Baltic Dry Index. 850
+29 Brent
Crude 74.60
Never ending Brexit
now October 31, maybe.
Day 146 of the
never-ending USA v China trade talks. Everyone’s “optimistic.”
USA v EU trade war 20
days away? No one optimistic.
In the space of a week, investors have shifted from plain greedy to extremely greedy, says our chart of the day, from CNN’s aptly named Fear & Greed Index.
With US stocks at “extreme
greed,” hopium fading that China and Europe are bottoming, the US Trump tax
cuts boost all in the past, Brexit stalled, and the USA v China trade talks on
a never-ending timetable, what could possibly go wrong?
Add in a summit
between President Putin and President Trump’s best buddy North Korea’s Kim,
plotting who knows what, US Iran sanctions starting May 1, and European
elections due to take place in late May, set to return an anti-EU rabble, and
isn’t this the perfect time to get extreme greed in global stocks led by the
Fed supported US markets?
Call me old
fashioned, but I don’t think so. To this old dinosaur, extreme greed, (mania,) usually
comes before a fall, though not necessarily immediately. Time to cash out for a
while seems safer to this old cautious Scot.
Asian shares slip; German, Korean data hurt risk appetite
April 25, 2019 /
2:06 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
Asian shares slipped on Thursday as a surprise deterioration in German and
South Korean economic data rekindled fears of slowing global growth, while oil
prices pulled back slightly after a sharp run-up earlier in the week.
The Japanese yen
weakened marginally to near 112 a dollar after the Bank of Japan kept policy
unchanged at a review on Thursday but pledged to keep interest rates very low
at least until early 2020.
---- The euro steadied after slumping to a 22-month low of $1.114 to the U.S. dollar overnight, driven by a drop in German business confidence which highlighted the divergence between data in the euro zone and the United States.
Data showing the South Korean economy unexpectedly contracted in the
first quarter of the year also fuelled worries about the dual-speed nature of
the global economy.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.27
percent, while Japan’s Nikkei average rose 0.4 percent to 22,280.99 points.
Overnight, Wall Street shrugged off some earnings misses but drifted
lower at the end of the session, after the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite
registered record closing highs on Tuesday. [.N]
Chotaro Morita, chief rates strategist at SMBC Nikko Securities, noted
hopes that the Chinese economy is bottoming out have contributed to recent
rallies in global equities.
----
The deteriorating reading on German business morale, in a
survey by the IFO economic institute, bucked expectations for a small
improvement.
More
Bank of Japan cuts inflation, economic growth forecasts
Date created :
Japan will fail to reach its two-percent inflation target even by 2022,
the central bank predicted on Thursday as it also revised down its estimate for
growth in the world's third-largest economy.
In its closely watched quarterly report, the Bank of Japan forecast
inflation of 1.6 percent in the fiscal year ending March 2022, meaning its
years-long battle to reignite prices is far from won.
The BoJ revised down its inflation forecast for the year to March 2021
to 1.3 percent from 1.4 percent.
Japanese inflation currently stands below one percent, less than halfway
to target, despite six years of aggressive monetary stimulus under BoJ Governor
Haruhiko Kuroda.
----Economic growth would also come in at 0.8 percent this fiscal year,
climbing to 0.9 percent the year after -- both downward revisions of 0.1
percentage points.
It forecast GDP at 1.2 percent in the fiscal year ending in 2022.
More
Don’t be ‘fooled’ by these fresh highs for stocks, warns analyst
By Barbara
Kollmeyer Published: Apr 24, 2019
9:32 a.m. ET
---- But our call
of the day, from Naeem Aslam, analyst at ThinkMarkets UK,
says investors should be wary of these latest gains for equities. He warns
clients “not be fooled…as smart money is ready to short.”
Aslam explains that even as nearly 79% of S&P 500 companies have
beaten forecasts in the first-quarter reporting season thus far, hedge funds or
institutional investors don’t seem to have bought into this.
He draws his evidence from recent Commodity Futures Trading Commission
data, which offers up a gauge of how investors, such as hedge funds, are positioned
in U.S. equity markets. Latest data shows that bullish sentiment for the
S&P decreased by 36%, meaning more of those investors are betting on a fall
for stocks, or a taking “short” position.
“This shows that smart money is ready to bank big if the market falls
again. Moreover, one thing is for certain when it comes to smart money, it
doesn’t like to play the catch-up game,” said Aslam.
---- Aslam says the institutional investors may be getting this call wrong, but says one thing keeping them out is the view that stocks are too expensive—a debate that rages on.
Opinion: Why earnings multiples of stocks are misleading
The chart
In the space of a week, investors have shifted from plain greedy to extremely greedy, says our chart of the day, from CNN’s aptly named Fear & Greed Index.
----
The chart is meant to reflect what kind of emotions are driving Wall Street,
and is calculated by seven indicators. Four of those shifted from greed to
extreme greed in the past week, such as safe haven demand for bonds and
strength of the stock market—the number of companies hitting 52-week highs
exceeds those that have been tapping lows.
More
In Tesla news, it’s more of the same,
says Marketwatch. P. T. Barnum’s saying springs to mind.
Opinion: Elon Musk keeps moving Tesla’s finish line
By Jeremy
C. Owens Published: Apr 24, 2019
8:33 p.m. ET
Elon Musk on Aug. 1, 2018: “In the second
half of 2018, we expect, for the first time in our history, to become both
sustainably profitable and cash-flow positive.”Elon Musk on Oct. 24, 2018: “We expect to again have positive net income and cash flow in Q4, and I believe — our aspirations, I think — will be for all quarters going forward.”
Elon Musk on Jan. 30: “At this point I’m optimistic about being profitable for Q1 ... and for all quarters moving forward.”
Elon Musk on Feb. 28: “We do not expect to be profitable in Q1, But we do think that profitability in Q2 is likely.”
Elon Musk on Wednesday, after reporting more than $700 million in first-quarter losses: “We expect to return to profitability in Q3 and significantly reduce our loss in Q2.”
Catch a pattern there? When Tesla Inc. TSLA, -1.99% reported profit in consecutive quarters last year, it appeared to have finally reached a new stage in its evolution, one of the bumpiest rides many market watchers have experienced. But the electric-car maker’s erratic chief executive has continued to push back the finish line that Tesla seemed to have already crossed.
Tesla
should be sustainably profitable and cash-flow positive by now, as Musk
promised last August, but still nothing about this company feels sustainable or
repeatable. After fighting through the tough Model 3 production ramp last year,
Musk has pushed Tesla right into a Model Y production ramp and China factory
build-out while making
outrageous promises about autonomous capabilities.
More
Next, does lightning ever
strike twice? Hopefully not in east Africa.
Tropical Cyclone Kenneth makes path toward storm-ravaged Mozambique
April 24, 2019 /
5:03 PM
April
24 (UPI) -- The African nation of Mozambique on
Tuesday braced for the arrival of another storm while still reeling from the
effects of Cyclone Idai.NASA meteorologists forecast that Tropical Cyclone Kenneth is expected to move toward the border of Mozambique and Tanzania and make landfall in northern Mozambique as early as Thursday.
"Residents along Mozambique/Tanzania border should make preparations for storm surge along the coasts, heavy rainfall and hurricane-force winds," NASA said.
The storm underwent additional strengthening on Wednesday and was rated a tropical cyclone by the French national meteorological service, indicating it has winds of 74 mph to 98 mph or equal to the strength of a Category 1 to 3 hurricane.
Additional strengthening is possible as Kenneth approaches Mozambique on
Thursday and rain may reach coastal locations by the end of the day Wednesday.
A storm surge of between 6.5 feet and 13 feet may occur near the south
of where the storm is expected to make landfall, likely to cause
life-threatening flooding.
Areas between Lindi, Tanzania, and Pemba, Mozambique, will be at risk
for rainfall, flooding, mudslides and powerful winds.
More
Finally, in EUSSR
news, Europe faces a month of European elections. The polls suggest a mighty
change is at hand.
That Deutsche Bank
rescue may be off. Brexit now before the
EUSSR implodes.
Far-right Vox wants to shake up Spain's election
Date created :
On the distant margins of politics until it burst onto the scene in southern
Spain, far-right party Vox hopes lingering discontent will help it score big in
Sunday's general election.
For a long time, Spain was one of the few European countries that didn't
have a far-right party to speak of.
That changed in December when Vox won 12 parliamentary seats in the
southern region of Andalusia, helping a coalition of the conservative Popular
Party (PP) and centre-right Ciudadanos take power in a traditional socialist
bastion.
Now, the party that was founded in 2013 seeks to emulate its success at
a national level and enter parliament for the first time.
- 'Silenced' Spain -
Ultra-nationalist, the party slams the outgoing socialist executive as
an "enemy" of Spain for trying to negotiate with separatists in
Catalonia, where a secession bid in 2017 shocked the country -- outrage Vox has
seized upon.
Opposed to Spain's influential feminist movement, uncompromising on
illegal immigration, anti-abortion and same-sex marriage, the party boasts that
its rallies are full to the brim.
Vox "has managed to awaken hope among many of those who had lost
it, who didn't feel represented," Vox leader Santiago Abascal told Spanish
radio this week.
Insisting that parts of Spain had long been "silenced" by what
he dubs the "progressive dictatorship," he promised Vox voters would
"cause a genuine stir" in Sunday's elections.
Shunning most traditional media and campaigning hard on social networks
and in rallies, Abascal has adopted the campaign tactics of US and Brazilian
presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.
- Catalonia -
While immigration has been a centre-piece for many far-right parties in
Europe, Vox has seized more on concern in Spain over Catalonia's independence
movement.
Abascal, a former PP member in the northern Basque Country who grew up
under the constant threat of armed group ETA, has pledged to "take
control" of the separatist-governed region of Catalonia if he came to
power and wants to ban pro-independence parties.
More
Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank deal now in doubt
By Jenny
Strasburg Published: Apr 24, 2019 8:44 p.m. ET
Merger talks between Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG have gotten
bogged down over questions ranging from a lack of investor support to
opposition from powerful labor unions, according to people familiar with the
matter.
The banks as of Wednesday evening had no plans to disclose by Friday --
the day Deutsche Bank is scheduled to report earnings -- intentions to merge,
as some had once expected. The two sides remained far from agreement on a deal,
the people said.
It is still possible the two banks could ultimately manage to strike a
deal, one of the people said.
Friday has become a widely expected deadline for a status update after
Deutsche Bank's chairman said publicly in late March that the bank would brief
investors on deal talks by the time it reports earnings. The bank has continued
to communicate that plan to investors this month, stoking expectations that it
could signal progress in the discussions -- or that it could abandon them.
Formal merger talks between the two lenders are in their sixth week.
----
Investors have questioned whether combining two troubled banks
solves their profitability and growth problems. The prospects for a big capital
hike to pay for the deal have spooked shareholders, too. And German labor
unions have fought the estimated 30,000 or more job cuts expected from a
merger.
More
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, that cryptocurrency scam again. Did they really think that the
“five eyes” would really let you hide your wealth.
A 'Blockchain Bandit' Is Guessing Private Keys and Scoring Millions
Author:
Andy Greenberg Andy Greenberg04.23.19
Last summer, Adrian Bednarek was mulling over ways to steal
the
cryptocurrency Ethereum. He's a security consultant; at the time, he was
working for a client in the theft-plagued cryptocurrency industry. Bednarek had
been drawn to Ethereum, in particular, because of its notorious complexity and
the potential security vulnerabilities those moving parts might create. But he
started instead with the simplest of questions: What if an Ethereum owner
stored their digital money with a private key—the unguessable, 78-digit string
of numbers that protects the currency stashed at a certain address—that had a
value of 1?To Bednarek's surprise, he found that dead-simple key had in fact once held currency, according to the blockchain that records all Ethereum transactions. But the cash had already been taken out of the Ethereum wallet that used it—almost certainly by a thief who had thought to guess a private key of 1 long before Bednarek had. After all, as with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, if anyone knows an Ethereum private key, they can use it to derive the associated public address that the key unlocks. The private key then allows them to transfer the money at that address as though they were its rightful owner.
That initial discovery piqued Bednarek's curiosity. So he
tried a few more consecutive keys: 2, 3, 4, and then a couple dozen more, all
of which had been similarly emptied. So he and his colleagues at the security
consultancy Independent Security Evaluators wrote some code, fired up some
cloud servers, and tried a few dozen billion more.
In
the process, and as detailed in a paper they
published Tuesday, the researchers not only found that cryptocurrency users
have in the last few years stored their crypto treasure with hundreds of easily
guessable private keys, but also uncovered what they call a "blockchain
bandit." A single Ethereum account seems to have siphoned off a fortune of
45,000 ether—worth at one point more than $50 million—using those same
key-guessing tricks.
"He was doing the same things we were doing, but he went
above and beyond," Bednarek says. "Whoever this guy or these guys
are, they're spending a lot of computing time sniffing for new wallets,
watching every transaction, and seeing if they have the key to them."
Combing a Gazillion Beaches
To explain how that blockchain banditry works, it helps to
understand that the the odds of guessing a randomly generated Ethereum private
key is 1 in 115 quattuorvigintillion. (Or, as a fraction: 1/2256.)
That denominator is very roughly around the number of atoms in the universe.
Bednarek compares the task of identifying a random Ethereum key to choosing a
grain of sand on a beach, and later asking a friend to find that same grain
among a "billion gazillion" beaches.
But as he looked at the Ethereum blockchain, Bednarek could
see evidence that some people had stored ether at vastly simpler, more easily
guessable keys. The mistake was probably the result, he says, of Ethereum
wallets that cut off keys at just a fraction of their intended length due to
coding errors, or let inexperienced users choose their own keys, or even that
included malicious code, corrupting the randomization process to make keys easy
to guess for the wallet's developer.
More
“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.
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?
Slightly off topic
today but interesting.
Could Machine Learning Be the Key to Earthquake Prediction?
Predicting earthquakes might be impossible, but some experts wonder if tools that can analyze enormous amounts of data could crack the seismic code
By Matthew Berger smithsonian.com April 23, 2019 8:00AM
Five years ago, Paul Johnson wouldn’t have thought predicting
earthquakes would ever be possible. Now, he isn’t so certain.
“I can’t say we will, but I’m much more hopeful we’re going to make a
lot of progress within decades,” the Los Alamos National Laboratory
seismologist says. “I’m more hopeful now than I’ve ever been.”
The main reason for that new hope is a technology Johnson started
looking into about four years ago: machine learning. Many of the sounds and
small movements along tectonic fault lines where earthquakes occur have long
been thought to be meaningless. But machine learning—training computer
algorithms to analyze large amounts of data to look for patterns or
signals—suggests that some of the small seismic signals might matter after all.
Such computer models might even turn out to be key to unlocking the
ability to predict earthquakes, a remote possibility that is so controversial,
many seismologists refuse to even discuss it.
When the theory of plate tectonics gained ground in the 1960s, many scientists thought that earthquake prediction was only a matter of time. Once small quakes caused by shifting plates could be modeled, the thinking went, it should be possible to predict larger earthquakes days or even weeks in advance. But a multitude of factors, from rock type to the distance of a fault slip, affect the strength of an earthquake, and it quickly became apparent that models of small-scale tectonic activity couldn’t provide a reliable way to predict major earthquakes. Perhaps small shifts and slips, which occur hundreds of times per day, could indicate a slight increase in the probability of a large earthquake striking, but even after a swarm of minor tectonic activity, a big quake is still highly unlikely to occur.
A better signal for an incoming earthquake is needed if prediction will ever become reality.
Using machine learning to find such a signal is likely a long way off—if it’s even possible. In a study published late last year, Johnson and his team suggested there could be a previously disregarded seismic signal that might contain a pattern revealing when a major earthquake—like the infamous and long-awaited Cascadia quake in the Pacific Northwest—could strike. If the hypothesis pans out, it could change the way earthquakes are forecast from seconds in advance to, maybe one day, decades in advance.
The most recent
improvements in earthquake forecasting have been those precious seconds.
Seismologists are working on improving early-warning systems like those
in Japan and the ShakeAlert system
being rolled out along the U.S. West Coast. Those systems send out alerts only
after an earthquake has already started—but in time to shut down things like
elevators or gas lines and warn communities farther from the epicenter.
Trying to extrapolate how big an in-progress quake is going to become,
where its epicenter is and what’s going to be affected, all from a few seconds
of data, is already a huge challenge, Johnson says. Existing warning systems
have misjudged major earthquakes and given false alarms on others. But before
2007, we didn’t even have seconds’ notice. Where might we be in 2027?
“We don’t know how well seismology will really do a decade from now,”
Johnson says. “But it will be much better than today.”
more
"We
finished the year, and we reported that we had $17 billion of cash sitting at
the bank's parent company as a liquidity cushion. As the year has gone on, that
liquidity cushion has been virtually unchanged."
Alan Schwartz, CEO Bear Stearns, March 12, 2008.
Bust March 16, 2008.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: 25,929 +54 Down. NASDAQ: 7,729 +94 Down.
SP500: 2,834
+53 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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