Baltic
Dry Index 629 -05
Brent Crude 62.05
Trump
25 percent tariffs 22 days away. Brexit 51
days away.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible
at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
In
America, President Trump talked and talked and talked, delivering the third
longest State of the Union address, without actually saying very much of
anything. Delivering conciliation and division in equal measure according to
most new agencies. Republicans hooped and hollered, Democrat scowled and
smirked. A good time was almost had by all.
In
the rest of the world there was little notice. People got on with celebrating the
Lunar New Year, adjusting to the great flooding in Australia (coal,) and the iron ore mine disaster in Brazil.
Waiting for America to declare victory in its trade wars, so slowing global
trade might have a chance of picking up again. Pay no attention to the Baltic
Dry index sinking daily.
But
with two major trade deadlines fast approaching, the conjuror’s hat seems to be
missing its rabbit.
Below,
how the rest of the world yawned and got on with life.
Stocks rise in Japan, Australia as most Asian markets remain closed for holiday
Shares advanced in Asia on Wednesday following a rally on Wall Street led by technology companies. There was little if any immediate reaction to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.Japan’s Nikkei 225 index NIK, +0.20% gained 0.3% early Wednesday. Australia’s S&P ASX 200 XJO, +0.34% also climbed 0.5%. Markets in Hong Kong, mainland China and most of Southeast Asia were closed for lunar new year holidays.
Among individual stocks, Yamaha Corp. 7951, +12.26% and Panasonic 6752, +2.85% rose while NTT Data 9613, -9.47% , Nintendo 7974, -5.49% and Sony 6758, -3.45% were among the biggest decliners. A day after surging, Australian bank stocks slid back, with ANZ Banking ANZ, -1.68% , Commonwealth Bank CBA, -1.36% , National Australia Bank NAB, -1.40% and Westpac WBC, -1.24% declining.
The overnight rally in U.S. markets, supported by strong corporate earnings, extended the benchmark S&P 500 index’s winning streak to five days.
More than 68% of companies reporting earnings in the S&P 500 beat analyst forecasts during the most recent quarter. Those results, in part, helped drive the market’s best January in 32 years.
Positive sentiment has been supported by reports from Washington, citing unnamed sources, that say U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin plan to travel to Beijing next week for the next round of talks aimed at resolving trade and technology-related disputes that have led to both sides imposing tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of each other’s products.
More
In
other news, as goes Germany so goes Euroland. Euros anyone? With China and Germany (plus France, Italy
and Spain,) slowing, Brexit next month, commodity trouble in Australia and
Brazil, and a continuing trade war against friend and foe alike by America,
best hope for the best but prepare for a 2019 crash landing.
Deutsche Bank Says German Economy Is Drifting Toward Recession
By Piotr Skolimowski
Deutsche Bank expects the German economy to
contract this quarter after recent business surveys pointed to souring moods at
companies and their worsening expectations for new orders.
“The start of the German economy into 2019 has been
a major disappointment so far,” Deutsche Bank economists including Sebastian
Becker wrote in a report on Tuesday. “The development of several key cyclical
indicators is telling us that the German economy is drifting towards recession
right now.”
The warning from Germany’s biggest bank comes just
days after Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said economic weakness carried
into 2019 and will result in significantly lower growth than predicted just a
few weeks ago. The government in Berlin also recently cut its 2019 outlook
almost in half and IHS Markit’s January survey showed manufacturing in
Germany shrank for the first time in four years.
Deutsche Bank economists have refrained from revising
their 1 percent growth forecast for this year as they wait for the German
statistics office to release the fourth-quarter data on Feb. 22. In its first
assessment last month, the office said Europe’s largest economy dodged
recession with a “slight” increase in gross domestic product.
Glencore says heavy rain disrupts production at two Australian coal mines
February 6, 2019 / 5:36 AM
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Glencore said on Wednesday
that production at two of its Australian coal operations has been affected by
heavy rain that has brought floods to parts of north Queensland state.
“We have experienced short-term production impacts
from heavy rain at our two most northerly coal sites, Collinsville and
Newlands,” a Glencore spokesman said in a statement to Reuters.
Finally, in Brexit news, Germany’s
Merkel seems to have come to her senses, but is it all now to little too late. Can
Europe’s paymaster still make Juncker and Barnier dance to Germany’s tune?
After Brexit, without British cash, how austere will the rump-EU have to
become? GB was the second largest contributor after Germany.
Germany's Merkel drops hint of a 'creative' Brexit compromise
February 4, 2019 / 1:46 PM
TOKYO (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on
Monday offered a way to break the deadlock over the United Kingdom’s exit from
the European Union, calling for a “creative” compromise to allay concerns over
the future of Irish border arrangements.
The United Kingdom is due under British and
European law to leave the EU in just 53 days yet Prime Minister Theresa May
wants last-minute changes to a divorce deal agreed with the EU last November to
win over members of parliament in the British parliament.
May is seeking legally binding changes to the deal
to replace the Northern Irish backstop, an insurance policy that aims to
prevent the reintroduction of a hard border between EU-member Ireland and the
British province of Northern Ireland.
While Merkel said she did not want the so-called
Withdrawal Agreement renegotiated, she added that difficult questions could be
resolved with creativity, the strongest hint to date that the EU’s most
powerful leader could be prepared to compromise.
“There are definitely options for preserving the
integrity of the single market even when Northern Ireland isn’t part of it
because it is part of Britain while at the same time meeting the desire to
have, if possible, no border controls,” Merkel said.
“To solve this point you have to be creative and listen
to each other, and such discussions can and must be conducted,” Merkel said at
a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo.
More
“I think we agree, the past is over.”
President George W. Bush.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over banksters and politicians.
Today Europe again. Germania was flying
on a wing and a prayer, then Germania ran out of prayers. Reminds me of the
whole EUSSR. Another sign of the global economy rolling over?
Germania airline goes bust and cancels all flights
February 5, 2019 / 6:08 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - German holiday airline Germania
collapsed on Tuesday after it failed to secure financing to meet a short-term
cash squeeze and said it would cancel all flights immediately.
The insolvency of Germania, which carried around 4
million passengers each year, follows on from the failure of Germany’s
second-biggest airline, Air Berlin, in 2017, and underscores the turbulence in
the European airlines industry.
Britain’s Monarch Airlines and Alitalia have also
filed for insolvency in recent years.
Germania, founded in 1986, blamed rising fuel
prices, a stronger dollar, delays in integrating new aircraft into its fleet as
well as a high number of maintenance services for the cash shortage.
“Unfortunately, we were ultimately unable to bring
our financing efforts to cover a short-term liquidity need to a positive
conclusion,” Chief Executive Karsten Balke said in a statement.
Germania’s 37 aircraft mainly flew German
sun-seekers to more than 60 destinations in Europe, North Africa and the Middle
East. It said all flights had been halted overnight after it filed for
bankruptcy late on Monday.
Balke thanked the airline’s staff and apologized to
passengers who had booked directly with the airline who it said would not be
entitled to alternative flights.
“The horror for German air travelers continues,”
said Klaus Mueller, head of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations.
The Federal Association of the German Aviation
Industry said airlines, including those belonging to the Lufthansa Group,
TUIfly and Condor, would offer stranded Germania passengers special rates to
return to Germany.
Europe’s largest budget airline Ryanair, which
posted its first quarterly loss since 2014 on Monday, said it expected further
consolidation in the industry over the next 12-18 months due to overcapacity.
It predicted a further rise in oil prices would put
the squeeze on smaller airlines that can’t afford to increase their oil price
hedging.
Germania’s own financial problems emerged at the
start of January when it said it was examining several financing options to
secure its short-term liquidity needs.
It said on Jan. 19 it had received a commitment for
15 million euros ($17 million) in funding that would secure its medium and
long-term future, but at the end of last week it confirmed media reports that
it had delayed paying wages.
Air Berlin, which served around 30 million
passengers a year filed for insolvency in 2017 and ceased operations. Many of its
aircraft were absorbed by bigger rival Lufthansa.
Success is the
ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Spencer Churchill.
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?
Graphene biosensor could provide early lung cancer diagnosis
Date: February 4, 2019
Source: University of Exeter
Summary: The wonder-material graphene could hold the
key to unlocking the next generation of advanced, early stage lung cancer
diagnosis.
A team of scientists from the University of Exeter
has developed a new technique that could create a highly sensitive graphene
biosensor with the capability to detect molecules of the most common lung
cancer biomarkers.
The new biosensor design could revolutionise
existing electronic nose (e-nose) devices, that identify specific components of
a specific vapour mixture -- for example a person's breath -- and analyses its
chemical make-up to identify the cause.
The research team believe the newly developed
device displays the potential to identify specific lung cancer markers at the
earliest possible stage, in a convenient and reusable way -- making it both
cost-effective and highly beneficial for health service providers worldwide.
The research is published in the Royal Society of
Chemistry's peer-reviewed journal Nanoscale.
Ben Hogan, a postgraduate researcher from the
University of Exeter and co-author of the paper explained: "The new
biosensors which we have developed show that graphene has significant potential
for use as an electrode in e-nose devices. For the first time, we have shown
that with suitable patterning graphene can be used as a specific, selective and
sensitive detector for biomarkers.
"We believe that with further development of
our devices, a cheap, reusable and accurate breath test for early-stage
detection of lung cancer can become a reality.
The quest to discover viable new techniques to
accurately detect early-stage lung cancer is one of the greatest global health
care challenges.
Although it is one of the most common and
aggressive cancers, killing around 1.4 million people worldwide each year, the
lack of clinical symptoms in its early stages means many patients are not
diagnosed until the latter stage, which makes it difficult to cure.
Due to the unrestrainable nature of the abnormal
cancer cells, while they begin in one or both lungs, they are prone to spread
to other parts of the body rapidly.
There are currently no cheap, simple, or widely
available screening methods for early diagnosis of lung cancer. However, for
the new research, the team from Exeter looked at whether graphene could form
the basis for a new, enhanced biosensor device.
Using multi-layered graphene, the team suggest that
current e-nose devices -- which combine electronic sensors with mechanisms for
pattern recognition, such as a neural network -- could revolutionise breath
diagnostic techniques.
Using patterned multi-layered graphene electrodes,
the team were able to show greater sensing capabilities for three of the most
common lung-cancer biomarkers -- ethanol, isopropanol and acetone -- across a
range of different concentrations.
The team believe this could be the first step
towards creating new, improved and cheaper e-nose devices that could give the
earliest possible lung-cancer diagnosis.
Multi-layer graphene as a selective detector for
future lung cancer biosensing platforms is published in the journal Nanoscale.
"All
safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and
may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S."
President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January.
DJIA: 24,999 +76 Down. NASDAQ: 7,282 +124 Down.
SP500: 2,704 +71
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 the Fed’s Plunge
Protection Team now officially part of President Trump’s re-election team, probably
the safest action here is fully paid up synthetic double options on most of the
major indexes.
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