Baltic Dry Index. 2053 -63 Brent
Crude 62.43 Spot Gold 1510
Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 35 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war postponed to November, maybe.
There
is nothing like losing all you have in the world for teaching you what not to
do.
Jesse
Livermore
In addition to the wild demented politics on both sides
of the Atlantic now underway, add a rising probability that the next recession
is/has arriving/arrived. When it hits and a new EU banking crisis also arrives,
how many European banks will join Deutsche Bank in crashing into the rocks?
While America and Japan signed an interim trade deal
yesterday that left out the main issues for both sides, well politicians can
never turn down a good opportunity for a positive photo op, the trade deal “lite”
didn’t fool the markets.
With communist China closing next week for it’s 70th
anniversary celebration, and the month-end and end of quarter fast approaching,
and stocks just churning and burning near the top, to this old dinosaur market
follower since the late 60s, if the market isn’t rolling over with sentiment
fading from bull to bear, the market is giving an Oscar winning performance at
faking it.
Below, a tired market limps towards month-end and the
always dangerous month for stocks of October.
Asia stocks struggle to stay positive with trade deal developments in focus
By MarketWatch
Published: Sept 26,
2019 1:00 a.m. ET
The U.S. and Japan on Wednesday signed a limited trade deal
that will eliminate tariffs and expand market access on farm, industrial and
digital products. But the deal does not address autos, a key sticking point
during months of contentious negotiations, and President Donald Trump indicated
the two countries were still working on a broader agreement.The trade agreement helped set a positive tone for some, but not all stocks in Asia Thursday, though some of the gains faded by the afternoon. Tokyo’s Nikkei NIK, +0.29% was up 0.3% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng HSI, +0.16% managed a 0.2% rise. Chinese stocks SHCOMP, -0.73% 399106, -2.31% slid 2.3%.
Chinese markets retreated as investors took profits before trading is suspended next week for the country’s National Day following an extended rise in share prices, especially for tech companies.
The U.S.-Chinese dispute over Beijing’s trade surplus and technology
ambitions has fueled anxiety the global economy could tip into recession. Both
sides have raised tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods, hurting
factories and farmers on both sides.
Negotiators are due to meet next month in Washington for a 13th round of
talks. Economists say a temporary deal is possible but a final settlement is
unlikely this year.
Trump signed a trade deal with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan on
Wednesday that covers farm, industrial and digital trade but leaves tariffs on
autos and parts intact at 2.5%.
More
U.S., Japan sign limited trade deal, leaving autos for future talks
September 25, 2019
/ 6:54 PM
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe signed a limited trade deal on Wednesday that cuts tariffs on U.S. farm
goods, Japanese machine tools and other products while further staving off the
threat of higher U.S. car duties.
Trump said the first-phase deal would open up Japanese markets to some
$7 billion worth of U.S. products annually, cutting Japanese tariffs on
American beef, pork wheat and cheese.
Although the agreement does not cover trade in autos, Abe said he had
received reassurance from Trump that the United States would not impose
previously threatened “Section 232” national security tariffs on Japanese car
imports.
“Between President Trump and I, myself, this has been firmly confirmed
that no further, additional tariffs will imposed,” Abe told a news conference.
“And with the entry into force of our trade agreements, I believe both of our
economies will be able to further grow and develop.”
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said after a signing
ceremony between the two leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General
Assembly that the two countries would tackle cars in a later round of
negotiations expected to start next April.
Autos are the biggest source of the $67 billion U.S. trade deal, and
Trump has frequently complained that U.S. automakers do not enjoy equal access
to Japan’s market.
Lighthizer said it was not the U.S. intention to impose additional car
tariffs, which would be based on the results of a Commerce Department study
that has found auto imports to threaten national security.
Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who had negotiated the pact
with Lighthizer, said that as long as the agreement was faithfully implemented,
the tariffs would not be applied.
A Japanese government statement also said further talks would seek to
eliminate the existing 2.5% U.S. tariff on Japanese cars and would not result
in the imposition of U.S. import quotas on Japanese autos.
More
Japan auto group says U.S. trade discussions going in direction of avoiding auto tariffs
September 26, 2019
/ 4:50 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - The chairman of the Japan Automobile
Manufacturers Association said on Thursday that trade discussions between the
United States and Japan were going in the direction of avoiding auto tariffs
and that it was good for both countries. Akio Toyoda, also president of Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), was speaking to reporters after U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signed a limited trade deal that staved off the threat of higher duties on Japanese cars exported to the United States.
In other news, a new recession is coming if not already
here, as smart money heads for the bunkers.
‘The most important chart in the world’ has one market bull unloading his stocks
By Shawn
Langlois Published: Sept 25, 2019
10:57 a.m. ET
Looking for reasons to bail on this market? Take your pick: Triple-witching quarterly expiry, shenanigans in the repo markets, mounting geopolitical tensions — those are all factors weighing on the mind of Kevin Muir, market strategist at Toronto-based East West Investment Management.
But the typically bullish investor behind the Macro Tourist blog pointed to this chart Jim Bianco at Bianco Research as the pressing reason he’s getting out of all his long positions in U.S. equities and looking for opportunities on the short side:
----His main worry: The U.S. is too tight for the world economy.
“The country with the world’s reserve currency has the highest policy
rate out there in the developed world,” Muir wrote, pointing to the chart
above. “If we look back over time, this has often coincided with market
crises.”
He said the world should follow the U.S.’s lead and implement
fiscal stimulus and stop relying on monetary madness. “But our job is not to
decide what should be, but calculate what is,” he wrote. “And with the Fed so
tight relative to the rest of the world, eventually it causes problems. Big
ones.”
While he’s unloading stocks and looking to “take stabs on the short
side,” he’s not completely apocalyptic with his view.
“I am not turning into one of those the end-of-the-world-is-upon-us
bears. Yet I think the time to be heavily long is past,” he said. “The next
5%-10% in the stock market is more likely to be down than higher.”
More
Opinion: It pays to prepare now for the end of the bull market
By Mark Hulbert
Published: Sept 25, 2019 3:45 p.m. ET
You might start reducing your exposure to stocks now, even if you think
the bull market has room to run. That’s because stock returns in the last
months of a bull market tend to be mediocre at best. So don’t try to hang on
for that last penny of profit.
I reached these conclusions after analyzing the bull market returns of
the several hundred investment newsletter model portfolios tracked by my
Hulbert Financial Digest. I focused on bull markets since 1990 in the calendar
maintained by Ned Davis Research — with one notable exception, which I will
discuss in a moment.
On average, the newsletters’ return in the last 12 months of those bull
markets was less than half their annualized bull market gains up until then.
And their average annualized return in the last three months of those bull
markets was even lower still. (See chart below.)
----The exception I didn’t include in this calculation was the bull
market that ended at the top of the internet bubble in early 2000. In that
bubble, portfolio returns accelerated rapidly as the bull market neared its
end. Extrapolating from that experience is risky, however, since it was so
different than the pattern emerging from the other bull markets in the Ned
Davis calendar.
The safer bet would be that bull markets gradually fizzle out rather
than end in a bang. (Excepting high-momentum stocks with the best trailing
12-month returns.) That’s why the benefits of hanging on to a bull market’s bitter
end are low, relative to the risks. We gain relatively little even if we’re
right, and can lose big if we fail to get out at the very top.
Speculators in the latter stages of a bull
market can look at the highest-momentum stocks. As the rest of the market is
faltering, momentum stocks are among the few that keep performing, as I
outlined in a recent column. Keep in mind that this approach is quite
risky, since high-momentum stocks tend to be among the biggest casualties when
the market turns.
---- But planning for a bear market is a matter of probabilities rather than an all-or-nothing proposition. While conceding that it’s difficult to predict recessions, we can also acknowledge that recession risks are higher at some times than at others.
Now would certainly appear to be one such time. Just take the inverted yield curve, which is one of the economic profession’s leading indicators of increased recession risk. Consider a famous econometric model based on the yield curve that was constructed two decades ago by Arturo Estrella, currently an economics professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic and, from 1996 through 2008, senior vice-president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Research and Statistics Group, and Frederic Mishkin, a Columbia University professor who was a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2008.
According to their model, the current yield curve inversion translates into between a 30% and 40% risk of a recession in the next 12 months. That is double where the odds stood at the end of last year.
more
Finally, there goes Trump’s trade war win. Amazon will
soon turn every online American into an importer!!!
Amazon buys cloud startup INLT to help merchants import goods
September 25,
2019 / 12:11 AM
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has bought technology startup INLT
for an undisclosed amount, the company told Reuters on Tuesday, in a
transaction that will help merchants on its online marketplace more easily
import goods into the United States.
The firm, with around a dozen employees based in Los Angeles and
Philadelphia, makes software for sellers to manage costs and customs clearance
of cross-border shipments. Seattle-based Amazon said it will offer INLT’s
cloud-based computing technology to its merchants.
“INLT is a smart, nimble team
that is helping companies simplify and lower the cost of importing goods into
the U.S.,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’re excited to work
with them to develop the next generation of solutions for their customers and
Amazon selling partners.”
Amazon is looking
to expand the services it offers merchants to add tools for complicated
cross-border sales processes, which sellers largely needed to manage on their
own.
More
In a bull market your
game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near it’s
end. To do this you must study general conditions and not tips or special
factors affecting individual stocks. Then get out of all your stocks; get out
for keeps!
Jesse
Livermore
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, Tesla again, but as all too often, for all
of the wrong reasons.
Tesla's Musk pushed for SolarCity deal despite major cash crunch: lawsuit
September 23,
2019 / 11:52 PM
(Reuters) -
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief
Executive Elon Musk urged investors to approve the 2016 purchase of SolarCity
at a big premium to its market value despite knowing the solar installer faced
a cash crunch and publicly stating he had recused himself from involvement in
the deal, according to court documents unsealed on Monday.
The filing was part of a lawsuit by Tesla shareholders alleging the
company’s board breached its duties to investors by approving the $2.6 billion
acquisition of the struggling company, which was run by Musk’s first cousins
and of which he was a chairman and the largest stakeholder. The former
SolarCity operations have been a drag on Tesla, with panel installations
slumping since they were acquired.
Defendants asked the Delaware Court of Chancery judge to dismiss the
case before it heads to a trial in March. Shareholder lawsuits that survive a
motion to dismiss often settle before trial, which in this case might involve a
payment to shareholders by Musk as well as money from directors’ insurance.
Tesla rejected the allegations in an emailed statement, saying they were
“based on the claims of plaintiff’s lawyers looking for a payday, and are not
representative of our shareholders who support our mission and ultimately voted
in favor of the acquisition.”
The suit represents another legal headache for Musk, the high-profile
entrepreneur who settled a lawsuit by U.S. securities regulators last year over
his use of Twitter and is being sued by for defamation by a British diver who
said Musk falsely branded him a pedophile. Just last week, a Delaware judge
ruled that Tesla must defend at trial Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package.
According to the filing, Musk was informed at a SolarCity board meeting
in October 2015 that SolarCity needed to raise up to $300 million and was
slashing its solar installation forecast for the year. The company issued $113
million in convertible notes a month later, of which Musk bought $10 million.
By February 2016, SolarCity management told the board its cash balances
were forecast to drop below amounts required for a key line of credit for
several months of the year. A default on that line of credit would trigger
defaults on other debt instruments, the filing said.
Despite the bad news, Musk proposed the acquisition of SolarCity to the
Tesla board later that month after a Lake Tahoe family vacation with his
cousin, SolarCity Chief Executive and founder Lyndon Rive. SolarCity did not
disclose the details of its liquidity concerns to investors.
At a meeting of Tesla’s board on June 20, 2016, Musk advocated to fellow
board members an initial acquisition price of $28.50 per share for SolarCity -
a 30% premium to its market price - even though Tesla’s financial adviser,
Evercore, had recommended $25 to $27 a share.
More
Without
faith in his own judgement no man can go very far in this game.
Jesse Livermore
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?
Graphene is 3D as well as 2D
Date:
September 23, 2019
Source:
Queen Mary University of London
Summary:
Graphene is actually a 3D material as well as a 2D material, according to a new
study.
Graphene is actually a 3D material as well as a 2D material, according
to a new study from Queen Mary University of London.
Realising that it is a 3D material is important for understanding its
mechanical properties and for developing novel graphene-based devices.
Often hailed as a 'wonder material', graphene has the highest known
thermal and electrical conductivity, is stronger than steel, light, flexible
and transparent. Its uses are wide-ranging and recently it has been shown it
could even act as a barrier against mosquito bites.
In this study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters,
the researchers asked two fundamental questions: to what extent is graphene
graphite, and what is the true thickness of graphene?
To their surprise, they found that 2D graphene, which is a flat single
layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure, has many of the same
mechanical properties as 3D graphite, which is a naturally occurring form of
carbon made up from a very weak stack of many layers of graphene.
They show that graphene shares a similar resistance to compression as
graphite and that it is significantly thicker than is widely believed.
If the thickness of a block of graphite 100 layers thick is measured,
the thickness of a single graphene layer is simply the thickness of the
graphene block divided by 100. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider the
thickness of graphene as 0.34 nm.
Dr Yiwei Sun, lead author of the study from Queen Mary University of
London, said: "Graphene owes its thickness to an array of chemical bonds
sticking out above and below the 2D plane of carbon atoms. Hence graphene is
really a 3D material, albeit with a very small thickness.
"By applying conventional 3D theory, which has been used for around
400 years, to 2D materials such as graphene, which have been known for 15
years, we show that similar arguments apply to other so-called 2D materials,
such as boron nitride and molybdenum disulphide. In that sense, 2D materials
are actually all 3D."
Graphene is often called the world's first two-dimensional material. It
was discovered in 2004 by peeling off graphene flakes from bulk graphite (used
in pencil leads and lubricants) using sticky tape.
It is regarded as part of a new class of 2D materials and it is
currently modelled by scientists as a sheet of atoms with very little depth,
hence the name 2D material.
When it
comes to selling stocks, it is plain that nobody can sell unless somebody wants
those stocks.
Jesse Livermore
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August
DJIA: 26,403 +52 Down. NASDAQ: 7,963 +59 Down.
SP500: 2,926 +53 unchanged.
An inconclusive month, but
all three shows signs of weakening.
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