Baltic Dry Index. 1801 +31 Brent
Crude 58.02 Spot Gold 1508
Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 22 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now In Effect.
The USA v EU trade war starts October 18. Just 9 days
away.
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
Between the latest political developments in Washington surrounding
President Trump, a collapse in trust in the trade war between the USA and
China, a new technology war underway between the USA and China, and a new trade
war just 7 days away between the USA and an EUSSR already heading into
recession led by Germany, to this old dinosaur market follower in stocks and
commodities since 1968, it’s bunker time before the bottom falls out in global
stock markets like October 1987.
Add in a growing Brexit fiasco in Europe, a growing
constitutional governance challenge in the UK, and the all too likely collapse
of WeWork in the next few months, generating a global commercial real estate crisis
and a banking crisis, led by New York City and central London, and there’s
absolutely no reason trying to be the last one out of stocks.
Global stock markets are already living on borrowed time,
given the length of this the weakest recovery on record and that’s with dismally
low or negative interest rates. If this isn’t ringing a bell at the top,
nothing is.
Asian stocks swoon on signs of prolonged U.S.-China standoff
October 9, 2019 /
1:41 AM
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Asian stocks fell the most in a week on Wednesday as the United
States and China’s broadening dispute over trade and foreign policy showed
little sign of coming to an end, weighing on global economic growth.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was down 0.44%. Chinese shares .CSI300 fell 0.47% after briefly touching a five-week low. Australian shares were down 0.76%.
The U.S. Treasury yield curve steepened in Asia after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signalled further interest rate cuts and the resumption of bond purchases to address a recent spike in money markets rates.
Oil prices extended declines as U.S. visa restrictions on Chinese officials and the addition of more Chinese companies to a U.S. trade blacklist weighed on already slim hopes that Washington and Beijing could reach a truce at trade negotiations this week.
The United States and China are engaged in a year-long row that has slowly expanded beyond trade policy, suggesting even more damage to an already fragile global economy.
“Stock markets are still trying to price in the slowdown in global growth,” said Kiyoshi Ishigane, chief fund manager at Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co in Tokyo.
“The dispute between the United States and China shows no sign of ending. We’re losing confidence in the U.S. economy. There’s more uncertainty about where the Fed is really headed.”
U.S. stock futures ESc1 rose 0.22% in Asia, but sentiment was weak after the S&P 500 ended 1.56% lower on Tuesday in response to the U.S. visa restrictions.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 slid 0.7%, its biggest decline in a week. Hong Kong shares .HSI fell 0.52%, nearing a four-week low due to persistent worries about often violent protest against China's rule of the former British colony.
Shares fell in Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) suppliers in Greater China, such as Luxshare Precision (002475.SZ) and O-Film Tech (002456.SZ), after China’s state media criticized the iPhone maker for an app use by Hong Kong protesters.
More
Asian markets retreat as trade tensions ratchet back up
By Marketwatch
and Associated
Press Published: Oct 8, 2019 10:52 p.m. ET
Asian markets slipped in early trading Wednesday amid
growing pessimism over U.S.-China trade talks scheduled later this week.Late Monday, the U.S. blacklisted 28 Chinese companies, including artificial-intelligence companies
because of their alleged role in human-rights violations against the Uighur Muslim minority. And Tuesday, the U.S. announced visa restrictions against Chinese officials believed involved in abuses if Uighurs. Bloomberg News also reported the Trump administration may move to cap the flow of U.S. capital into Chinese companies.
In response, China’s Commerce Ministry issued a statement saying the U.S. should “stop interfering” in its internal affairs. “China will also take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard China’s own interests,” a Commerce Ministry spokesperson said, according to CNBC.
“With the recent U.S. trade war escalation headlines . . . it suggests from President Trump’s perspective that at this stage of the election process a trade deal this week, will not offer up a significant enough policy victory that he needs to bolster his polling numbers against the gale-force economic and political headwinds he’s facing stateside,” Stephen Innes, Asia-Pacific market strategist at AxiTrader, wrote in a note. “So, it’s back on the trade-war offensive. Frankly, it’s incredible how my times the markets get sucked back into the trade-war calm only to end up back in trade-war purgatory.”
More
China demands U.S. drop latest blacklist, vows to ‘safeguard’ its interests
Published: Oct 8,
2019 11:50 p.m. ET
BEIJING — China has demanded Washington lift sanctions on Chinese tech
companies and warned it will “resolutely safeguard” the country’s interests.
The Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday criticized curbs imposed on sales
of U.S. technology to a group of Chinese companies as interference in the
country’s affairs. U.S. officials say those companies provide technology used
to repress Muslim minorities as interference in China’s affairs.
The ministry said Beijing will “take all necessary measures to
resolutely safeguard” the country’s interests but gave no details of possible
retaliation.
The measure announced Monday restricts sales of U.S. technology to a
group of Chinese companies working on facial recognition, artificial
intelligence and other advanced products.
U.S. visa move against China casts pall over talks to end trade war
October 8, 2019
/ 4:20 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on
Tuesday imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials for the detention or
abuse of Muslim minorities, angering Beijing, but a U.S. official said
high-level trade talks would still take place on Thursday and Friday as
planned.
The State Department announced the visa plan just a day after the U.S.
Commerce Department cited the mistreatment of Uighur Muslims and other
predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in China in its decision to add 20
Chinese public security bureaus and eight companies to a trade blacklist.
The State Department did not name the Chinese officials affected by the
visa clampdown. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the restrictions
“complement” the Commerce Department’s actions.
China’s embassy in Washington denounced the move as
“made-up pretexts” for interfering in China’s internal affairs. “#Xinjiang affairs are purely China’s internal affairs that allow no foreign interference. We urge the US to correct its mistakes at once and stop its interference in China’s internal affairs,” the embassy said on Twitter.
Major U.S. stock indexes added to losses after the State Department's announcement, with the S&P 500 index .SPX closing down about 1.6%. Investors feared the escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing could doom efforts to get the trade negotiations back on track.
More
SocGen says this is the ‘worst-case scenario’ of U.S. clampdown on capital flows to China
By Sunny
Oh
Published: Oct 8,
2019 2:17 p.m. ET
U.S.-China tensions over international trade have steadily deteriorated
in the past couple of years, with the latest headlines pointing to fresh
efforts to decouple the two largest economies in the world.
The latest concern is talk of capping the flow of U.S. capital into
Chinese companies which comes at a precarious time for investors who are
banking on the success of trade negotiations this week in Washington D.C.
Société Générale analysts say continued discussions of measures to limit
U.S. investments in China could upend the impressive performance of its onshore
stock-market this year.
“Broadly speaking, we can define three stages in the rising economic
tensions between the two
countries,” Société Générale argued in a note Tuesday.
“The first stage started with the tariffs dispute and is ongoing. The second
stage extends the conflict to China investment to the US (CFIUS) and export
controls (through the Export Control Act and the Entity List). The third stage
might involve restrictions on US capital funding Chinese firms. It has not
started but that is a risk that we have advised to hedge,” they said.
It’s the third step that represents the “worst-case scenario” for
Chinese equities, said the Société Générale analysts, adding that such measures
could include preventing U.S.-based stock index providers from putting Chinese
stocks in benchmarks pegged to trillions of dollars of assets.
Still, they still favored keeping Chinese stocks in portfolios if only
because legal difficulties and recent denials by the U.S. of plans to delist
Chinese companies had made more draconian measures to curtail U.S. capital
flows unlikely to take place.
----But in the event of a broader “assault,” analysts at the French bank say it could undermine the case for holding Chinese equities for three reasons:
One, Chinese efforts to lower debt levels in the economy depend on a
backdrop of rising domestic equity values. Policies to allow private investors
to take stakes in state-controlled companies will only see uptake if they
anticipate values of their investments rising.
“If debt/equity ratios cannot be curbed by raising the denominator, the
overall debt de-leveraging process will become more painful,” they said.
Further attempts to prevent U.S. and overseas investors from accessing
Chinese capital markets could raise the risk premium of the country’s equities,
which has gradually shrunk in recent years as its stock markets become more
accessible. The risk premium denotes how much investors demand in additional
returns for holding stocks over risk-free assets like bonds.
More
A politicised, left wing, UK Supreme Court:
"repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional
values."
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
No crooks or scoundrels today, though both the UK
Parliament, and the US Congress are sitting, today an update and some advice on
the coming northern hemisphere flu season.
Flu season could be especially bad this year, doctors say. Here are 5 things to know
October 07, 2019 08:18 AM, Updated October
07, 2019 12:22 PM
A rough flu season just wrapping up in Australia could mean a worse one in the United States, where flu season is just starting, The New York Times reports.
“It’s too early to tell for sure, because sometimes Australia is predictive and sometimes it’s not,” said Dr. Daniel B. Jernigan, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But the best move is to get the vaccine right now.”
In 2018-2019, the U.S. flu season ran from October through May, NBC News reported. As many as 43 million people caught the flu, and up to 61,000 died.
Here’s what you need to know.
Flu seasons in the Southern Hemisphere, where winter just ended, can sometimes help predict the oncoming U.S. flu season, NBC News reported.
In Australia, which counts flu deaths differently than the United States and has a much smaller population, 662 people have died of the flu, The New York Times reported.
Hospitalizations and nursing home outbreaks “were at moderate to high levels,” said Ian Barr, of a World Health Organization research center on influenza, according to the publication.
The flu season began two months early in Australia, NBC News reported, dominated by a particularly virulent strain dubbed H3N2.
Cases of the flu in the United States remain low, according to the latest update by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But a 4-year-old boy with underlying health issues has already died of flu-related illness in California, the Riverside University Health System reported.
“We should never forget that the flu still kills,” said Dr. Cameron Kaiser, a public health officer for Riverside County. “A death so early in the flu season suggests this year may be worse than usual.”
Children, older adults, pregnant women, anyone with a chronic health problem and healthcare workers are especially vulnerable to both the flu and potential complications, like pneumonia, WebMD says.
People with asthma, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and a compromised immune system due to cancer, HIV, or other conditions are among those also at risk, according to the site.
Do I need a flu vaccine?
Doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest getting a flu vaccination before the end of October.“The concern with delaying it is that some people who might have the opportunity to get vaccinated now may not have that opportunity later,” said Dr. Robert Atmar, an infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, NBC News reported.
“The most important thing is for people to get their flu vaccine, and get it before the epidemic starts,” he said, according to the network. Even if the vaccine doesn’t prevent the flu, it can reduce the severity if you do catch it.
more
Frequently Asked Influenza (Flu) Questions: 2019-2020 Season
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?
Bacteria trapped -- and terminated -- by graphene filter
Laser-induced graphene to remove pathogens from the air
Date:
October 7, 2019
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Chemists transform their laser-induced graphene into an air filter that not
only traps pathogens but also kills them with a small blast of electricity.
Airborne bacteria may see what looks like a comfy shag carpet on which
to settle. But it's a trap.
Rice University scientists have transformed their laser-induced graphene
(LIG) into self-sterilizing filters that grab pathogens out of the air and kill
them with small pulses of electricity.
The flexible filter developed by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour may
be of special interest to hospitals. According to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, patients have a 1-in-31 chance of acquiring a
potentially antibiotic-resistant infection during hospitalization.
The device described in the American Chemical Society journal ACS
Nano captures bacteria, fungi, spores, prions, endotoxins and other
biological contaminants carried by droplets, aerosols and particulate matter.
The filter then prevents the microbes and other contaminants from
proliferating by periodically heating up to 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees
Fahrenheit), enough to obliterate pathogens and their toxic byproducts. The
filter requires little power, and heats and cools within seconds.
LIG is a conductive foam of pure, atomically thin carbon sheets
synthesized through heating the surface of a common polyimide sheet with an
industrial laser cutter. The process discovered by Tour's lab in 2014 has led
to a range of applications for electronics, triboelectric nanogenerators,
electrocatalysis, water filtration and even art.
Adapting it for use as a filter meant laser-building graphene into both
sides of the polyimide, leaving a fine, three-dimensional lattice of the
polymer to reinforce the graphene foam. Laser-building at different
temperatures resulted in a thick forest of graphene fibers with smaller,
interconnected sheets underneath.
Like all pure graphene, the foam conducts electricity. When electrified,
Joule heating raises the filter's temperature above 300 C, enough to not only
kill trapped pathogens but also to decompose toxic byproducts that can feed new
microorganisms and activate the human immune system.
The researchers suggested a single, custom-fit LIG filter could be
efficient enough to replace the two filter beds currently required by federal
standards for hospital ventilation systems.
More
"We shouldn't pour cold water on everything. We, the eight or nine players in global investment banking, have a very good future."
Deutsche Bank, CEO Josef Ackermann. Davos, January 2007.
Well anyone can be wrong, especially when talking up one's book.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September
DJIA: 26,917 +57 Up. NASDAQ: 7,999 +62 Up. SP500: 2,977 +61 Up.
Another inconclusive month,
but all three moved up weakly. I would not rely on nor take such a weak buy
signal.
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