Baltic Dry Index. 1043
+17 Brent
Crude 70.92
Never ending Brexit
now October 31st, maybe.
Nuclear Trump
Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war any
day from now. No one optimistic.
“You
are a slow learner, Xi," said Trump
"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."
"Sometimes, Xi. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.
"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."
"Sometimes, Xi. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.
With
apologies to George Orwell 1984.
After several days of
severe rhetoric blasting China for “reneging” on an agreed trade deal, unintentionally
blasting US stock markets and his 2020 re-election chances, President Trump
U-turned his rhetoric yesterday back towards that a trade deal still might be
possible.
Investors, aka “Muppets”
at a famous if not infamous leading Wall Street firm, raced back into the
markets to get long over-priced stocks. Re-election Team Trump breathed a big
sigh of relief. I suspect that their sigh
of relief will be short lived. Nothing has really changed.
US consumers face
sharply higher prices on many consumer goods over the summer. US manufacturers
face higher Chinese import costs and lower margins. US farmers face sharply
lower prices and bankruptcy.
And all this is
before President Trump starts his next trade war with the European Union over
auto exports to the USA, which according to President Trump represent a severe security
threat to the USA requiring punitive tariffs. The EU says “go ahead, make my
day, we will retaliate.” President Trump has authority to start his European
trade war from mid-May, which is today or tomorrow. Any USA v EU trade war is
highly likely to push the EU into recession.
Ticking away like an
unexploded time bomb in Europe lies Brexit, which itself under the EU’s botched
Brexit negotiations, is also highly likely to push the EU into recession, and
probably GB into a constitutional crisis, which is quite something for a nation
without a written constitution.
All in all, no reason
to gamble on over-priced stocks at the onset of summer.
Asia stocks bounce from three-and-a-half month lows as trade fears soften
May 15, 2019 /
1:48 AM
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Asian stocks bounced from a 3-1/2-month low on Wednesday as a
slight softening in rhetoric from U.S. President Donald Trump helped ease
worries about the U.S.-China tariff war and on expectations Beijing could
release more economic stimulus.
Shares in Asia were led by strong gains in Chinese equities, which
rebounded after two days of losses.
“Chinese stocks are mounting a rebound as they had been oversold in
recent sessions. Sentiment is also better as President Trump seems to be
desiring a compromise,” said Kota Hirayama, senior emerging markets economist
at SMBC Nikko Securities in Tokyo.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.5%.
The index had fallen to its lowest level since the end of January the previous
day as the Sino-U.S. trade conflict intensified. Beijing on Monday imposed a
tariff hike on U.S. goods following Washington’s decision last week to hike its
levies on Chinese imports.
However, Trump on Tuesday said he had a “very good” dialogue with China
and insisted talks between the world’s two largest economies had not collapsed.
Wall Street shares were able to bounce overnight in wake of Trump’s comments.
---- “The latest data shows that the Chinese economy still needs stimulus. Its stock markets could sustain its recovery if the government indicates it will continue to keep supporting the economy,” Hirayama at SMBC Nikko Securities said.
Australian stocks added 0.6%, South Korea’s KOSPI gained 0.7% and
Japan’s Nikkei dipped 0.1%.
The Chinese yuan was a shade firmer at 6.9005 per dollar in offshore
trade, having edged away from a five-month trough of 6.9200 set on Tuesday.
More
China's economic activity cools in April
By MarketWatch
Published: May 14, 2019 11:39 p.m. ET
BEIJING-- China's economic activity cooled last month as growth in
factory production, investment and retail sales slowed.
Value-added industrial output in China rose 5.4% in April from a year
earlier, slowing from an 8.5% year-over-year increase in March, the National
Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. April's growth also missed the median
forecast of 6.6% from a Wall Street Journal poll of economists.
Fixed-asset investment in non-rural areas rose 6.1% in the
January-to-April period from a year ago, slowing from the 6.3% growth in the
first three months, and missing economists' median forecast of 6.4%
Retail sales climbed 7.2% in April from a year earlier, slowing from
March's 8.7% growth and missing economists' median forecast for growth of 8.8%
Economists expect the government to step
up efforts to help stabilize the domestic economy amid rising trade tensions
with the U.S.
Trump calls trade war with China 'little squabble,' says talks ongoing
May 14, 2019 /
4:24 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called the
trade war with China “a little squabble” and insisted talks between the world’s
two largest economies had not collapsed, as investors remained on guard for a
further escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs.
Trump, who has railed against what he describes as China’s unfair trade
practices and threatened to impose punitive levies on all its imports, softened
his tone in a series of remarks expressing optimism about reaching a trade deal
with Beijing.
“We’re having a little squabble with China because we’ve been treated
very unfairly for many, many decades,” Trump told reporters, referring to U.S.
complaints about Chinese intellectual property and subsidy practices.
Trump also denied talks with China had broken down after Washington
punctuated two days of negotiations last week with another round of tariffs on
Chinese imports, with Beijing following suit on Monday with higher tariffs on
U.S. goods.
“We have a dialogue going. It will always continue,” said the U.S.
president, who has announced plans to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at a
G20 summit in Japan late next month. Trump described the dialogue with China as
“very good” and touted his “extraordinary” relationship with Xi.
Earlier, Trump tweeted that the United States would make a deal with
China when the “time is right” and said that would happen “much faster” than
thought.
Global stock markets, which have seen a sharp selloff in the past week
on the back of rising U.S.-China tensions, rebounded. Major U.S. stock indexes
were up more than 1%, recovering some of their losses on Monday. The U.S.
dollar rose against a basket of currencies.
Earlier on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told
a daily news briefing that it was his understanding that China and the United
States had agreed to continue “pursuing relevant discussions.”
“As for how they are pursued, I think that hinges upon further
consultations between the two sides,” Geng said.
---- U.S. agricultural products have been targeted by China’s retaliatory tariffs, and American farmers, a key political constituency for Trump, are increasingly frustrated with the failure of the two sides to find a solution to the dispute.
Soybeans , which was the most valuable U.S. export crop, bounced off a
decade low on Tuesday as the market’s focus shifted to weather-related planting
delays that could reduce the crop size. Some analysts said the worst
of the trade news was priced into the market.
In a tweet earlier on Tuesday, Trump appealed to China to buy U.S. farm
products.
More
Beijing calls for a 'people's war' against the US as Trump threatens tariffs on another $300 billion of Chinese goods in all-out trade battle
.
The US-China trade war continues to heat up, with Beijing
calling for a "people's war" against Washington and President Donald
Trump threatening to impose tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese
goods.In a series of editorials and op-ed articles published Monday, Chinese state media slammed what it labeled the Trump administration's "greed and arrogance" and called for a "people's war" against it. Beijing's state-run media effectively serves as a mouthpiece for the Communist Party.
"The most important thing is that in the China-US trade war, the US side fights for greed and arrogance ... and morale will break at any point. The Chinese side is fighting back to protect its legitimate interests," the nationalistic Global Times tabloid wrote in a Chinese-language editorial carried by Xinhua News Agency.
"The trade war in the US is the creation of one person and one administration, but it affects that country's entire population. In China, the entire country and all its people are being threatened. For us, this is a real 'people's war.'"
More
In
other news, more sign of our new slowing global economy.
Taiwan's Foxconn shares drop more than 2% after quarterly profit miss
May 15, 2019 /
2:18 AM
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Shares of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract
manufacturer, dropped more than 2% on Wednesday after the company posted a
lower-than-expected quarterly profit.
Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, reported a
net profit of T$19.82 billion ($637.26 million) for the first three months of
2019, down 17.7% from the same period a year earlier.
The result lagged the T$24.84 billion average of eight analyst estimates
compiled by Refinitiv.
“War is
peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
George
Orwell 1984.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, WhatsApp, are your enemies targeting you?
How Hackers Broke WhatsApp With Just a Phone Call
Author:
Lily Hay Newman 05.14.19 12:05 pm
You've heard the advice a million times. Don't click links
in suspicious emails or texts. Don't download
shady apps. But a new Financial Times report alleges that the notorious Israeli spy firm NSO
Group developed a WhatsApp exploit that could inject malware onto targeted
phones—and steal data from them—simply by calling them. The targets didn't need
to pick up to be infected, and the calls often left no trace on the phone's
log. But how would a hack like that even work in the first place?WhatsApp, which offers encrypted messaging by default to its 1.5 billion users worldwide, discovered the vulnerability in early May and released a patch for it on Monday. The Facebook-owned company told the FT that it contacted a number of human rights groups about the issue and that exploitation of this vulnerability bears "all the hallmarks of a private company known to work with governments to deliver spyware." In a statement, NSO Group denied any involvement in selecting or targeting victims but not its role in the creation of the hack itself.
So-called zero-day bugs, in which attackers find a vulnerability before
the company can patch it, happen on every platform. It's part and parcel of
software development; the trick is to close those security gaps as quickly as
possible. Still, a hack that requires nothing but an incoming phone call seems
uniquely challenging—if not impossible—to defend against.
WhatsApp wouldn't elaborate to WIRED about how it discovered the bug or
give specifics on how it works, but the company says it is doing infrastructure
upgrades in addition to pushing a patch to ensure that customers can't be
targeted with other phone-call bugs.
"Remote-exploitable bugs can exist in any application that receives
data from untrusted sources," says Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at the
German firm Security Research Labs. That includes WhatsApp calls, which use the
voice-over-internet protocol to connect users. VoIP applications have to
acknowledge incoming calls and notify you about them, even if you don't pick
up. "The more complex the data parsing, the more room for error," Nohl
says. "In the case of WhatsApp, the protocol for establishing a connection
is rather complex, so there is definitely room for exploitable bugs that can be
triggered without the other end picking up the call."
More
“Big Brother
is Watching You.”
George
Orwell 1984.
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?
The Fusion Reactor Next Door
Entrepreneurs are taking up the search for a near
limitless energy source and seeking investors willing to put money behind a
long-shot bet against climate change.
YARNTON, England — On a Friday afternoon,
a small group of scientists gathered in front of a bank of computer screens
near a Ping-Pong table in a warehouse close to Britain’s Oxford University.
Scattered conversations and laughter hushed as a siren started blaring.
One of the scientists began calling out, “10 … 20 … 30 …,”
as a hulking machine behind thick walls in the next room was pumped with
electromagnetic energy. Within seconds, he gave the command: “Send trigger!”
A sudden bang like a shotgun blast reverberated through
the building. The equivalent of hundreds of lightning strikes going off at once
had just exploded.
“Well done, everyone,” someone said after
a few moments, and the chatter resumed. The scientists had just taken another
small step toward harnessing the power of the universe, and the weekend
beckoned.
The promise of fusion energy seems
fantastic and unapproachable: It is the power behind the sun and the stars. The
spark comes when hydrogen nuclei fuse to become heavier atoms.
The tremendous burst of energy released in the resulting transformation creates
sunlight, and the conditions that enabled our creation. Without it, the
universe would be cold, dark and lifeless.
Since the 1930s, scientists have been trying to harness
fusion, thinking that it could run the electric power plants of the future and
even send people to other planets.
The fusing of hydrogen and helium atoms requires
incredible heat and pressure, and for decades fusion research has been the
exclusive province of big science, like ITER, a 35-nation thermonuclear project
in the south of France that covers 100 acres and is expected to ultimately cost
more than $20 billion.
Such initiatives, though, have made slow progress toward
the ultimate goal of building a machine that generates more power than it takes
in.
Fusion is now attracting science-minded entrepreneurs and
investors willing to make a long bet. They see small companies as more nimble
than government-funded behemoths. They are sensitive to rising alarms over the
impact of climate change. They want to create a power source with enviable
possibilities: millions of times the energy potential of oil and gas and
substantially more than nuclear power, without the carbon emissions of fossil fuels.
Fusion proponents also say that it is free of most of the
risks of contemporary nuclear plants — which are powered by splitting, not
joining, atoms — and that it has advantages over wind and solar, whose output
is variable and whose turbines and panels require enormous space.
“There is no doubt in my mind that humanity will
eventually succeed in making fusion energy happen,” said Robin Grimes, a
professor of physics at Imperial College, a public research university in
London. “We’ve got no choice.”
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: 26,593 +51 Down. NASDAQ: 8,095 +89 Down.
SP500: 2,946
+55 Up.
The S&P has
reversed to up largely as a result of the Fed falling into line with President
Trump’s demands, 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 still fully paid up synthetic double options on most of the
major indexes. This could all go very wrong very fast.
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