Baltic Dry Index. 689
-01 Brent
Crude 67.33
Car Crash Brexit now reset
17 days away. Day 116 of the
never-ending China trade talks.
“When
the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long
as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”
Chuck
Prince, CEO Citigroup, 2007.
Today, yet more
unease over a new recession. In what should be a week of relief rally that
President Trump was “exonerated,” Monday’s relief rally, and Asia’s Tuesday response
is underwhelming to say the least.
Recession fears seem
to be trumping Trump. In a global slumping property market, weakness has
brought back gazundering to the UK market. In a bull property market prices get
gazumped higher. But in a bear market weakness is the order of the day.
Below, the calm
before the storm? Have the markets finally run out of greater fool buyers with
cash? Has the music stopped 2008 style
again, that did for the hapless Prince?
Asian shares edge up as U.S. bond yields come off late-2017 lows
March 26, 2019 /
1:19 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
Asian shares bounced back on Tuesday after two days of losses as U.S. 10-year
Treasury yields edged higher, but the outlook remained murky as investors
weighed the odds of whether the U.S. economy is in danger of slipping into
recession.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rebounded 0.3
percent after losing 1.4 percent in the previous session.
Australian shares were flat, while Japan’s Nikkei jumped 1.8 percent after
recording its biggest drop since late December on Monday.
China’s blue-chip CSI300 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index also rose, by
0.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.
Wall Street shares were little changed on Monday with the S&P 500
ending with a small loss of 0.08 percent.[.N]
U.S. stock futures rose, with E-Minis for the S&P 500 tacking on
one-third of a percent.
Investors have been spooked by sharp falls in U.S. bond yields and an
inversion of the U.S. Treasury yield curve, which is widely seen as an
indicator of an economic recession.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield edged up to 2.430 percent, having shed 5
basis points on Monday.
It has fallen about 18 basis points since the Federal Reserve last week
ditched projections for raising rates this year and announced the end of its
balance sheet reduction, citing signs of an economic slowdown.
“The U.S. yield curve continues to invert,” said Michael Every, Hong
Kong-based senior Asia-Pacific strategist at Rabobank.
“This is not a healthy sign, as bond-market watchers should know and
equity-market obsessives should rapidly learn,” he said in a note. “How much
further will this run before we see markets starting to do the same?”
The 10-year yield
fell below the yield for three-month bills on Friday for the first time since
2007, inverting the yield curve.
San Francisco Fed
researchers have said that the difference in those two maturities was the most
useful for forecasting a recession.
More
Oil edges up on supply cuts, but recession fears cap market
March
26, 2019 / 1:17 AM
SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Tuesday, lifted by supply cuts led by
producer club OPEC and U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, but signs of
a sharp economic slowdown and potentially even a recession kept markets from
rising further.
Brent
crude oil futures were at $67.33 per barrel at 0416 GMT, up 12 cents, or 0.2
percent, from their last close.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures were at $59.26 per barrel, up
44 cents, or 0.8 percent, from their last settlement.
Oil prices have been supported for much of 2019 by efforts by the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-affiliated
allies like Russia, who have pledged to withhold around 1.2 million barrels per
day (bpd) of supply this year to prop up markets.
Prices have also been driven up by U.S. sanctions on oil exporters and
OPEC-members Iran and Venezuela.
Yet analysts said oil prices would likely be higher by now if it wasn’t
for a spreading economic slowdown that some say could turn into a recession
soon and dent fuel consumption.
“Recession risks have risen to the highest since 2008,” said Ole Hansen,
head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank.
Manufacturing data from Asia, Europe and North America is pointing to a
sharp economic slowdown.
“Global factory output growth slowed to a 1 percent rate last quarter,
and indicators point to a near stall this quarter,” said JPMorgan Chase Bank.
“Outside China, Asian industry was already contracting as we turned into
the New Year,” the U.S. bank added.
‘Gazundering’ Seen as Growing Problem for U.K. Housing Market
Press Association
Gazundering, where a buyer lowers their offer for a home at the last
minute, is becoming a growing problem, according to a report.
Some 45 percent of people surveyed think gazundering is a serious
problem, up from 40 percent when similar research was carried out last
year.
Gazundering can happen just before a sale is set to go through, with
sellers sometimes feeling under pressure to accept the lower price to stop the
deal collapsing.
Some 45 percent of people also think negative equity, when the
value of someone’s home is less than the mortgage amount they owe on it, is a
problem, the report from campaign group theHomeOwners Alliance , BLP
Insurance and Resi.co.uk architects found.
Paula Higgins , chief executive of HomeOwners Alliance ,
said: “People crave more certainty in the housing market - that the price
agreed at point of sale will be the price paid.”
Meanwhile, 63 percent of people are worried about the quality of
the country’s housing stock, rising to nearly seven in 10 (69 percent) renters,
the survey of 2,000 people across the UK found.
More
Finally, do you really know where you are
going????British Airways Plane Bound for Germany Accidentally Lands in Scotland
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
25 March 2019, 14:37 GMT
London (AP) -- The flight on Monday seemed to go perfectly well, until
passengers realized that their plane had landed in both the wrong city and the
wrong country.
The British Airways flight from London City Airport was supposed to head
to Duesseldorf, Germany, but ended up in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.
The airline said Monday the problem started when an incorrect flight
plan was filed by WDL Aviation, which operated the flight on behalf of British
Airways. Officials say the pilot followed the flight plan for Edinburgh, and
that air traffic control officials also were following the same flight plan and
saw nothing amiss.
WDL aviation said it was trying to determine the cause of the
"obviously unfortunate mix-up."
The flight was
refuelled and set off again, this time directly to Duesseldorf.
“It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even
see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one
dollar in any of those [CDS] transactions.”
Joseph J. Cassano, a former A.I.G. executive,
August 2007, on Credit Default Swaps that wiped out A.I.G in 2008.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Below, more on God’s work, but I wonder why? How will Goldie
spin this? “The devil made me do it?” Just
who set out to frame Trump? Why?
"I'm
just a banker doing 'God's Work.'
Lloyd
Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs, aka Mr. Goldman Sacks.
Goldman Sachs UK unit reports gender pay gap of 51 percent
March 25, 2019 /
11:55 AM / Updated 5 hours ago
LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs’s British business on average paid
women 51 percent less than men per hour in 2018, the U.S. investment bank said
on Monday, down from 56 percent the year before.
The gap does not reflect the bank paying women at the same level
differently from men, the bank said, but rather the fact that fewer women hold
the more senior roles that have higher salaries and bonuses.
The data were released as part of rules requiring British firms to
disclose regularly their gender pay gaps, and say what measures they are
putting in place to try and close the divide.
If the financial
system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours
and everyone else's is going down, too.
Lloyd
Blankfein’s CEO Goldman Sachs, threat 2008. “Mr. Goldman Sacks.”
Mueller Exposes Spy Chiefs
Did our intel leaders have any evidence when they pushed the Russia collusion line?
By William McGurn
March 25, 2019 7:15 p.m. ET
Now that special counsel Robert Mueller has found that no one in the
Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, Democrats are
busy moving the goal posts. But this is a distraction from the real reckoning
that needs to come.
The one we need is for all the intelligence officials—including former
Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, former Central Intelligence
Agency chief John Brennan, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former
Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—who pushed the
Russia conspiracy theory. The special counsel has just made clear they did so
with no real evidence.
Mr. Mueller could have said he didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute.
Instead he was categorical: “The investigation did not establish that members
of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in
its election interference activities.”
This wasn’t for lack of trying on Moscow’s part. “Despite multiple
offers” from Russia-affiliated individuals to help their campaign, Mr. Mueller
reports, the Trump people didn’t take them up on it.
So why do 44% of Americans—according to a Fox News poll released
Sunday—believe otherwise? Part of the answer has to be that the collusion tale
was egged on by leading members and former members of the American intelligence
community.
Intelligence professionals are trained to sift through the noise and
distractions in pursuit of the truth. In this case, however, they went all in
for a tale that the Russian government had somehow compromised Mr. Trump or his
close associates. In peddling this line, their authority rested on the idea
they had access to alarming and conclusive evidence the rest of America
couldn’t see. Now it appears they never had much more than an unverified
opposition-research dossier commissioned by Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson on
behalf of Hillary Clinton.
Nevertheless, they persisted. Start with the FBI’s Mr. McCabe, who
boasts that he is the man who opened the counterintelligence probe into Russia
and President Trump. Today the question has to be: On what evidence was this
extraordinary step predicated, apart from Mr. Trump’s saying things the G-man
didn’t like?
As recently as three weeks ago, Mr. McCabe—sacked by the bureau for a
“lack of candor”—told CNN that he still thought it “possible” President Trump
was a “Russian asset.” Again, on what evidence?
Ditto for Mr. Clapper, who said he agreed “completely” with Mr. McCabe
that Mr. Trump could be a Russian asset. He added only that he couldn’t be
certain whether it was “witting or unwitting.” Coming from a former director of
national intelligence, this is a grave accusation. But on what evidence?
Or consider Mr. Brennan. After a presidential press conference in
Helsinki with Vladimir Putin in which Mr. Trump refused to acknowledge Russian
meddling in the 2016 election, Mr. Brennan tweeted that the president’s
behavior was “nothing short of treasonous.” Not “wrong,” not “outrageous,” but
“treasonous.”
More
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. May 2017.
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?
New computational tool could change how we study pathogens
Date:
March 25, 2019
Source:
Florida State University
Summary:
A sophisticated new analysis too incorporating advanced mathematical strategies
could help revolutionize the way researchers investigate the spread and distribution
of dangerous, fast-evolving disease vectors.
A sophisticated new analysis tool developed by Florida State University
scientists may signal a new era in the study of population genetics.
Their model, which incorporates advanced mathematical strategies, could
help revolutionize the way researchers investigate the spread and distribution
of dangerous, fast-evolving disease vectors.
The breakthrough research was an interdisciplinary collaboration between
postdoctoral mathematician Somayeh Mashayekhi and computational biologist Peter
Beerli, both in FSU's Department of Scientific Computing. Their findings were
published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Ours is the first application of fractional calculus to population
genetics," Beerli said. "This will help us to give better estimates
of quantities that may be important to combat pathogens."
The team's model, called the f-coalescent for its novel use of
fractional calculus, follows in the lineage of a similar but more limited model
called the n-coalescent. Proposed by the British mathematician John Kingman in
1982, the n-coalescent allowed scientists to make statistical statements about
a population's past using data collected in the present.
"The n-coalescent introduced a retrospective view of relationships
among individuals," Beerli said.
---- But for all its groundbreaking theoretical advantages, the n-coalescent had one major hindrance: The model operated under the assumption that populations are homogeneous. That is, it assumed each individual shared identical experiences, with the same adversities that threaten their survival and the same benefits that give them a competitive leg up.
This is where the FSU team's new f-coalescent advances on its
predecessor. Their model allows for increased environmental heterogeneity,
specifically in location and time intervals. These allowances help yield
clearer pictures of when different genetic variations emerge -- information
that is critical in the analysis of pathogens that evolve rapidly in response
to different environments.
In their study, Beerli and Mashayekhi applied the f-coalescent to three
real datasets: mitochondria sequence data of humpback whales, mitochondrial
data of a malaria parasite and the complete genome data of an H1N1 influenza
virus strain.
They found that while environmental heterogeneity seemed to have little
effect in the humpback whale dataset, the influenza and malaria data suggested
that heterogeneity should be considered when evaluating pathogens that evolve
quickly due to changing selection pressures.
"Heterogeneity has effects on the timing in the genealogy,"
Mashayekhi said. "The f-coalescent will result in better estimates of this
timing, which will lead to important changes in the analysis of
pathogens."
More
Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to
do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.
George Bernard Shaw, Man
and Superman, 1903.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February
DJIA: 25,916 +68 Down. NASDAQ: 7,533 +109 Down.
SP500:
2,784 +62 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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