Baltic Dry Index. 1899
-23 Brent
Crude 65.28
Never ending Brexit
now October 31st, maybe. 92
days away.
Nuclear Trump
China Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war
postponed to November, maybe.
“What
you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,”
President
Trump.
Trump’s big Fed Day
arrives. Will the Fed cut by a tiny quarter of one percent, or “go big” as
ordered by President Trump? The market
is betting on the tiny quarter of one percent.
But cowed by
President Trump, will the Fed go all-in and follow the ECB into negative
interest rates in the months ahead? Hopefully not, as NIRP will wreak havoc on
the world’s, by far largest, reserve fiat currency.
In addition to Fed
day it is the last trading day of the first month of the second half of the
year. Time to dress up the stock index closings again.
But while it might be
dress up Wednesday, in the real world things look far from rosy, with President
Trump being rude about China again. Hardly a good start to the renewed USA v
China trade talks.
Below, some of the
recent news.
"I
will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico
pay for that wall. Mark my words."
President
Trump.
Trump says he wants more than ‘small’ Fed rate cut
By Greg Robb
Published: July 29, 2019 12:55 p.m. ET
President Donald Trump on Monday made it clear that he wants more than a
quarter-point interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve.
“A small rate cut is not enough,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Most Fed watchers think the central bank will move in small steps, cutting rates by a quarter-point on Wednesday, while leaving the door open for more moves later this year.
Only a few economists, including Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Standish, think the Fed should engineer a half-point cut.
In an interview with MarketWatch, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius said it would be odd for there to be only one quarter-point cut. But Hatzius and many other economists think the Fed might only cut twice, and disappoint a bond market that has three rate cuts priced in for this year.
The U.S. central bank doesn’t think it is embarking on a lengthy series of rate cuts at the moment, speeches from members have revealed. And aggressive rate cuts might signal a recession is imminent, which the Fed wants to avoid.
Instead, the Fed believes it is tweaking rates in order to prolong the expansion, more of an “insurance” cut.
The central bank doesn’t have a clear view of the road ahead, economists said.
More
Trade war keeps China's factories in reverse gear for third month
July 31, 2019 /
2:36 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China’s factory activity shrank for the third month in a row in July, an
official survey showed, underlining the growing strains on the world’s
second-biggest economy as the Sino-U.S. trade war hits business profits,
confidence and investment.
Wednesday’s weak manufacturing reading adds to global growth risks and
explains why policymakers around the world have stepped up easing measures,
with some others considering doing so soon, to counter the fallout from
international trade frictions.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to 49.7 in July, from the
previous month’s 49.4, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday,
but remained below the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction on
a monthly basis. Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted a reading of 49.6.
Deteriorating global demand saw export orders shrinking for the 14th
month, the survey showed, though the sub-index ticked up fractionally to 46.9
from June’s 46.3.
---- The official gauge came on the second day of U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators’ meeting in Shanghai, their first in-person talks since a G20 truce last month, though expectations for progress remain low.
“We expect that this downward trend in manufacturing will continue in
2019 until the trade and technology negotiations make some progress,” said Iris
Pang, ING’s Greater China economist.
In a row that has dragged on for more than a year, the world’s two
largest economies have slapped billions of dollars of tariffs on each other’s
imports, disrupting global supply chains and shaking financial markets. That
has prompted central banks from South Korea to Australia to South Africa to cut
rates, with the U.S. Federal Reserve also widely expected to ease later on
Wednesday for the first time since the global financial crisis.
More
Trump Lashes Out at China ‘Rip Off’ as Trade Talks Resume
By Terrence Dopp and Justin Sink
Updated on July 31, 2019, 2:07 AM GMT+1
·
·
He says spoke recently with Xi, but doesn’t give
details
President Donald Trump lashed out at China for what he said is its unwillingness to buy American agricultural products and said it continues to “rip off” the U.S., just as the two nations resumed negotiations in Shanghai following a three-month breakup.
“China is doing very badly, worst year in 27 -- was supposed to start buying our agricultural product now -- no signs that they are doing so,” Trump said Tuesday on Twitter. “That is the problem with China, they just don’t come through.”
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-30/trump-cites-problem-with-china-on-trade-sending-futures-lower?srnd=premium-europe
Weak euro zone data backs Draghi's plan for more stimulus
July 30, 2019 /
11:04 AM
PARIS/BERLIN
(Reuters) - French growth slowed unexpectedly in the second quarter on weaker
household spending and German consumer morale worsened for the third month in a
row heading into August, adding to signs that the euro zone economy as a whole
is cooling.
The lacklustre read-out of data from the zone’s two biggest economies on
Tuesday backed European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s assessment that
the growth outlook is deteriorating and the bank should inject more monetary
stimulus.
In a further sign of weakness, euro zone economic sentiment deteriorated
to hit its lowest level in more than three years in July, European Commission
data showed on Tuesday.
“This adds to evidence from PMI data published last week that the euro
zone economy will expand by a meager 1% or so this year, strengthening the case
for ECB action sooner rather than later,” said Melanie Debono from Capital
Economics.
After the ECB changed forward guidance during its policy meeting last
week, it is likely to cut rates in September and announce a fresh round of
quantitative easing through bond buys in October, Debono added.
The French economy grew 0.2% in the April-June period, down from 0.3% in
the previous three months, according to preliminary data from the INSEE
statistics agency.
That was just below a Reuters poll of 28 economists, which had an
average estimate of 0.3%.
Until now the French economy, the euro zone’s second largest, has proven
more resilient than some neighbors such as Germany because it is less dependent
on exports and thus less exposed to global swings.
But household spending, the traditional motor of French growth, grew only 0.2%, the slowest rate in a year despite a more than 10 billion euro ($11.1 billion) package of measures launched by President Emmanuel Macron to boost purchasing power.
In Germany, growth is widely expected to have contracted in the second quarter and sentiment surveys suggest that the third quarter might not bring any improvement, raising the specter of a technical recession in Europe’s largest economy.
More
"Our
country is in serious trouble. We don't have victories any more. We used to
have victories but [now] we don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw
us beating, let's say, China, in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all
the time. All the time."
President
Trump.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, more on the return of gold. Well why not when America’s President
talks of deliberately devaluing the dollar, the world’s reserve fiat currency.
While one would hope sensible advisors would stop him from trying, you just
never know with President Trump and possibly five more years.
Opinion: Watch out, America: China and Russia are stockpiling gold
By Brett Arends Published: July 29, 2019 1:48 p.m. ET
I’ve never been a gold bug.The yellow metal generates no cash, grows no crops, provides no shelter and supplies no useful service. It hasn’t been official money for decades. It isn’t any kind of “safe haven” because it always seems to be crashing or booming or crashing again. It hasn’t been an efficient way of verifying payment since Samuel Morse invented the telegraph.
But here’s the funny thing: It’s been going up. Big time. And for none of the usual reasons.
There’s no inflation. Prices are currently rising by about 1.6% a year.
There’s no obvious economic distress. The U.S. economy is growing by about 2.1% a year.
And there’s no financial panic. Stock markets are rising. Wall Street has been hitting new highs. Junk bond spreads — the extra interest that risky companies have to pay to borrow money — are low.
Yet for all that, gold GC00, +0.55% has now risen 11% in the past two months. Over the past year, it’s up 15%. That’s more than the S&P 500 SPY, -0.21% or the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.44%. And more than the so-called FAANG stocks — Facebook FB, -0.65%, Apple AAPL, -0.56%, Amazon AMZN, -0.81%, Netflix NFLX, -0.92% and Google holding company Alphabet GOOG, -0.88% GOOGL, -0.27% — that are so fashionable on the Street.
‘Something’s going on here’
What’s going on? And, more interestingly, perhaps, is it worth a trade?London hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, at Odey Asset Management, says the precious metal drew his eye during the stock market meltdown last fall. “Gold should have gone down last year,” he says from his plush offices in London’s Mayfair district. “It should have ended the year around $1,000 [an ounce]. Instead it was $1,200. I thought, ‘Something’s going on here.’ ”
The explanation? Some of America’s biggest geopolitical rivals were stockpiling gold. Especially China and Russia.
And they still are. The People’s Bank of China recently revealed hiking its gold reserves by 74 tons in the six months through May. The Russian central bank has bought about 96 tons in the first half of the year.
U.S. dollar hegemony
And there’s an obvious reason for China to buy gold. It wants to break up the global hegemony of the U.S. dollar — the hegemony that former French President Charles de Gaulle called America’s “exorbitant privilege.” It wants to make its own currency, the renminbi, a world player. And Odey argues that buying gold bullion is a natural move. Gold reserves should add to world confidence in the Chinese currency.In other words, the U.S. president, by “Making America Great Again,” may also be Making Gold Great Again.
Do China and Russia really need piles of this arcane yellow metal to break the U.S. dollar’s stranglehold on the world’s financial system?
Can’t they just issue new currency backed by their economic output, as Europe did when it launched the euro 20 years ago?
Maybe, or maybe not. But that seems to be the way they’re betting.
We are at a very rare inflection point in history: The passage of economic hegemony. China’s economy has already overtaken America’s by one key measure, just as America’s once overtook Britain’s. These periods of transition, throughout history, have been times of instability.
Don’t fight the central banks
Odey, once a gold skeptic, has plunged into the metal now in one of his characteristically heavy ways. His flagship hedge funds, Odey European and OEI MAC, were about 40% invested in gold at the end of June.Yikes.
”You want to do what the central banks are doing,” he says, with a laugh.
Where could gold go? Nobody knows, and Odey isn’t giving a forecast. In theory, some gold bugs argue, a breakdown in the dollar’s hegemony could send the yellow metal spiraling upward by several hundred percent. We shall see.
More
"The concept of global warming was
created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing
non-competitive."
President
Trump.
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?
Physicists discover new quantum trick for graphene: Magnetism
Date:
July 29, 2019
Source:
Stanford University -- School of Humanities and Sciences
Summary:
Physicists were stunned when two twisted sheets of graphene showed signs of
superconductivity. Now scientists have shown that the wonder material also
generates a type of magnetism once only dreamed of theoretically.
Sometimes the best discoveries happen when scientists least expect it.
While trying to replicate another team's finding, Stanford physicists recently
stumbled upon a novel form of magnetism, predicted but never seen before, that
is generated when two honeycomb-shaped lattices of carbon are carefully stacked
and rotated to a special angle.
The authors suggest the magnetism, called orbital ferromagnetism, could
prove useful for certain applications, such as quantum computing. The group
describes their finding in the July 25 issue of the journal Science.
"We were not aiming for magnetism. We found what may be the most
exciting thing in my career to date through partially targeted and partially
accidental exploration," said study leader David Goldhaber-Gordon, a
professor of physics at Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences. "Our
discovery shows that the most interesting things turn out to be surprises
sometimes."
The Stanford researchers inadvertently made their discovery while trying
to reproduce a finding that was sending shockwaves through the physics
community. In early 2018, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero's group at MIT announced that
they had coaxed a stack of two subtly misaligned sheets of carbon atoms --
twisted bilayer graphene -- to conduct electricity without resistance, a
property known as superconductivity.
The discovery was a stunning confirmation of a nearly decade-old
prediction that graphene sheets rotated to a very particular angle should
exhibit interesting phenomena.
When stacked and twisted, graphene forms a superlattice with a repeating
interference, or moiré, pattern. "It's like when you play two musical
tones that are slightly different frequencies," Goldhaber-Gordon said.
"You'll get a beat between the two that's related to the difference
between their frequencies. That's similar to what you get if you stack two
lattices atop each other and twist them so they're not perfectly aligned."
Physicists theorized that the particular superlattice formed when
graphene is rotated to 1.1 degrees causes the normally varied energy states of
electrons in the material to collapse, creating what they call a flat band
where the speed at which electrons move drops to nearly zero. Thus slowed, the
motions of any one electron becomes highly dependent on those of others in its
vicinity. These interactions lie at the heart of many exotic quantum states of
matter.
More
"I'm the most successful person ever
to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody's ever been more successful than me.
I'm the most successful person ever to run. Ross Perot isn't successful like
me. Romney - I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney."
President
Trump.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished June
DJIA: 26,600 +51 Up. NASDAQ: 8,006 +70 Down.
SP500: 2,942 +50 Up.
The S&P has reversed again to up after only one month. The Dow has
reversed to up, while the NASDAQ remains down. On to next
month’s numbers for clarification.
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