalent of 27
truckloads a day from “over a thousand” since he sent the army to police
installations of state-oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) last month. On
Wednesday he vowed to hold firm in the fight.
---- Still, concern in industry is growing.
Juan Pablo Castanon, head of the powerful Mexican business lobby CCE,
told Milenio television bottlenecks in fuel supply were starting to affect
manufacturing.
“Not just workers in their movements to the workplace, but also production
plants, particularly in the auto industry, which isn’t able to get enough fuel
for new vehicles,” he said.
Alfredo Arzola, director of the automotive industry hub in the state of
Guanajuato, a major carmaking area hard hit by the fuel problems, told Reuters
assembly plants could begin idling within a week if no fix was found.
More
Japan weather bureau sees 80 percent chance of El Nino continuing into spring
January 10, 2019 / 5:12 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s weather bureau said on Thursday the El Nino
weather pattern appears to be continuing and that there was an 80 percent
chance it would stretch into the northern hemisphere spring.
A U.S. government weather forecaster last month projected a 90 percent
chance of the El Nino weather pattern emerging during the northern hemisphere
winter 2018-19, with a 60 percent chance of continuing through spring this
year.
The last El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern
and central Pacific that typically happens every few years, occurred around
2015/2016 and caused weather-related crop damage, fires and flash floods.
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a
society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over
banksters and politicians.
Today, that trade war again. US soybean farmers have a ten year master plan.
Shame about last year’s crop though, and what do they plant this year? Perhaps
they can switch back to planting wheat. If America keeps Huawei’s Canada
kidnapped executive locked up will Chinese soy buyers ever return? Something
for Apple to think about too.
Good luck with trying to get Indians, Pakistanis,
and Bangladeshis to eat beef and pork to drive USA soy sales in 2029.
“It is
easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the
cost.”
Devastated by trade war, U.S. soy growers look for new buyers
Jan. 8, 2019 / 3:08 PM
EVANSVILLE, Ind., Jan. 8 (UPI) -- America's
soybean industry is scrambling to find new international trading partners after
the trade war with China cost the industry it's single largest buyer --
plummeting prices and devastating farmers.Before the trade dispute, China purchased around 30 percent of all the soy grown in the United States -- and 60 percent of the exported soy. That stopped suddenly last summer when China levied a 20 percent tariff on U.S. beans. The move was retaliation for similar tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
The enduring trade dispute mean Chinese buyers have purchased a fraction of what they normally would, leaving millions of bushels of beans sitting in grain bins around the country with nowhere to go.
The situation has exporters urgently looking for other nations to buy that soy.
"China had become such a large part of our market," said Jim Sutter, CEOof the U.S. Soybean Export Council. "And, all of a sudden, that market was closed. We had to do something."
The problem they're running into is there simply isn't enough worldwide demand for soy to make up for the loss of China. To fill the void, exporters say, they must create demand for soy in countries where there is none.
To do this, exporters are looking for countries that are poor, but have an economy that is quickly developing. Those are countries in which the majority of the people don't eat much meat. For now, they're too poor to afford it. But, as their nation's economy improves, they soon will.
"As people move from poverty into a middle class, one of the first things they do is add more meat to their diets," said Grant Kimberley, director of market development for the Iowa Soybean Association.
This is important for the soy industry because U.S. beans are mainly used to feed livestock, like cows, pigs and chickens.
So, to create new markets for U.S. soy, the idea is for exporters to create relationships with farmers in developing countries, so when they need to begin raising more livestock, the United States will be there ready to supply the feed.
The United States created a market in China in the same way, Sutter said. Exporters and industry groups began working with farmers in China in the 1980s, when China was still a poor country that had no demand for soy.
"At that point, we could see China had the ability to grow," Kimberley said.
So exporters held workshops, inviting farmers and companies to teach them how the United States feeds animals to maximize their growth -- using soybeans.
It took more than a decade before China's economy had grown enough to need livestock feed. But eventually, the Chinese economy exploded, and the nation grew to become the world's leading importer of soy. And because the United States had established relationships early, American exporters owned the lion's share of China's market, Kimberley said.
U.S. soy groups are now focused on creating similar relationships with farmers in other developing countries. In Asia, they're looking at places like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They're also looking at African nations like Ethiopia and Liberia.
There will be more.
It's a long-term strategy that likely won't see any real results for years -- if not decades.
"I tell our farmers this is not so much for them as for their sons and daughters," Sutter said.
Anarchy is simply the
handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism.
Theodore Roosevelt
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?
Scientists discover a process that stabilizes fusion plasmas
Date:
January 8, 2019
Source:
DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Summary:
New research describes a newly discovered stabilizing effect of an
underappreciated 1983 finding that variations in plasma temperature can
influence the growth of magnetic islands that lead to disruption of fusion
plasmas.
Scientists seeking to bring the fusion reaction that powers the sun and
stars to Earth must keep the superhot plasma free from disruptions. Now
researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory (PPPL) have discovered a process that can help to control the
disruptions thought to be most dangerous.
Replicating fusion, which releases boundless energy by fusing atomic
nuclei in the state of matter known as plasma, could produce clean and
virtually limitless power for generating electricity for cities and industries
everywhere. Capturing and controlling fusion energy is therefore a key
scientific and engineering challenge for researchers across the globe.
Creating magnetic islands
The PPPL finding, reported in Physical Review Letters, focuses on
so-called tearing modes -- instabilities in the plasma that create magnetic
islands, a key source of plasma disruptions. These islands, bubble-like
structures that form in the plasma, can grow and trigger disruptive events that
halt fusion reactions and damage doughnut-shaped facilities called
"tokamaks" that house the reactions.
Researchers found in the 1980s that using radio-frequency (RF) waves to
drive current in the plasma could stabilize tearing modes and reduce the risk
of disruptions. However, the researchers failed to notice that small changes --
or perturbations -- in the temperature of the plasma could improve the
stabilization process, once a key threshold in power is exceeded. The physical
mechanism that PPPL has identified works like this:
---- The new paper takes a fresh look at the impact of these temperature perturbations on the islands, a feature which has been underappreciated since the 1983 paper pointed to it. "We basically went back 35 years to carry that thought just a bit further by exploring the fascinating physics and larger implications of positive feedback," Fisch said. "It turned out that these implications might now be very important to the tokamak program today."
The theoreticians began their recent work with a simple model and
advanced to more complex ones to address the key issues. They now plan to
produce a more detailed picture with still-more sophisticated models. They are
also working to suggest experimental campaigns that will expose these new
effects. Support for this research comes from the DOE Office of Science.
More
There is no greater evil than
anarchy.
Sophocles
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December.
DJIA: 23,327 +115 Down. NASDAQ:
6,635 +152 Down. SP500: 2,507 +90 Down.
Normally this would suggest more
correction still to come, but with President Trump wanting to be judged by the
performance of the stock market and his Treasury Secretary activating the
Plunge Protection Team after the Christmas Eve Crash, will a politicised PPT
cover the President’s back? [Yes] Probably the safest action here is fully paid
up synthetic double options on most of the major indexes.
Hopefully a USA – China trade deal
reinvigorates the markets, but failure and 25 percent tariffs, is a market
killer.
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