Baltic Dry Index 1112 +35 Brent
Crude 62.70
“The
nature of the game as it is played is such that the public should realize that
the truth cannot be told by the few who know.”
Reminiscences of a Stock
Operator
Brexit
update 10:50 am.
A Canadian Perspective
from Conrad Black. An interesting read for Berlin and Brussels. Berlin and
Brussels blew it and now they face a disaster.
Conrad Black: Theresa May will find her way to a victory
Cameron didn’t believe Britain would vote to leave and even after they did, Europe didn’t believe the British were serious
January 17, 2019 12:54 PM EST
The front page of the London Daily Mirror undoubtedly had it
wrong when it ran a front page on Wednesday with a full-length photo of Prime
Minister Theresa May with the bold headlines covering the rest of the page: “No
Hope No Clue No Deal No Confidence.”
More
With the Fed safely in his pocket promising President Trump no rate hikes for the foreseeable future and possible rate reductions if stock markets tumble, Bloomberg reported yesterday that China has become a team player for President Trump’s re-election campaign. Poor Democrats.
According to Bloomie,
China promises to buy so much stuff from the USA that the China USA trade deficit will be zero by 2024. What’s not to like and the Dow shot up 336
points, with other indexes following. Trump’s as good as made for 2020 it
seems.
China Offers a Path to Eliminate U.S. Trade Imbalance, Sources Say
Bloomberg News
Updated on 18 January 2019, 18:47 GMT
·
Wall Street extends rally on U.S.-China trade optimism
January
18, 2019 / 12:49 PM
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rallied on Friday, helping Wall Street’s major
indexes advance for the fourth consecutive week, as increased hopes the United
States and China would resolve their trade dispute lifted shares across
sectors.
The market
was boosted after a Bloomberg report said China sought to raise its annual
goods imports from the United States by a combined value of more than $1
trillion in order to reduce its trade surplus to zero by 2024.
The news
followed a report on Thursday that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was
considering lifting some or all tariffs imposed on Chinese imports. A Treasury
spokesman denied Mnuchin had made any such recommendation.
More
Apart
from the fact China hasn’t confirmed it, and Bloomberg and the Wall Street
Journal have repeatedly trialled false trade war balloons creating stock
rallies (hmmm?) I’m sceptical any such plan would work, and even if it did it
would probably not work out as intended, sending whole sections of the emerging
markets back into recession and crisis.
But who
am I to rain on Bloomberg’s parade? Better to let highly respected real
analysts cover the beat. Below, the highly respected Mike Shedlock takes on the
challenge assisted by Brad Setser.
China Pledges US Buying Spree to Reduce Trade Surplus With US to Zero By 2024
China pledges to buy over $1 trillion in US goods and services by 2024 to eliminate the trade gap with the US.By increasing goods imports from the U.S. by a combined value of more than $1 trillion over that period, China would seek to reduce its trade surplus -- which last year stood at $323 billion -- to zero by 2024, one of the people said. The officials asked not to be named as the discussions aren’t public.
By agreeing to buy more goods from the U.S., China may just shift its trade surplus toward other trading partners, said Tom Orlik, the chief economist for Bloomberg Economics. “If China switches its imports from other countries to the U.S. -- less Brazilian soybeans, more U.S. soybeans -- that might help deal with their bilateral problem with the U.S., but at the expense of worsening imbalances with other countries,” he said.
Additionally, the types of products that China offers to buy more of could matter more than the overall target for a dollar amount, Orlik said. Airplanes, soybeans and automobiles were among China’s top U.S. imports last year.
“Over the years, China has used the offer of purchasing more technologies with national security applications as a gambit in trade negotiations,” said Orlik. “That’s always been unacceptable to the U.S. because of the strategic costs.”
Even a massive buying binge would likely fail to eliminate the trade deficit with China, said Brad Setser, who served as deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis in the Treasury during the Obama administration.
Closing the trade gap “would require enormous changes and it would require and all out effort to get a Chinese industrial policy to disguise China’s exports to the U.S. by routing them elsewhere,” said Setser, who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You can’t get rid of the bilateral deficit unless you shift the location of final electronics assembly out of China. The math doesn’t work.”
Math Doesn't Work
Even though the math doesn't work, Trump will proclaim the greatest trade deal in history.
Now back to the harsh
reality in commodities, getting whipsawed in high volatility using high
leverage, doesn’t work out for most. When clients lose money funds lose clients,
but in a zero sum game where are the winners?
Bad bets on oil, gas spark wave of energy-fund closures
January
18, 2019 / 6:16 AM
NEW
YORK/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Energy fund managers took heavy losses last year with
wrong-way bets on the prices of oil and natural gas, leading to a wave of
closures in the volatile fund sector.
The number of active
energy-focused funds fell to just 738 in 2018 through September from about 836
in 2016, according to the latest available data from hedge funds industry
tracker Eurekahedge. That’s the lowest number of active funds since 2010.
The number of funds solely
focused on oil or gas has tumbled to 179 in 2018 from 194 in 2016. Funds that
have suspended operations included high-profile names such as Jamison Capital’s
macro fund, T. Boone Pickens’ BP Capital and Andy Hall’s main hedge fund at
Astenbeck Capital Management, along with smaller niche funds such as Casement
Capital.
“There is a massive decline in
the number of funds, and no replacements,” said David Mooney, founder of
Casement Capital. “There has been a near ‘extinction event’ in commodities
hedge funds.”
“We had about 16 large hedge
funds trading natural gas in Houston a few years ago,” he said. “That number is
now reduced to a small number of managers.”
Some funds saw investors pull
out because they increasingly view energy as an unsafe spot for their money.
Casement suspended operations after difficulties raising investor interest, two
industry sources said.
---- “All hedge funds, including
commodities, that are being scrutinized for near-term performance are coming
under pressure,” said Jonathan Goldberg, founder of one of the best-known
energy-focused hedge funds, BBL Commodities.
Closures of energy-focused hedge
funds have outpaced launches in the last three years, according to data from
Eurekahedge.
---- Macro hedge funds - those with
strategies based on broad global macroeconomic trends, such as a bet that oil
prices will rise - were among the hardest hit, falling 3.6 percent in 2018.
That’s the weakest annual performance since 2011, when such funds fell 4.2
percent, according to the Hedge Fund Research (HFRI) Macro index .HFRIMI, a key
industry index.
Through mid-December,
commodity trading advisors (CTAs) were down by 7.1 percent, according to a late
December estimate by Credit Suisse.
More
In better commodities
news, BP gets better at finding deep oil. But more and cheaper oil could be a
killer for electric vehicle uptake. Thankfully pollution is coming to the
rescue it would seem.
After billion-barrel bonanza, BP goes global with seismic tech
January
18, 2019 / 7:11 AM
LONDON
(Reuters) - Buoyed by the success of seismic imaging that found an extra
billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, BP (BP.L)
is looking to take its latest technology to Angola and Brazil.
The software used in the Gulf,
based on an algorithm created by Xukai Shen, a geophysicist straight out of
Stanford University, led to BP discovering the crude in an area where it had
long thought there was none to be found.
Industry experts said the
scale of the discovery 8 km below BP’s Thunder Horse field, announced last
week, marked a major leap forward for deepwater exploration - a costly business
known for its low success rate and high risk. It is an example of how
technology is helping deepwater make a comeback after a decade when the industry
has focused on advances in onshore shale.
The new deposit was found with
software known as Full Waveform Inversion (FWI), which is run on a
super-computer and analyses reverberations of seismic soundwaves to produce
high-resolution 3D images of ancient layers of rock thousands of metres under
the sea bed, helping geologists locate oil and gas.
It is more accurate than
previous surveying methods, BP said, and processes data in a matter of days,
compared with months or years previously.
While the discovery marked the
biggest industry success for digital seismic imaging, the British oil major’s
rivals are hot on its heel with similar techniques.
BP scientist John Etgen, the
company’s top adviser on seismic imaging, said it aimed to retain its edge with
a new machine it has developed, Wolfspar, to be used alongside FWI.
The submarine-like Wolfspar is
dragged by a ship through the ocean and emits very low frequency soundwaves,
which are particularly effective for penetrating thick salt layers that lie
above rocks containing fossil fuels, he added.
More
Bangkok pollution 'at crisis level' as planes trigger rain
The Thai government is using planes
carrying chemicals to start rainfall and water cannon to clear the dust.
By Siobhan
Robbins, Southeast Asia correspondent
Doctors in
Thailand are warning Bangkok could face a pollution health crisis if it does
not address its smog problem.
On several
occasions this week hazardous dust particles known as PM 2.5 reached unsafe
levels in 30 of the city's 50 districts.
The
government has been using water cannon to try to clear the dust, while planes
carrying chemicals were sent on cloud seeding missions designed to trigger
rain.
Tuk-tuk
driver Suriya Umalee, 37, has lived in Bangkok for the last decade and said
this is the worst the smog has ever been.
He told Sky
News: "The air is bad because there are lots of cars and a lot of building
work. I feel sick."
PM 2.5 is a
mixture of liquid droplets and solid particles that can include dust, soot and
smoke. The microscopic particles can cause lung and cardiovascular problems.
This
week, authorities have handed out more than 10,000 face masks to try to protect
residents.
However, the
Medical Council of Thailand said figures show respiratory disease in Bangkok
has been rising since August.
Professor
Nitipatana Chierakul, a respiratory consultant at Siriraj Hospital, warned many
more people would become ill if the pollution was not addressed.
---- The Department of Pollution Control say diesel fumes from cars contribute 50-60% of the pollution while burning rubbish, while crops attributed about 35%.
The government
has banned large trucks from entering downtown Bangkok during the rush hours,
while police have vowed to enforce the law on emission controls.
Pictures.
“The
sucker has always tried to get something for nothing, and the appeal in all
booms is always frankly to the gambling instinct aroused by cupidity and
spurred by a pervasive prosperity. People who look for easy money invariably
pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this
sordid earth.”
Reminiscences of a Stock
Operator
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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