Saturday 12 January 2019

Weekend Update 12/01/19. The Captive Fed. A Gathering Storm.


 Baltic Dry Index 1169 -20       Brent Crude 60.48

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy...What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, 1776.


Update 11 am Saturday 12 January 2019.

Is/has Europe entering/entered recession?  Taking the top 5 economies, Germany, GB, France, Italy and Spain, industrial production fell in November in all five, following declines in October in all but France. For Germany, GB and Italy it was a third consecutive decline. It’s a big ask to expect Europe’s minnow economies to make up for a big 5 decline since most rely on the big 5.

November Industrial Production.

Germany -1.9.  GB -1.5. France -1.3. Italy -1.6. Spain -2.6.

More than one swallow makes a flock.
 

With the Fed a captive of Wall Street and President Trump, stocks are back to the only game in town, it seems. But to this old dinosaur market follower, for how long? How long before the slowing global economy trumps the Fed’s Plunge Protection Team? How long before Trump’s trade war passes the point of irreversible short-term damage?  How long before America’s partial government shutdown weakens the US economy itself? How long before Europe’s Germany slowdown (plus France and Italy's, too) becomes an EUSSR problem spilling out into the global economy? How long is a short piece of string?
There’s no way of knowing of course, but I suspect not very long if the sinking Baltic Dry Index and a rising oil price are sending out a signal. Not very long, if the USA and China don’t make a trade deal, and pretty fast, as in before the new 25 percent tariffs start on March 2. 
Below, has the newly politicised Fed’s Powell Put, bitten off more than it can chew?
By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?
Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Stock market ends session flat, but books weekly gains as government shutdown approaches a record

By Mark DeCambre  Published: Jan 11, 2019 4:13 p.m. ET
Stocks on Friday ended with slight losses, but capped a week that helped to propel the Dow and S&P 500 out of corrective phases as progress on trade talks with China and the U.S. overshadowed a partial government shutdown that had entered a 21st day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.02% closed down about 6 points lower, or less than 0.1%, at 23,995, the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.01% edged less than a point lower to reach 2,596, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.21% fell 0.2% to close at 6.971, on a preliminary basis.
For the week, the Dow booked a weekly gain of 2.4%, the S&P 500 ended 2.5% for the period, while the Nasdaq produced a weekly return of 3.5%. On Thursday, the S&P 500 and the Dow emerged from a correction, usually defined as a drop of 10% from a recent peak. The indexes climbed by at least 10% from their correction low, a day ago, which signals an emergence from correction, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
 On Saturday, the partial government shutdown will mark the longest on record in its 22nd day. At that point, investors may take greater notice but thus far Wall Street investors have enjoyed solid gains. Next week, bank earnings from Citigroup (s: C] and JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.48% among others, mark the unofficial start of earnings season, which may offer fresh clues about the health of American corporations. Meanwhile, a General Motors GM, +7.05% said it increased its profit guidance for 2018 and estimated a stronger performance in 2019.

The government shutdown has become the longest on record

Published: Jan 12, 2019 12:00 a.m. ET
At 22 days in duration as of Saturday, the current partial government shutdown has become the longest one on record, based on figures that go back more than 40 years.

It has exceeded the mark set by a 21-day closure during the Clinton administration that began in December 1995.

The record was broken as the end of the workweek brought no major signs of a bipartisan spending deal that would reopen shuttered agencies.

The chart below, based on Congressional Research Service data, shows how the current shutdown tops all other closures or gaps in funding in the last four decades.

----Analysts have noted that the impact of the current shutdown is somewhat limited, as it’s affecting agencies that represent about 25% of total government spending.

The ongoing shutdown has been sparked by a dispute over money for President Donald Trump’s proposed wall at the southern border. The president on Wednesday left a negotiating session after clashing with top Democratic lawmakers, and Trump stated Thursday that he could declare a national emergency in order to build his wall if there’s no funding deal with Democrats, saying “probably I will do it. I would almost say definitely.” On Friday he backed away from any imminent national-emergency declaration but said he retained the right to take such a step. “I’m not going to do it so fast,” he said, according to a White House pool report.
More

U.S. shutdown sends grain traders, farmers hunting for data

January 11, 2019 / 1:44 PM
CHICAGO (Reuters) - When the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a slew of key farm reports would not be released on Friday due to the partial government shutdown, the phones at crop forecaster Gro Intelligence blew up.
The USDA was set to release its views on the projected size of U.S. soybean stockpiles, among other data, following a record-large domestic harvest and a trade war with China that has slowed U.S. exports.
Commodity traders, economists, grain merchants and farmers are anxious for crop updates as they work to project their financial balance sheets and make spring planting decisions.
“It’s been crazy busy,” said Sara Menker, chief executive of New York-based Gro Intelligence.
The shutdown, now in its third week, has rippled across the already struggling U.S. farm economy ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned address at the American Farm Bureau conference in Louisiana on Monday. Federal loan and farm aid applications have also been delayed.
To fill the void on data, traders and farmers are relying on private crop forecasters, satellite imagery firms and brokerages offering analyses on trade and supplies. Some have been scouring Twitter for tidbits on shifting weather patterns and rumors of grain exports, but say it is difficult to replace the USDA.
“We’re just doing the best we can, looking for as much information as is available,” said Brian Basting, economist for Illinois-based broker Advance Trading, which provides customers its own harvest and crop supply estimates.
“Everyone’s got their own internal numbers but the USDA is the most comprehensive data source.”
Dan Henebry, an Illinois corn and soy farmer, said the absence of USDA data was difficult.
“You delay all these reports and the market has no idea where to go, other than trade guesses,” Henebry said.
More

China retailers slash iPhone prices after Apple sales warning

January 11, 2019 / 9:28 AM
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Several Chinese electronics retailers including Alibaba-backed Suning (002024.SZ) and JD.com (JD.O) have slashed iPhone prices this week, after Apple (AAPL.O) recently blamed poor sales of the smartphone in the country for a rare revenue warning.
The discounting, as steep as $118 (92.50 pounds) for the recently launched 64GB iPhone XR, is the latest sign that Apple’s weak holiday sales in China may have extended to the current quarter.
The price cuts on iPhones by Chinese retailers began in the middle of this week, with at least six offering promotions this weekend, according to checks done by Reuters.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment. Prices for iPhones sold through its Chinese website remained unchanged.
Such widespread price cuts are not uncommon around shopping festivals like Single’s Day in November, but these cuts stand out as they affect Apple’s latest XS and XR models that were released only months ago, said Mo Jia, a Canalys analyst who tracks China’s smartphone industry.
Jia believes Apple itself could have lowered prices of the phones it ships to distributors, or that distributors may have slashed rates in order to move more units.
“It’s possible Apple wants to test the market’s feedback if it brings down the channel prices. Or, Apple might be under pressure to clean out its stock of iPhones,” he said.
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Unclear how deep and lasting Germany's economic problems are: ECB's Nowotny

January 12, 2019 / 5:11 AM / Updated an hour ago
VIENNA (Reuters) - It is unclear if Germany’s recent economic setbacks are a one-off or a more lasting phenomenon caused by structural problems, particularly in its car industry, European Central Bank policymaker Ewald Nowotny said in remarks published on Saturday.

Struggling to adjust to new emission testing standards, Germany’s car manufacturing contracted in the third quarter, dragging overall economic growth into negative territory and raising fears that Europe’s five-year-old growth run may be coming to a premature end.

The Bundesbank said in a monthly economic report last month that Germany’s dominant car industry may take longer than previously thought to recover from a slump, weighing on growth in the euro zone’s biggest economy.

“The most important economic question for Europe is whether these are one-off slowdowns or whether structural factors are behind them,” ECB’s Governing Council member Nowotny said in an interview with Austrian newspaper Der Standard, discussing the prospect of a second quarter of negative growth in Germany.

“The fear is that particularly in the auto industry we have lasting changes that affect Germany especially,” said Nowotny, who is also governor of the Austrian National Bank.

The Bundesbank said in its report last month that while a quick rebound in the auto sector had been forecast, fresh data was disappointing those hopes.
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Next, did Tesla deliberately wipe out a competitor’s autonomous vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, or was it just another Tesla failure? They wouldn’t do that would they? Well it was a Russian Promobot! 

Self-driving Tesla collides with autonomous robot in Las Vegas

Updated Jan. 10, 2019 at 3:46 PM
Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A Russian robotics company said one of its autonomous Promobots was taken out by a self-driving Tesla on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Promobot shared a video recorded outside of the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino showing one of its namesake machines at the side of a driveway at the facility.

Multiple cars easily pass by the autonomous robot, but a self-driving Tesla Model S collides with the robot and drives away.

The Promobot, which is knocked off its wheels, was destroyed, the company said.

The collision took place about half a mile from CES, the technology trade show that began Tuesday.

Video.

What is Promobot?

Promobot is an autonomous robot designed for business purposes. It is able to communicate with people on any topic, recognize faces, answer questions, move around avoiding obstacles, move its arms and head, show various materials on its display and integrate with third-party devices and systems.

To date, several hundred of our Promobot robots operate in 26 countries around the world. They perform the functions of administrators, promoters, hostesses, Museum guides, consultants, concierges and many others in various crowded places such as banks, shopping centers, museums, housing complexes, business centers and many others.

The Promobot robot allows you to:
·         Reduce labour costs
·         Improve the quality of service
·         Improve the mood and loyalty of the customers
·         Make the company stand out from its competitors
·         Positively influence the financial performance of the company
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Finally,  just how secure is our new age of the internet of everything? Hardly secure at all! We all know what’s coming next.

For Owners of Amazon’s Ring Security Cameras, Strangers May Have Been Watching Too

Sam Biddle January 10 2019, 5:34 p.m.

The “smart home” of the 21st century isn’t just supposed to be a monument to convenience, we’re told, but also to protection, a Tony Stark-like bubble of vigilant algorithms and internet-connected sensors working ceaselessly to watch over us. But for some who’ve welcomed in Amazon’s Ring security cameras, there have been more than just algorithms watching through the lens, according to sources alarmed by Ring’s dismal privacy practices.

Ring has a history of lax, sloppy oversight when it comes to deciding who has access to some of the most precious, intimate data belonging to any person: a live, high-definition feed from around — and perhaps inside — their house. The company has marketed its line of miniature cameras, designed to be mounted as doorbells, in garages, and on bookshelves, not only as a means of keeping tabs on your home while you’re away, but of creating a sort of privatized neighborhood watch, a constellation of overlapping camera feeds that will help police detect and apprehend burglars (and worse) as they approach. “Our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring,” founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff wrote last spring to commemorate the company’s reported $1 billion acquisition payday from Amazon, a company with its own recent history of troubling facial recognition practices. The marketing is working; Ring is a consumer hit and a press darling.

Despite its mission to keep people and their property secure, the company’s treatment of customer video feeds has been anything but, people familiar with the company’s practices told The Intercept. Beginning in 2016, according to one source, Ring provided its Ukraine-based research and development team virtually unfettered access to a folder on Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world. This would amount to an enormous list of highly sensitive files that could be easily browsed and viewed. Downloading and sharing these customer video files would have required little more than a click. The Information, which has aggressively covered Ring’s security lapses, reported on these practices last month.

At the time the Ukrainian access was provided, the video files were left unencrypted, the source said, because of Ring leadership’s “sense that encryption would make the company less valuable,” owing to the expense of implementing encryption and lost revenue opportunities due to restricted access. The Ukraine team was also provided with a corresponding database that linked each specific video file to corresponding specific Ring customers.
At the same time, the source said, Ring unnecessarily provided executives and engineers in the U.S. with highly privileged access to the company’s technical support video portal, allowing unfiltered, round-the-clock live feeds from some customer cameras, regardless of whether they needed access to this extremely sensitive data to do their jobs. For someone who’d been given this top-level access — comparable to Uber’s infamous “God mode” map that revealed the movements of all passengers — only a Ring customer’s email address was required to watch cameras from that person’s home. 
Although the source said they never personally witnessed any egregious abuses, they told The Intercept “if [someone] knew a reporter or competitor’s email address, [they] could view all their cameras.” The source also recounted instances of Ring engineers “teasing each other about who they brought home” after romantic dates. Although the engineers in question were aware that they were being surveilled by their co-workers in real time, the source questioned whether their companions were similarly informed.
---- A never-before-published image from an internal Ring document pulls back the veil of the company’s lofty security ambitions: Behind all the computer sophistication was a team of people drawing boxes around strangers, day in and day out, as they struggled to grant some semblance of human judgment to an algorithm. (The Intercept redacted a face from the image.)
A second source, with direct knowledge of Ring’s video-tagging efforts, said that the video annotation team watches footage not only from the popular outdoor and doorbell camera models, but from household interiors. The source said that Ring employees at times showed each other videos they were annotating and described some of the things they had witnessed, including people kissing, firing guns, and stealing.
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This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1932.
GB Brexit 2019.

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?  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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