Baltic Dry Index. 1806 -40 Brent
Crude 59.42 Spot Gold 1490
Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 8 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.
“When
the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long
as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”
Chuck
Prince, Citigroup CEO July 2007.
While Brexit took one step forwards and two steps backwards in the UK Parliament
yesterday, and Canada’s new government will still be led by the colourful Justin
Trudeau, albeit relying for support of a
far left political party, the big news yesterday was the US technology sector
joining manufacturing in recession, China continuing to slow, but looking to
switch horses in Hong Kong, and Japan’s SoftBank Group stepping in to rescue
flawed WeWork.
To this old dinosaur market follower, SoftBank must be
going soft in the head. The WeWork model is the 737 Max of the co-working
commercial real estate sector, why bail them out rather than restructure after
bankruptcy?
Below, there may be trouble ahead. Cue Mr. Astaire and Ms.
Rogers.
Asia shares slip on Brexit snag, Texas Instruments' revenue woes
October 23, 2019 /
2:06 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
U.S. stock futures and Asian shares slipped on Wednesday as revenue warnings
from Texas Instruments raised worries about the global tech sector and after
British lawmakers forced the government to hit the pause button on the latest
Brexit deal.
&P500 mini futures ESc1 dropped 0.3% while Japan's Nikkei .N225 last stood almost flat after having fallen as much as 0.4%. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.5%.
On Tuesday on Wall Street, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.36%.
After the bell, Texas Instruments (TXN.O), whose broad lineup of products makes it a proxy for the global chip industry, forecast current-quarter revenue to fall 10 to 17% from a year earlier, well below estimates.
Texas Instruments shares tumbled 9.8% in after-hour trade, driving down other chipmaker shares including Intel (INTC.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O).
Worries that the global microchip industry is being squeezed by a downturn in demand and a prolonged U.S.-China trade dispute sent some Asian chip-related shares lower.
Taiwan’s TSMC (2330.TW) fell 0.2% while South Korea’s SK Hynix (000660.KS) shed 0.7% and Japan’s Tokyo Electron (8035.T) slumped 3.7%.
“Given recent rally in semi-conductor shares, some adjustments will be inevitable,” said Nobuhiko Kuramochi, chief strategist at Mizuho Securities.
“But our investor survey has shown that many investors are still cautious on the sector so a bit of weakness in the industry would surprise few of them,” he added.
In the currency market, sterling dipped 0.15% to $1.2851 GBP=D4, falling further from five-month highs of $1.3012 set on Monday
But the currency still kept hefty gains made over the past fortnight on growing expectations that a no-deal Brexit will be avoided even though it is still not clear how the process will unravel.
More
Opinion: Texas Instruments tanks the chip sector and investors’ hopes for a rebound
Published: Oct 22,
2019 9:50 p.m. ET
The recent run-up in semiconductor stocks hit a speed bump
Tuesday afternoon that could turn into much more.Texas Instruments Inc. TXN, -1.80% gave a forecast that was much worse than expected in a Tuesday earnings report, with a new revenue estimate range that fell as much as a half-billion dollars lower than Wall Street’s consensus revenue estimate. That was not welcome news for investors, who have sent chip stocks higher in recent months on hopes that a downturn for the semiconductor industry would hit its nadir in third-quarter results and start turning around in the final three months of the year.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index SOX, -0.77% is up nearly 40% this year, continuing a roller-coaster ride as the semiconductor downturn has persisted. The index has especially surged in the past quarter, adding 6.3% as the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.36% has gained just 1% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.15% has declined 1.2%.
Shares of TI tumbled nearly 10% in after-hours trading Tuesday, and other semi stocks fell as well, as TI executives blamed broad-based weakness among its customers, plus ongoing trade issues. In addition, the stocks of Intel Corp. INTC, -0.23% and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, -1.62% lost 1.6%, Nvidia Corp. NVDA, -0.20% fell 2.1% and Xilinx Inc. XLNX, +0.97% sank 1.7% in the after-hours trading session Tuesday.
When analysts tried to get more specific information from the company about what exactly was causing the shortfall, TI executives responded in rather vague generalities while refusing to call a bottom to the downturn.
“It
is due to macro events, and specifically, the trade tensions, and if you think
about when there’s tensions in trade and obstacles to trade, what do businesses
do? They become more cautious and they pull back, and we are at the very end of
a long supply chain,” TI Chief Financial Officer Rafael Lizardi told analysts.
“This thing we’ve been in, it [has been] for four quarters and it’s going to be
longer than that.”
----
If TI is an example, investors may have to let go of the notion of a near-term
recovery, as this
column has warned since a second-half rebound was originally suggested.
Combined with disappointments from IBM
Corp. IBM, +1.04%
and Netflix
Inc. NFLX, -4.09%
last week, tech’s earnings season has gotten off to a rocky start, and
all eyes now move to Xilinx and Intel as they prepare to give more info on the
chip sector later this week.
China working on plans to replace Hong Kong's leader: report
By
Mike
Murphy
Published: Oct 22, 2019 10:32 p.m.
ET
China
is preparing plans to replace embattled Hong Kong administrator Carrie Lam, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Lam's government has
faced months of protests and massive demonstrations calling for democratic
reforms and her resignation. The FT said Lam's replacement could be installed
by March and serve out the rest of her five-year term, until 2022. Chinese
officials don't want to be seen as caving to protesters, so they are waiting
for the situation to stabilize before making the change, the report said.
Things aren’t looking great for China’s economy and it may only be getting worse
By Elisabeth Buchwald Published: Oct 21, 2019 1:53 p.m. ET
If you thought China’s 6%
growth rate for this year’s third quarter — which indicates that the
country is growing at its slowest pace in nearly 30 years — was bad, brace for
worse.The International Monetary Fund predicts that the Chinese gross domestic product will grow at a rate of 5.8% in 2020, according to its World Economic Outlook published over the weekend. Six months ago, the IMF had forecast a growth rate of 6.1%.
The downward revision was triggered by “the effects of escalating
tariffs and weakening external demand,” which have “exacerbated the slowdown associated
with needed regulatory strengthening to rein in the accumulation of debt,” the
report states.
Among economists, there appears to be a disagreement over which effect
is making a greater contribution to the country’s dismal growth prospects.
Jennifer Lee, senior economist and director of economic research at BMO
Capital Markets, believes that the trade war is to blame.
“China is still reliant on trade, even though exports as the share of
the economy has declined,” she said. “The tariffs that the U.S. has imposed on
China’s goods that cross over the Pacific are hurting those industries.”
On top of which, retaliatory tariffs China has placed on American goods
such as pork and soybeans have curbed Chinese demand, Lee said.
Unlike Lee, Louis Kuijs, chief Asia economist at Oxford Economics, said
the trade war is just one side of the coin.
“China’s economy has been impacted by serious headwinds, especially
stemming from slower global trade, the U.S.-China trade war and the effect that
has on the appetite to invest.”
Kuijs said that the service and consumption sector has “been the most
robust in relative terms, in the sense that growth there has slowed down less
than elsewhere in the economy.” The latest figures indicate that the retail
sector in China for the first three quarters of the year increased by 8.2%
compared to last year.
“But, in part because household consumption is still a modest share of
GDP” around 38%, he said, “this relative resilience has not been enough to
fully offset the headwinds, which is why overall growth has slowed.”
More
Finally, WeWork gets a lifeline
from SoftBank Group. But how will its flawed business model survive the coming
recession? According to Reuters, SoftBank has now sunk 13 billion into the
company with an iffy value of 8 billion and a business model staring failure in
the face when the next recession hits. Call me old fashioned, but aren’t
companies supposed to make money for their owners rather than perpetual losses?
SoftBank Unveils $9.5 Billion WeWork Rescue, Gets 80% Stake
By Pavel Alpeyev, Gillian Tan,Michelle Davis, and Ellen Huet
Updated on October 23, 2019, 4:39 AM GMT+1
·
·
Rescue caps one of the most dramatic business
disasters ever
WeWork announced on Wednesday it has accepted a rescue package from SoftBank Group Corp., its largest investor, that will give the Japanese conglomerate an 80% stake in the company.
The deal marks the end of an era for the troubled co-working giant, which raised money at a $47 billion valuation in January, pulled out of a botched initial public offering attempt last month and is now valued at less than $8 billion in the bailout.
More
SoftBank shares fall as WeWork deal adds to financial strains
October 23, 2019 /
1:57 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
Shares of SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) fell 3% in morning trade on Wednesday
as the tech conglomerate agreed to spend more than $10 billion to take over
beleaguered office-space sharing startup WeWork, adding to its financial
pressures.
The deal, structured to give SoftBank an 80% stake in - but not control of - WeWork, takes its total investment to more than $13 billion, with the money-losing startup now valued at just $8 billion.
SoftBank’s shares have fallen 30% from their July peak as investor scepticism grows over the path to profitability for its cash-burning marquee investments like WeWork and publicly listed Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N).
The deal adds to the financial strains at the highly leveraged group, which is structured to avoid having to consolidate WeWork on its books or take responsibility for WeWork’s onerous lease obligations.
Although SoftBank has an army of retail investors in yield-strapped Japan willing to buy its junk bonds, it already holds about 5 trillion yen ($46 billion) of net debt on its balance sheet - more than half its 9 trillion yen market capitalization.
The cost of default protection on SoftBank Group has risen, with the 5-year credit default swap SFTB5YJPAC=R jumping 17.7 points in a week to the highest level since January.
The disarray at WeWork, which is scrambling for cash following a flopped IPO attempt, comes as SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son struggles to raise money for a successor to his $100 billion Vision Fund, sources told Reuters this month.
Son has often spoken of his strategy of betting on ambitious founders, who will use SoftBank’s generous cash injections to push for rapid growth - an approach that come under scrutiny from sceptical investors.
At WeWork, SoftBank has acted to remove co-founder and face of the company Adam Neumann, first as chief executive and now from the board of WeWork’s parent, following the botched IPO and concerns over corporate governance.
SoftBank’s chief operating officer, Marcelo Claure, will become WeWork’s executive chairman, adding to his hodgepodge of roles including heading a $5 billion Latin America-focused fund and getting the tie-up between Sprint Corp (S.N) and T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) through regulators.
WeWork is “a searing indictment of SoftBank’s valuation and screening methodology, which needs to shift towards being based on fundamentals,” independent analyst Richard Windsor wrote in a blog post.
SoftBank, which argues its valuation methods are based on standard industry practice, faces chunky writedowns on many of its tech bets when it reports second-quarter earnings next month.
More
When the next recession hits,
SoftBank, I suspect, will be putting on their Top Hat and Flying Down to Rio to
disappear. Cue Mr. Astaire and Ms. Rogers. Does anyone remember those lovable
old rogues at aptly named Drexel Burnham?
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, bad news for global banking. In the next downturn, which might be
happening right now, more than half the world’s banks probably won’t survive.
Better tell the Fed to scale up it’s monetising repos by a factor of ten! But
is even that enough?
Half the World’s Banks Are Too Weak to Survive a Downturn, McKinsey Says
By Hannah Levitt
October 22, 2019, 12:01 AM GMT+1
More than half of the world’s banks are too weak to survive a downturn, according
to a survey from consultancy McKinsey & Co.
A majority of banks globally may not be economically viable because
their returns on equity aren’t keeping pace with costs, McKinsey said in its
annual review of the industry released Monday. It urged firms to take steps
such as developing technology, farming out operations and bulking up through
mergers ahead of a potential economic slowdown.
The decade since the global financial crisis has seen a wave of innovation in financial services, bringing new competitors from fintech startups to giants like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Banks have pondered whether to compete with, partner with or acquire some of these newcomers. Some established firms have sought to rebrand as technology companies, in part to attract hard-to-get talent.
McKinsey,
whose clients are some of the biggest corporations in the world, consults on
topics ranging from strategy and technology to mergers
& acquisitions, outsourcing and stock offerings. In its
report, the firm said banks risk “becoming footnotes to history” as new
entrants change consumer behavior. Most recent attempts by banks to boost
efficiency have been “business-as-usual,” it said.
Banks allocate just 35% of their information-technology budgets to
innovation, while fintechs spend more than 70%, McKinsey said. Combined with
regulatory factors lowering the barrier to entry -- like open banking and
looser requirements for startups -- the environment is increasingly conducive
for newer firms to take share from banks.
The report points to Amazon.com Inc. in the U.S. and Ping An in China as
examples of technology firms that are capturing financial-services customers.
To make matters worse for the old guard, the new players tend to go after the
business areas that create the highest returns at banks -- credit cards, for
example.
---- Another way to free up money: get bigger. BB&T
Corp. and SunTrust Banks Inc. said as much when they announced their decision
to combine earlier this year -- the biggest U.S. bank merger since the
financial crisis. Rajgopal said he expects M&A to continue in the late
cycle.
“Going
forward, scale will likely matter even more as banks head into an arms race on
technology,” the report says.
"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.
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?
Resin-infused metal foam may make for better airplane wings
Ben Coxworth
October 21, 2019
Scientists at North Carolina State
University have already had success using composite metal foams (CMFs) to stop
bullets and block
radiation. Now, they've determined that a new one should also outperform
aluminum when used in the construction of aircraft wings.
CMFs typically consist of hollow spheres made of one type of metal,
contained within a solid matrix composed of either the same or a
different metal. One of their biggest selling features is that they tend to be
lighter than conventional solid metals, while offering comparable strength.
Developed by a team led by Prof. Afsaneh Rabiei, the new material is
known as an infused CMF.
It's based around a steel-steel CMF, meaning that both the hollow
spheres and the matrix are made of stainless steel. Utilizing a vacuum process,
however, a hydrophobic (water-repelling) epoxy resin is pulled into the
material – as a result, the resin fills the inside of the spheres, along with
about 88 percent of the smaller pores within the matrix material.
The scientists tested the infused CMF alongside traditional aerospace
aluminum, to see how both materials would fare when used on the leading edge of
an aircraft wing. It was found that the CMF performed better, in three specific
areas.
First of all, it was superior at causing water to bead up and roll off,
as opposed to clinging in place. Technically-speaking, its contact angle was
130 percent higher than that of the aluminum – the lower a material's
contact angle, the greater the amount of water that clings to its surface.
Secondly, when insects were blasted against both materials, less of
their residue accumulated on the CMF. Numbers-wise, there was 60 percent less
residue as measured by height of accumulation, and 30 percent less according to
area covered.
Finally, although both materials were made rougher when subjected to grit blast tests, the CMF still came out on top, showing less degradation.
"Our results suggest that infused CMF may be a valuable replacement [for aluminum], offering better performance at the same weight," says Rabiei. "By the same token, the results suggest that we could use different materials for the matrix or spheres to create a combination that performs as well as conventional aluminum at a fraction of the weight. Either way, you're improving performance and fuel efficiency."
A paper on the research was published this week in the journal Applied Surface Science.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom), or
the Hungarian Uprising,[5]
was a nationwide revolution
against the Hungarian People's Republic
and its Soviet-imposed
policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Leaderless when it
first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the Red
Army drove Nazi Germany from
its territory at the End of World War II in Europe.
---- Initially appearing open to
negotiating a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo
changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution. On 4 November, a large
Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country. The Hungarian
resistance continued until 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet
troops were killed in the conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees.
Mass arrests and denunciations continued for months thereafter. By January
1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition.
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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