Baltic Dry Index. 1916 -8 Brent
Crude 58.90 Spot Gold 1494
Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 16 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now In Effect.
The USA v EU trade war starts October 18. Just 3 days
away.
"From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation."
Henry Hazlitt
Friday’s US v China trade deal “lite,” was Monday’s worry
that there wasn’t really a trade deal at all. Equally bad, China shows yet more
sign of a slowing economy, while the African swine fever epidemic is causing
inflation, especially food price inflation to soar.
Worse, the Fed chose Friday’s trade deal news as cover to
bury the bad news it’s starting QE4.
Just don’t call it QE4, according to the Fed. Alright, I’ll call it monetization,
but what has gone so badly wrong in the US financial system? Who or what has
blown up or is on the verge of blowing up. WeWork-JPM-SoftBank? God forbid
that.
Below, more and more reasons to exit the markets for the
relative safety of cash and precious metals. Don’t panic now, but that new USA
v EUSSR trade war is just 3 days away. Americans better stock up on French wine
and scotch whisky now for Christmas.
“The
world is a place that’s gone from being flat to round to crooked.”
Mad
Magazine.
Asian markets mixed as doubts emerge over trade deal
By Marketwatch
and Associated
Press Published: Oct 14, 2019 10:39
p.m. ET
Asian markets were mixed in early trading Tuesday, as
investors grew wary as they waited for more details about last week’s agreement
for a partial trade deal between the U.S. and China.Doubts emerged Monday amid reports that Chinese officials wanted more talks before signing the so-called “phase one" deal. U.S. tariff hikes on about $160 billion in Chinese goods, scheduled to take effect in December, are apparently still on track, although tariff hikes on $250 billion of Chinese goods that were to take effect this week were postponed. A more comprehensive trade deal will come in three phases, President Donald Trump said, with the mode divisive issues to be tackled at a later date.
More
Gold ends higher as the Fed announced the start of a ‘massive’ bond buying program
By Myra P.
Saefong Published: Oct 14, 2019 2:07
p.m. ET
Gold futures rose Monday to post their first gain in three
sessions, finding support as the so-called “phase one” of the U.S.-China trade
deal reportedly hit a snag and after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced last
week that it will start expanding its balance sheet next week.“The focus on Friday was on the China-U.S. trade deal, which appears to be in limbo pending further talks,” Peter Spina, president and chief executive of GoldSeek.com, told MarketWatch.
Wariness over the strength of an agreement hammered out between the U.S. and China last week was growing on Monday after a report that Beijing will insist on more talks with the U.S. before signing any such deal.
As big as the trade talks news was on Friday, it was “a giant distraction from the real news,” said Spina. “In a very quiet and sneaky way, the Federal Reserve announced the start of a massive bond buying program.”
The Fed, in a surprise announcement, set in motion a plan Friday to ease unexpected strains seen in short-term money markets last month.
Read more: Fed says it will start to buy Treasury bills next week to ease money-market pressure
---- Despite the size of the bond buying program, “the Fed does not wish for us to refer to it as quantitative easing or QE4,” said Spina. “Yet, this is exactly what the Fed is doing but due to the timing and enormity of the program.”
“I believe fund managers and investors are going to have time...this
week to digest this very secretive-like news from the Fed on this massive debt
monetization scheme,” said Spina, noting that he does not see gold falling
below $1,450, “where excellent support exists and instead, gold should be
working through this consolidation phase which will take it to record levels in
the coming several months.”
More
China's factory prices post steepest fall in three years
October 15, 2019
/ 3:10 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s factory gate prices declined at the fastest
pace in more than three years in September, reinforcing the case for Beijing to
unveil further stimulus as manufacturing cools on weak demand and U.S. trade
pressures.
September’s producer price index (PPI), considered a key barometer for
corporate profitability, dropped 1.2% year-on-year, National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS) data showed on Tuesday. It marked the steepest factory price
decline since July 2016 but matched forecasts in a Reuters survey of analysts.
The grim outlook is unlikely to change even as tensions in the year-long
trade war between Beijing and Washington have eased somewhat. U.S. President
Donald Trump said on Friday the two sides had reached agreement on the first phase
of a deal and suspended a tariff hike, but officials said much work still
needed to be done.
Some analysts expect China’s overall GDP growth rate to slip below the
government’s 6.0%-6.5% target range this year.
Trade data released on Monday showed contractions in both exports and
imports as U.S. tariffs implemented on Sept. 1 came into effect, underscoring
the continued impact of the bilateral dispute.
China has taken a cautious approach in dealing with the slowing economy.
Stimulus to date has largely avoided dramatic increases in government spending
and the central bank has also mainly used the reserve requirement ratio for
banks instead of sweeping interest rate cuts.
Chinese central bank governor Yi Gang said late in September there was
no urgent need to implement large interest rate cuts following Beijing’s
reiteration that it would not use “flood-like” stimulus measures.
More
China auto sales fall in 'Golden September' as turnaround hopes fade
October 14, 2019 /
8:07 AM
BEIJING/SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - Auto sales in China fell for a 15th consecutive month in September,
data from its biggest auto industry association showed, dampening hopes for a second-half
turnaround in the world’s largest auto market.
Total auto sales fell 5.2% from the same month a year earlier to 2.27
million vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said
on Monday.
This followed declines of 6.9% in August and 4.3% in July. Car sales in
2018 declined from a year earlier, the first annual contraction since the 1990s
against a backdrop of slowing economic growth and a crippling trade war with
the United States.
September and October, known as “Golden September, Silver October” by
China’s auto insiders, are regarded as the high season for sales, with
customers traditionally returning to make purchases after the summer.
The association had previously said it expected sales in the second half
to improve, but that overall annual sales would fall 5% year-on-year to 26.68
million vehicles in 2019.
“Sales have risen in the second
half but they have not hit expectations and the pace has been slow,” said Chen
Shihua, CAAM assistant secretary-general.
“Competition has become fiercer,” said senior CAAM official Xu Haidong,
adding that independent Chinese brands, rather than joint venture ones, were
bearing the brunt of the sales slide.
---- Fifteen
cities and provinces, which account for more than 60% of car sales in China,
implemented new vehicle emission standards earlier than the central
government’s 2020 deadline, damaging sales of traditional-fuel vehicles in
particular, according to CAAM, analysts, dealers and consumers.
Sales of new energy vehicles (NEV), which China has been a keen
supporter of, have also been impacted by subsidy cuts, falling 34.2% in
September following a 15.8% decline in August, CAAM said. NEV sales had jumped
almost 62% last year as the broader auto market contracted.
NEVs include plug-in hybrids, battery-only electric vehicles and those
powered by hydrogen fuel cells. CAAM has said it expects sales of new energy
vehicles to increase this year, but at a slower pace to 1.5 million, down from
a previous forecast of 1.6 million.
The impact of the subsidy cuts on the NEV sector was set to linger, Chen
said. “I feel that there will be difficulties in reaching the target in the
following three months,” he said.
Oil prices extend losses as weak China data compounds U.S.-China trade deal doubts
October 15, 2019
/ 3:14 AM
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices dropped again on Tuesday after falling
heavily in the previous session, as weak Chinese economic data for September
added to lingering concerns about the feasibility of the U.S.-China trade deal
announced by President Trump late last week.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 fell 30 cents, or 0.5%, to $59.067 barrel by
0142 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 was at
$53.38 a barrel, down 21 cents or 0.4%.
“China’s exports and imports shrunk more than expected in September, as
ongoing tariffs and a slowdown in global trade undercut demand,” analysts at
ANZ bank wrote in a research note.
Doubts over the agreement between Washington and Beijing, designed to
end a brutal trade war between the world’s top two economies, also kept
sentiment weak, ANZ said. The U.S.-China dispute has cast a shadow on global
economic growth prospects, and left questionmarks over future oil demand.
A slide in China’s exports picked up pace in September, while imports
contracted for a fifth straight month, pointing to further weakness in the
economy and underlining the need for more stimulus as the U.S.-China trade war
drags on.
The impact was enough to outweigh any support that prices might have
received from geopolitical tensions surrounding the Middle East.
On Monday President Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey demanded the NATO
ally stop a military incursion in northeast Syria that is rapidly reshaping the
battlefield of the world’s deadliest ongoing war.
China consumer inflation hits nearly 6-year high
By MarketWatch
Published: Oct 14, 2019 10:51 p.m. ET
BEIJING--Rising pork prices pushed China's consumer inflation to its
highest level in nearly six years in September, official data showed Tuesday.
The consumer price index rose 3% in September from a year earlier
compared with the 2.8% expansion recorded August, the National Bureau of
Statistics said. The key inflation reading topped a median forecast for 2.9%
growth from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
The government aims to keep consumer inflation under roughly 3% for
2019. In the first nine months of the year China's CPI rose 2.5% from the same
period a year earlier, the data showed.
Food prices in September surged 11.2% on year to set the strongest pace
in nearly eight years and extend August's 10.0% gain.
Pork prices jumped 69.3% on year compared with the previous month's
46.7% rise, lifting the headline index up by 1.65 percentage points. Prices of
fresh vegetables dropped 11.8% in September following a 0.8% drop in August.
Nonfood prices climbed 1.0% over the period, moderating slightly from a
1.1% increase previously.
More
“It’s a good idea to save your money. One day it might be
worth something again.”
Mad Magazine.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, more skepticism of President Trump’s claim that China has agreed to buy 50 billion dollars
of USA farm products. Even if China has
agreed to try, many sceptics think reaching such a target will take a few
years.
Trump's hailing of $50 billion in Chinese farm purchases seen as 'meaningless'
October 14, 2019 /
8:49 AM
BEIJING
(Reuters) - China is still a long way from forking out $50 billion for farm
goods from the United States, agriculture industry analysts said on Monday,
cautioning that getting there is contingent on removing substantial technical
and political hurdles.
Outlining the first phase of a deal to end a trade war with China, U.S.
President Donald Trump on Friday lauded his counterparts for agreeing to make
purchases of $40 billion to $50 billion in U.S. agricultural goods.
That would be double the $24 billion China spent on American farm goods
in 2017.
But Darin Friedrichs, senior Asia commodity analyst at brokerage INTL
FCStone in Shanghai, threw cold water on the pledge.
“I think it’s a meaningless big number, thrown out to get headlines, and
won’t happen,” Friedrichs told Reuters
Boosting purchases so substantially will depend on further progress on
other, more thorny, issues still to be dealt with in the talks, said Friedrichs
and others.
“It’s probably still dependent on a larger deal going through,” said
Tobin Gorey, director of Agri Commodities Strategy at Commonwealth Bank in
Sydney.
---- U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has said the agriculture purchases would be scaled up annually.
But even with a breakthrough on bigger issues, scaling up farm imports to that level is a “big, big ask”, said Ole Houe, director of advisory services at brokerage IKON Commodities in Sydney.
‘MARKET UNCERTAIN’
Soybeans made up more than half of China’s agriculture purchases from the United States in 2017, at about $13 billion. Bringing in significantly larger amounts of the oilseed will be difficult with African swine fever curbing soymeal demand in China, said Houe.Substantially larger soy imports from the United States would also mean reduced purchases from other producers such as Brazil, where Chinese firms have invested heavily in recent years to accelerate Brazilian soybean shipments.
---- Imports of other products, ranging from corn to pork and beef, have always been much smaller than soybean sales, impacted by what the United States refers to as non-tariff barriers.
To boost imports of U.S. beef, China would need to lift its ban on
hormones and drug residues in meat, allowing for similar trading conditions as
those prevailing in Japan and South Korea, said Joel Haggard, Asia president of
the U.S. Meat Export Federation.
That could see it export more than $1 billion in beef to China, he said,
or ten times the current level, but it could take a year or two to ramp up
those supplies.
Other China-based market watchers were cautious about expecting any
notable increase in purchases beyond soybeans until a broader trade deal is
finalized.
More
"It's strange that men should take up crime when there are
so many legal ways to be dishonest. “
Al
Capone.
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?
Creating 2D heterostructures for future electronics
New research integrates borophene and graphene into heterostructures
Date:
October 11, 2019
Source:
Northwestern University
Summary:
New research integrates nanomaterials into heterostructures, an important step
toward creating nanoelectronics.
Nanomaterials could provide the basis of many emerging technologies,
including extremely tiny, flexible, and transparent electronics.
While many nanomaterials exhibit promising electronic properties,
scientists and engineers are still working to best integrate these materials
together to eventually create semiconductors and circuits with them.
Northwestern Engineering researchers have created two-dimensional (2D)
heterostructures from two of these materials, graphene and borophene, taking an
important step toward creating intergrated circuits from these nanomaterials.
"If you were to crack open an integrated circuit inside a
smartphone, you'd see many different materials integrated together," said
Mark Hersam, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering,
who led the research. "However, we've reached the limits of many of those
traditional materials. By integrating nanomaterials like borophene and graphene
together, we are opening up new possibilities in nanoelectronics."
Supported by the Office for Naval Research and the National Science
Foundation, the results were published October 11 in the journal Science
Advances. In addition to Hersam, applied physics PhD student Xiaolong Liu
co-authored this work.
Creating a new kind of heterostructure
Any integrated circuit contains many materials that perform different
functions, like conducting electricity or keeping components electrically
isolated. But while transistors within circuits have become smaller and smaller
-- thanks to advances in materials and manufacturing -- they are close to
reaching the limit of how small they can get.
Ultrathin 2D materials like graphene have the potential to bypass that
problem, but integrating 2D materials together is difficult. These materials
are only one atom thick, so if the two materials' atoms do not line up
perfectly, the integration is unlikely to be successful. Unfortunately, most 2D
materials do not match up at the atomic scale, presenting challenges for 2D
integrated circuits.
Borophene, the 2D version of boron that Hersam and coworkers first
synthesized in 2015, is polymorphic, meaning it can take on many different
structures and adapt itself to its environment. That makes it an ideal
candidate to combine with other 2D materials, like graphene.
To test whether it was possible to integrate the two materials into a
single heterostructure, Hersam's lab grew both graphene and borophene on the
same substrate. They grew the graphene first, since it grows at a higher
temperature, then deposited boron on the same substrate and let it grow in
regions where there was no graphene. This process resulted in lateral
interfaces where, because of borophene's accommodating nature, the two
materials stitched together at the atomic scale.
Measuring electronic transitions
The lab characterized the 2D heterostructure using a scanning tunneling
microscope and found that the electronic transition across the interface was
exceptionally abrupt -- which means it could be ideal for creating tiny
electronic devices.
"These results suggest that we can create ultrahigh density devices
down the road," Hersam said. Ultimately, Hersam hopes to achieve
increasingly complex 2D structures that lead to novel electronic devices and
circuits. He and his team are working on creating additional heterostructures
with borophene, combining it with an increasing number of the hundreds of known
2D materials.
"In the last 20 years, new materials have enabled miniaturization
and correspondingly improved performance in transistor technology," he
said. "Two-dimensional materials have the potential to make the next
leap."
“I
think we agree, the past is over.”
President
George W. Bush.
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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