Baltic Dry Index. 721
-09 Brent
Crude 67.61
Car Crash Brexit 10
days away, maybe. Day 109 of the
never-ending China trade talks.
“There is only one side of the market and it is not the bull
side or the bear side, but the right side.”
Another week of markets
waiting for guidance from America’s central bank. I don’t really know why.
Nothing much is expected from this week’s meetings and guidance. Since the Fed
folded on Christmas eve, bending to pressure from President Trump to bailout
the stock market, the Powell Fed is firmly in Trump’s pocket.
With the China trade
talks still underway, Brexit approaching, Europe and China slowing, US stock
markets still skittish and the US economy now starting to show signs of stress,
the last thing the Fedster’s are going to do this week is rock the boat and tip
everyone into the stormy sea.
Besides, a noted
stock timer with quite an impressive past record, chose yesterday to opine of a
high probability of an 18 percent collapse in US stocks due to a new business
downturn starting this year. I know, no
one can know the future, and 18 percent is quite a quirky number, but I wouldn’t
bet against his call.
Below, what’s
troubling markets this morning, as the never-ending US v China trade talks
continue, and GB and the EUSSR stumble on towards a German car crash Brexit.
Asian markets muted, awaiting upcoming Fed meeting
By Associated Press
and Marketwatch
Published: Mar 18, 2019 11:15 p.m. ET
Asian shares mostly fell in muted trading Tuesday as
investors awaited the U.S. Federal Reserve meeting later in the week.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 NIK, -0.09% lost 0.3% in early trading. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 XJO, -0.09% edged down 0.1% and South Korea’s Kospi SEU, -0.04% inched down less than 0.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng HSI, -0.12% was about flat, while the Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, -0.12% fell 0.3%.
Among individual stocks, Hitachi 6501, +4.43% jumped in Tokyo trading, while Nikon 7731, -2.71% and Rakuten 4755, -2.12% slid. In Hong Kong, Sino Biopharmaceutical x 2922, +5.70% and CSPC Pharmaceutical 1093, +3.15% surged, as Sunny 2382, -1.37% nd CNOOC 0883, -1.43% fell. SK Hynix 000660, +0.00% slipped in Korea, as did Taiwan Semiconductor 2330, -0.21% in Taiwan. Beach Energy BPT, -3.24% tumbled in Australia, while Rio Tinto RIO, +1.70% and BHP BHP, +1.65% gained.
More
Stocks are poised for an 18% hit, warns economist who nailed last financial crisis
By Shawn
Langlois Published: Mar 18, 2019
5:54 p.m. ET
Gary Shilling has a knack for predicting turns in the
economy. The former chief economist for Merrill Lynch did it in the 1960s.
Again in 1991. And then, leading up to the financial crisis in 2008, he
consistently warned the housing boom would turn to bust. We all know how that
one turned out. Now, he’s making another call.
“I give a business downturn starting this year a two-thirds probability,” he wrote in a Bloomberg News op-ed. “The recessionary indicators are numerous.”
Shilling, portfolio manager and president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., pointed to factors such as the near-inversion in the Treasury yield curve, the nasty December for stocks, weaker housing activity, soft consumer spending, etc.
“Then there are the effects of the deteriorating European economies and decelerating growth in China as well as President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with that country,” Shilling said.
He explained that it’s possible the current economic softening is temporary, but cautioned that even if it starts to heat back up, it would trigger Fed restraint.
“Policy makers want higher rates in order to have significant room to cut in the next recession, and the current 2.25% to 2.50% range doesn’t give them much leeway,” Shilling wrote. “The Fed also dislikes investors’ zeal for riskier assets, from hedge funds to private equity and leveraged loans, to say nothing of that rankest of rank speculations, bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.23% .”
He said that if growth resumes, “a tight credit-induced recession would be postponed until 2020.”
Shilling doesn’t see any major bubbles that are immediately “begging to be pricked,” so he’s looking for the upcoming bear market to bring about more of a “normal recession-related decline” of about 18% from Friday’s closing level.
That would surely sting, but that kind of decline would still be a far cry from the 78% drop by the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.34% in the wake of the dot-com bubble and the 48% retreat by the S&P 500 SPX, +0.37% in the mid-1970s.
EU trade surplus with U.S. expands, deficit with China grows
March 18, 2019 /
10:08 AM
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s trade surplus with the United
States and its deficit with China both increased in January, serving as
potential fuel for trade conflicts between the world’s largest economies.
The EU surplus in goods trade with the United States expanded to 11.5
billion euros (10 billion pounds) in January, from 10.1 billion in January
2018, EU statistics office Eurostat said.
With China, the EU deficit also increased to 21.4 billion euros, from
20.8 billion euros a year earlier.
U.S. President Donald Trump has complained repeatedly about Europe’s
trade surplus with his country, imposing tariffs to curb imports of EU steel
and aluminium and threatening to do the same for the much larger trade in cars
and car parts.
China’s trade surplus with the European Union is also a source of
tension between the two, with the bloc taking a firmer line towards Beijing,
for example setting out a 10-point plan to balance economic ties and pushing
China to open up
As a whole, the EU trade deficit in goods was 24.9 billion euros in
January from 21.4 billion euros in January 2018. For the euro zone, its trade
surplus dropped to 1.5 billion euros from 3.1 billion euros.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the euro
zone’s overall surplus rose slightly on the month and the EU’s trade deficit
dipped in January compared with December 2018.
UK to launch 'early warning' indicators for next economic shock
March 18, 2019 /
11:22 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will launch a new set of early warning
indicators aimed at spotting the next big economic downturn more quickly, based
on the volume of road traffic, businesses’ value-added tax returns and how long
ships spend in port.
The Office for National Statistics has been under pressure to use more
of the digital data created by businesses and consumers which other statistics
agencies are streaming into their measurements of the economy.
The Bank of England is likely to pay attention too, as it is trying to
improve its understanding of early signals coming from Britain’s economy as it
navigates Brexit.
“Policymakers and analysts demand faster insight into the state of the
UK economy in order to make informed, timely decisions on matters such as the
setting of interest rates,” said Louisa Nolan, the ONS’s lead data scientist.
The ONS said its new indicators would be launched in April and in many
cases they would be available a month earlier than gross domestic product data,
the main measure of how fast an economy is growing or shrinking.
The ONS cautioned against using the new indicators as predictors of GDP
but said they would be able to identify large changes to economic activity.
A new VAT index, which will show whether businesses are seeing more or
less turnover, would have spotted the first quarter of the 2008-09 recession in
Britain five months before it showed up official estimates, although GDP
figures have been improved since then, the ONS said.
There was a “surprisingly good correlation” between the ONS’s shipping
indicators and imports, while traffic counts for heavy goods vehicles in
England were consistent with at least some economic events, such as the
financial crisis.
The traffic flows numbers might also help to measure how much Britain’s
economy can grow without creating excessive inflation pressure, the ONS said.
In
other news, Trump’s war on China’s Huawei is heating up.
China's top diplomat rejects West's 'immoral' Huawei concerns
March 18, 2019 /
9:41 AM
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - China opposes politically motivated attempts to
discredit its telecoms equipment makers on security grounds, the Chinese
government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, said on Monday.
“What we oppose are groundless accusations for political purposes and attempts
to bring down a foreign company,” Wang told a news conference in Brussels in a
veiled reference to Huawei Technologies Co.
“We think such practices are abnormal, immoral and have no support,” he
said after a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
Finally, in Boeing 737 Max crash news, the drip, drip, drip of bad news continues. Why did 346 people have to die? Was Boeing or the FAA at fault? Both?
Boeing's safety analysis of 737 MAX flight control had crucial flaws: Seattle Times
March 17, 2019 /
4:43 PM
(Reuters) - Boeing
Co’s safety analysis of a new flight control system on 737 MAX jets had several
crucial flaws, the Seattle Times reported on Sunday.
Boeing’s safety
analysis of the flight control system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics
Augmentation System) understated the power of this system, the Seattle Times
said, citing current and former engineers at the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA).
The FAA also did not delve into any detailed inquiries and followed a
standard certification process on the MAX, the Seattle Times reported citing an
FAA spokesman.
The FAA declined to comment on the Seattle Times report but referred to
previous statements about the certification process. It has said the 737-MAX
certification process followed the FAA’s standard certification process.
The report also said both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the
specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the
crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX last Sunday that killed all 157 people
on board. The same model flown by Lion Air crashed off the coast of Indonesia
in October, killing all 189 on board.
More
“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
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, more on that magic money tree. There is a free lunch for all, and
not just for banksters after all. Stay long fully paid up precious metals. Is
Europe about to join America in flirting with Venezuelan socialism?
Paper money eventually returns to
its intrinsic value: zero.
Voltaire
Valid or voodoo? Monetary theory may appeal in Europe's 'age of rage'
March 18, 2019 /
7:14 AM
LONDON (Reuters) -
Having spent three years and more than 2.6 trillion euros (£2.2 trillion)
trying to boost economic growth across the euro zone, the European Central
Bank’s mixed record may open the door for a high-spending, radical alternative.
With populist and anti-austerity parties looking to build support before
European parliamentary elections in May just as growth withers, so-called
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is challenging conventional thinking on debt, deficits
and how economies should be run.
Popularised by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of the American
left, MMT posits in essence that a country with the ability to print its own
currency can create and spend money freely, so long as inflation is kept under
control.
The country can’t be forced into defaulting on its debts since it can
always print money to pay creditors, the theory runs.
It’s music to the ears of European populists demanding a ramp-up in
public spending to fight unemployment and finance social programmes. Years of
central bank quantitative easing (QE), they say, have done little except
inflate financial asset prices.
MMT is about financing government spending and the real economy, its
advocates say, while QE is solely designed to stimulate financial markets
through massive purchases of private and public bonds on the secondary market.
MMT is unlikely to be put into practice in the euro zone any time soon.
Rules of the currency area make it impossible for member states to print money
unilaterally, and mainstream policymakers have derided the economics behind it.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has called MMT “voodoo”
thinking.
But the ideas
underpinning the theory are helping shape an ideological push against European
fiscal orthodoxy and policymakers’ reluctance to consider big public
debt-funded investment schemes.
“Post-European elections, there will be much more talk at a European level of (fiscal) spending and stimulus,” John Roe, a fund manager at Legal & General Investment Management, Britain’s biggest asset manager, told Reuters.
Roe noted calls for a vast publicly funded “Green New Deal”, as touted by some left-wing U.S. Democrats, are yet to materialise in Europe. But demands for such a policy remain a possibility which investors should take seriously.
The ECB’s admission this month that QE had failed to lift inflation and economic growth, and that it would leave interest rates at rock-bottom until at least 2020, leaves it vulnerable to calls for a drastic rethink.
---- There have already been some moves towards an MMT-type approach.
British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 proposed “people’s QE”,
a government-directed central bank-financed scheme to fund infrastructure.
More recently, Italy’s ruling parties have been in a standoff with
Brussels over their desire to end an EU-imposed fiscal straightjacket and spend
more to revive a struggling economy.
French President Emmanuel Macron has beefed up public spending to defuse
violent “yellow vest” street protests.
More
“Set
your own rules and stick to them; never argue with the market; never make a
play you can’t afford; never give way to irrational exuberance. Above all,
don’t be a sucker.”
How To Trade In Stocks
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 graphene-based device is first step toward ultrasensitive biosensors
Device could detect disease biomarkers at the molecular level and lead to new sensor technology
Date:
March 7, 2019
Source:
University of Minnesota
Summary:
Researchers have developed a unique new device using the wonder material
graphene that provides the first step toward ultrasensitive biosensors to
detect diseases at the molecular level with near perfect efficiency.
Researchers in the University of Minnesota College of Science and
Engineering have developed a unique new device using the wonder material
graphene that provides the first step toward ultrasensitive biosensors to
detect diseases at the molecular level with near perfect efficiency.
Ultrasensitive biosensors for probing protein structures could greatly
improve the depth of diagnosis for a wide variety of diseases extending to both
humans and animals. These include Alzheimer's disease, Chronic Wasting Disease,
and mad cow disease -- disorders related to protein misfolding. Such biosensors
could also lead to improved technologies for developing new pharmaceutical
compounds.
The research is published in Nature Nanotechnology, a
peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Publishing Group.
"In order to detect and treat many diseases we need to detect
protein molecules at very small amounts and understand their structure,"
said Sang-Hyun Oh, University of Minnesota electrical and computer engineering
professor and lead researcher on the study. "Currently, there are many
technical challenges with that process. We hope that our device using graphene
and a unique manufacturing process will provide the fundamental research that
can help overcome those challenges."
Graphene, a material made of a single layer of carbon atoms, was
discovered more than a decade ago. It has enthralled researchers with its range
of amazing properties that have found uses in many new applications, including
creating better sensors for detecting diseases.
Significant attempts have been made to improve biosensors using
graphene, but the challenge exists with its remarkable single atom thickness.
This means it does not interact efficiently with light when shined through it.
Light absorption and conversion to local electric fields is essential for
detecting small amounts of molecules when diagnosing diseases. Previous
research utilizing similar graphene nanostructures has only demonstrated a
light absorption rate of less than 10 percent.
In this new study, University of Minnesota researchers combined graphene
with nano-sized metal ribbons of gold. Using sticky tape and a high-tech
nanofabrication technique developed at the University of Minnesota, called
"template stripping," researchers were able to create an ultra-flat
base layer surface for the graphene.
They then used the energy of light to generate a sloshing motion of
electrons in the graphene, called plasmons, which can be thought to be like
ripples or waves spreading through a "sea" of electrons. Similarly,
these waves can build in intensity to giant "tidal waves" of local
electric fields based on the researchers' clever design.
By shining light on the single-atom-thick graphene layer device, they
were able to create a plasmon wave with unprecedented efficiency at a near-perfect
94 percent light absorption into "tidal waves" of electric field.
When they inserted protein molecules between the graphene and metal ribbons,
they were able to harness enough energy to view single layers of protein
molecules.
"Our computer simulations showed that
this novel approach would work, but we were still a little surprised when we
achieved the 94 percent light absorption in real devices," said Oh, who
holds the Sanford P. Bordeau Chair in Electrical Engineering at the University
of Minnesota. "Realizing an ideal from a computer simulation has so many
challenges. Everything has to be so high quality and atomically flat. The fact
that we could obtain such good agreement between theory and experiment was
quite surprising and exciting."
“It
has always been my experience that I never benefited much from a move if I did
not get in at somewhere near the beginning of that move.”
How to Trade In Stocks
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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