Baltic Dry Index. 1345 -33 Brent
Crude 62.41 Spot Gold 1454
Never ending Brexit now January 31, or maybe sooner.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.
“I do not deny that what happened to us is
a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is
sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of
view.”
Don Quixote
It is President Trump’s big day in New York City, a city
he is ditching for Palm Beach, Florida. A very wise move.
President Trump is to deliver a
key speech later today to the Economic Club of New York. EU officials say he
will postpone his threatened new tariff war on the EU by at least six months.
President Trump has pinned his
re-election to the fate of the US stock market, the market expects a stellar
outcome from President Trump’s coming speech.
Dropping another trade war, is a
good start. EU auto tariffs would push Germany and the rest of the EUSSR into a
deep recession, and that could all too easily blow back into the US economy
ahead of next year’s US presidential election.
But the unpredictable, erratic, President Trump could
still blow it in his coming speech. A gaff here, an over statement there, a
WeWork like rosy over optimism, and the stock market might get a very nasty
surprise.
This is probably no way to be running the world’s most
important economy, though for most it is a thing worth laughing at.
Below, a day of waiting and watching. A day that might make or break his
re-election hopes.
Asia shares left guessing on trade, await Trump speech
November 12, 2019
/ 12:26 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) -
Asian share markets flatlined on Tuesday as uncertainty over Sino-U.S. trade
talks and political strife in Hong Kong dogged sentiment, while safe-haven
bonds eked out a bounce.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up a
slight 0.04%, following a sharp 1.2% pullback on Monday.
Japan’s Nikkei dithered either side of flat, while Shanghai blue chips
eased 0.1%. E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 also dipped 0.1%, as did
EUROSTOXX 50 futures.
Caution ruled ahead of a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump to the
Economic Club of New York later in the day in case there was any new word on
the Sino-U.S. Phase one trade deal.
Trump wrongfooted markets over the weekend when he said there had been incorrect
reporting about U.S. willingness to lift tariffs on China.
On a more positive note, Politico reported Trump would announce this
week that he is delaying a decision on whether to slap tariffs on imported
European Union autos for another six months.
Investors were anxious about the situation in Hong Kong after a violent
escalation of protests knocked nearly 2% off Asia-exposed banks HSBC and
StanChart.
Riot police were deployed at metro stations across the territory and
large queues were forming at railway platforms as commuters struggled to get to
work.
More
How Trump’s Stock Market Record Stacks Up
Justin Fox Bloomberg
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s been three years now since Donald Trump was
elected president, which means it’s been three years of listening to Donald
Trump bragging about how great the stock market is doing. Contrary to one
now-infamous pre-election prediction, it has done quite well.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor’s 500
Index and other market indices are of course imperfect economic indicators.
They reflect investors’ beliefs about how well publicly traded
corporations are doing and will do in the future, not necessarily the reality
of how publicly traded corporations are doing — or of how well the rest of
us are doing. The indices most cited in the media also mainly reflect the
fortunes of the largest corporations; even as the Dow and S&P 500 have been
setting new records lately, the small-cap Russell 2000 is down 9% from its peak
in August 2018.
Still, the advantage of the S&P 500 as a performance indicator is
that it is (1) frequently updated, (2) available back to 1926(1) and (3)
not subject to measurement error in the way that, say, the unemployment rate or
GDP are. Investors might turn out be wrong, but the index itself simply is what
it is.
So here’s the total return on the S&P 500, adjusted for inflation,
for the first three years after the initial election of every president since
Herbert Hoover:
Some prefer to track stock market performance from Inauguration Day, and
CNN has a handy online tracker that already does this for Trump and the last
few presidents. Trump argues that one should measure from Election Day, and
while he surely does so mainly because it makes him look better, he also
happens to be right. Market indices are forward-looking metrics, and were
already reflecting investors’ opinions on a Trump presidency on Nov. 9, 2016.
Using this approach left the question of how to measure performance
under Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, who took office after the deaths of
their predecessors and were subsequently elected. I decided to go with
performance from Election Day, but I think the other approach would be equally
valid. As for Gerald Ford, he was neither elected nor served for three years,
so there was no place for him in this ranking.
Total return measures how much an investment in the companies in the
S&P 500 Index would grow if dividends were reinvested in those companies as
they were paid out. Dividends were a much bigger part of investor returns
before World War II, and even before the 1990s, so any comparison that excludes
them overstates market performance under recent presidents. Any comparison that
ignores inflation, meanwhile, understates the awfulness of the 1970s stock
market and overstates the goodness of the 1980s market.
Stock market performance in first three years since Trump’s election,
then, ranks fourth among the 14 elected presidents since Herbert Hoover. That’s
pretty good! It’s worth noting, though, that there’s not a whole lot separating
him from John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. A bad week or two,
and he could easily fall to eighth place. On the other hand, falling to ninth
would take some work, as would catching up to Dwight Eisenhower for third. Put
into letter grades, I’d give the market’s performance since Trump’s
election a solid B.
More
Economy Week Ahead: German Recession Watch, U.S. Retail Sales, Powell Talks to Congress
Fed Chairman Powell is set to testify on the economic outlook before the Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday
----Wednesday
Mr. Powell is set to testify on the economic outlook before the Joint Economic Committee. It will be the first time he’s appeared before that committee. He’s likely to be asked about the central bank’s expected pause from further interest-rate cuts and about how the U.S. economy is faring amid trade tensions and a global slowdown. He’ll testify shortly after new inflation data, the October consumer-price index, is released by the Labor Department. Mr. Powell will speak to the House Budget Committee the following day.Thursday
Is Germany in recession? One of the most consequential questions for European policy makers will be answered when the country’s statistics agency releases economic growth figures for the three months through September. Europe’s largest economy contracted in the second quarter, so a drop in gross domestic product during the third quarter would place it in a technical recession for the first time since early 2013. Economists expect the figures to record a very slight contraction, but are less sure than they were only a few weeks ago, as recent data has pointed to a revival in German exports as the quarter drew to a close.Meanwhile, October business activity data for China will be released. China’s value-added industrial output is expected to show 5.2% growth from a year earlier, slowing from September’s 5.8% increase, according to economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese economy will probably continue cooling in the coming quarters as Beijing has been reluctant to unleash more aggressive stimulus measures for fear of rising financial risks.
More
In
European news, yet more political polarisation. Trump expected to cave to the
EU on a new trade war, says the EU.
Poll brings Spain no respite from political uncertainty
MADRID (AP) — A general election called to end
political deadlock in Spain has only deepened uncertainty about the future of
the European Union’s fifth-largest economy and raised the possibility of yet
another ballot — the fifth in five years — next year.
No party achieved a clear mandate to govern in
Sunday’s vote, which was the second election in seven months and was intended
to clear away the stalemate. Further weeks or months of political jockeying now
lie ahead.
Incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s
left-of-center Socialists captured the most seats, with 120. But that is far
short of a majority in the 350-seat chamber, meaning the Socialists will have
to negotiate deals with other parties if they are to govern.
The outcome also threw up a new roadblock:
Support surged for far-right party Vox, which was launched just six years ago.
It collected 52 seats, more than double its
showing in the last election in April, making it the third largest party in
parliament behind the Socialists and the conservative Popular Party, which
recovered to collect 88 seats.
Across Europe, far-right parties have made gains
in recent years, setting off alarm bells about the bloc’s political direction.
Some analysts put down Vox’s rise to nationalist
sentiment stirred up as a result of mass protests by separatists in the wealthy
northeastern region of Catalonia. The protests have included recent violent
clashes with police that left more than 500 people injured.
The push for Catalan independence, which the
national government won’t allow, is Spain’s most serious political issue in
decades and shows no signs of abating. Three Catalan separatist parties won a
combined 23 seats, one more than in April.
José Ignacio Torreblanca, an analyst and head of
the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the
Catalan separatists helped give rise to Vox.
“The one thing that the Catalans have achieved
is to get a radical right equally as radical as they are on the other end, a
kind of a mirror thing and with that make everyone’s life more miserable,” he
said.
On Monday, Catalan radicals resumed their
protests by blocking a major highway crossing the border between France and
Spain and promising to keep it closed for three days. French police pushed them
back toward Spain and scuffles broke out.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal said Monday that his
party won’t support a Socialist government and issued a warning: “We demand
that order be restored in Catalonia.”
----Andrew Dowling, an expert on contemporary
Spanish politics at Cardiff University in Wales, said Sánchez’s plan to
reconfigure parliament to his benefit had backfired, leaving Spain once again
at the mercy of an unpredictable political landscape.
“The Spanish Socialist party made a major
miscalculation in calling new elections,” Dowling said.
The next step will be for parliamentarians to
select a house speaker in the coming weeks and then for talks between King
Felipe VI and party leaders to begin so that one of them, most likely Sánchez,
will be called on to try to form a government.
More
Trump expected to delay European auto tariff decision - EU officials
November 11,
2019 / 10:11 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald
Trump is expected to announce this week he is delaying a decision on whether to
slap tariffs on cars and auto parts imported from the European Union, likely
for another six months, EU officials said.
“We have a solid indication from the administration that there will not
be tariffs on us this week,” one EU official said on Monday.
The Trump administration has a Thursday deadline to decide whether to
impose threatened “Section 232” national security tariffs of as much as 25% on
imported vehicles and parts under a Cold War-era trade law.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose agency is overseeing an
investigation into the effect of auto imports on U.S. national security, said
on Nov. 3 the United States may not need such tariffs after holding “good
conversations” with automakers in the European Union, Japan and South Korea.
Trump last May delayed a decision on the tariffs by six months, and
another delay would cause automakers across the globe to breathe a sigh of
relief.
The president could bring up the issue of car tariffs in a speech he is
delivering on Tuesday at the Economic Club of New York. A White House spokesman
would only say Trump would focus his speech on how his tax and trade policies
have supported a strong economic recovery.
EU officials said while a further six-month delay was likely, Trump’s
actions were unpredictable and he would likely keep the threat of car tariffs
hanging over them as the United States and European Union pursue trade
negotiations in the coming year.
More
Finally,
more from that easy to win US v China trade war. As the USA gets close to
entering a third year of tariffs, are America’s chair sellers starting to fold?
Furniture Retailers Start to Feel Tariff Pain More Acutely
Industry’s broad exposure to China ratchets up financial risks; ‘We’re walking the tightrope’
By Katy Stech Ferek Nov. 11, 2019
7:45 am ET
HIGH POINT, N.C.—Amid seemingly endless displays of chairs and
dining-room sets, the furniture industry’s fall trade show here featured a few
signs of the times: placards atop non-Chinese goods proclaiming “No Tariffs!”
“People see the signs and they come over,” said Luther Revels, a
salesman for furniture wholesaler Bramble Co., whose showroom featured
sofas, tables and nightstands made in Indonesia.
The furniture business is one of many caught up in the Trump
administration’s tariff campaign against China, and lately the pain has started
to intensify.
“Tariffs are injecting greater-than-expected volatility into our marketplace,” said Wayfair co-founder and Chief Executive Niraj Shah.
China was the top furniture exporter to the U.S. last year, shipping $34 billion in tables, chairs, couches and other furnishings.
These imports were first hit with 10% duties in September 2018, before the tariffs jumped to 25% in May after U.S.-China trade talks hit an impasse.
“This has been very challenging for the furniture industry as a whole
because of the huge exposure that it has to China,” said Peter Keith, a Piper
Jaffray analyst who added that the discretionary nature of furniture purchases
means the industry faces more potential for tariff-related financial
difficulties than many other businesses.
While a 25% tariff suggests steep price increases and plummeting sales,
retailers and industry experts said the furniture industry’s pain has been
dulled by several factors, including furniture shipments from countries other
than China and suppliers who agreed to cover some of the costs. They also said
customers often aren’t aware of the shifting prices.
Ed Menapace, owner of the Farmhouse Store in Westfield, N.J., said he
has made more than 30 passes through his 10,000-square-foot furniture showroom
since the tariffs first hit, adjusting prices.
Still, he said his customers haven’t noticed the changes. “They don’t
have a clue how much furniture costs,” he said.
More
“Until death it is all life”
Don Quixote
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
No crooks again today. Today, a little history as the Suez Canal reaches
150 years old. Well the current version, anyway.
Egypt discreetly marks Suez Canal's 150th anniversary
Issued on:
11/11/2019 - 03:24
Since the Suez Canal was inaugurated amid pomp and ceremony 150 years
ago, it has become one of the world's most important waterways. But its
anniversary will only be discreetly marked in Egypt.
The man-made canal was excavated between 1859 and 1869, in an ambitious
project to connect the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and cut shipping times for
growing international trade from Europe to Asia.
The Suez Canal is "not a prerogative of one nation," declared
Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat credited with masterminding the
project, drawing from the dreams of the pharaohs who dredged a similar channel
4,000 years earlier.
"It owes its birth to, and belongs to, the aspirations of
humanity," he said in an 1864 speech.
A million Egyptians, using camels and mules as beasts of burden,
laboured over the decade-long construction, according to official figures. And
tens of thousands died in the process, experts say.
The first ships sailed down the 164-kilometre (102-mile) canal on
November 17, 1869, with hopes that fair winds would permit a faster route to
and from Asia, avoiding a lengthy and perilous circumvention via the tip of
southern Africa.
But the waterway's history has followed the turbulent ebbs and flows of
the volatile Middle East region.
----Today the vital sea route is managed
by the Suez Canal Authority and was expanded in 2015 to accommodate modern,
larger vessels. It has grown into a major economic asset, providing passage for
10 percent of all international maritime trade.
More
Suez Canal: expansion and modernisation
Issued on:
11/11/2019 - 03:52
The Suez Canal has been regularly expanded and modernised since it
opened 150 years ago and is today capable of accommodating some of the world's
largest supertankers.
Here is a look back at key stages in the enlargement of the waterway,
which handles roughly 10 percent of international maritime trade.
- Beginnings -
When the sea-level canal was first opened in 1869, it was 164 kilometres
(102 miles) long and eight metres (26 feet) deep.
It could accommodate ships of up to 5,000 tons to a depth 6.7 metres
which constituted the bulk of the world's fleet at the time, according to the
Suez Canal Authority.
In 1887 the canal was modernised to allow navigation at night, which
doubled its capacity.
- Growth in the 1950s -
It was not until the 1950s that the waterway was substantially expanded,
deepened and lengthened, following demands from shipping companies.
By the time it was nationalised by Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser
in 1956, it was 175 kilometres long and 14 metres deep, and could take tankers
with a capacity of 30,000 tons to a depth of 10.7 metres.
- 21st century -
A major expansion in 2015 took the length of the waterway to 193.30
kilometres and its depth to 24 metres.
It meant that the canal could handle supertankers with a capacity of
240,000 tons, some of the biggest in the world, that went up to 20.1 metres
deep in the water.
In 2019 around 50 ships used the canal daily, compared with three in
1869. Traffic is expected to almost double by 2023 with two-way circulation
also reducing waiting times, the authority says.
- Fastest route -
The majority of oil transported by sea passes through the Suez Canal,
which is the fastest crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean but
demands hefty passage tolls.
The journey between ports in the Gulf and London, for example, is
roughly halved by going through the Suez -- compared to the alternate route via
the southern tip of Africa.
Most of the cargo travelling from the Gulf to Western Europe is oil. In
the opposite direction, it is mostly manufactured goods and grain from Europe
and North America headed to the Far East and Asia.
Historical Outline:
- Egypt was the first country to dig a man-made canal across its lands to connect the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea via the branches of the River Nile. The first who dug it was Senausert III, Pharaoh of Egypt (1874 B.C.). This canal was abandoned to silting and reopened several times as follows:
----It is recorded
that Egypt was the first country to dig a canal across its land with a view to
activate world trade.
The Suez Canal is considered to be the shortest link between the east
and the west due to its unique geographic location; it is an important international
navigation canal linking between the Mediterranean sea at Port said and the red
sea at Suez. The idea of linking the Mediterranean sea with the red sea by a
canal dates back to 40 centuries as it was pointed out through history starting
by the pharaohs era passing by the Islamic era until it was dredged reaching
its current condition today.
It is considered to be the first artificial canal to be used in Travel
and Trade. The Whole Idea of establishing a canal linking between the red sea
and the Mediterranean dates back to the oldest times, as Egypt dredged the
first artificial canal on the planet’s surface. The pharaohs dredged a canal
link in between river Nile and the red sea.
-----The first
efforts to build a modern canal came from the Egypt expedition of Napoleon
Bonaparte, who hoped the project would create a devastating trade problem for
the English. Though this project was begun in 1799 by Charles Le Pere, a
miscalculation estimated that the levels between the Mediterranean Sea and the
Red Sea were too great (estimating that the Red Sea was some ten meters higher
than that of the Mediterranean Sea) and work was quickly suspended.
Napoleon was told that the Red Sea was 30 feet higher than the
Mediterranean. Dig a canal, his surveyors said, and the Red Sea will hemorrhage
into the Mediterranean.
More, much, much more.
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?
Today, something
slightly different, though still scientific. For the next two nights, those
lucky enough to be free from cloud cover, awake, and away from too much street
lighting, have a chance to observe and appreciate the annual Leonid meteor
shower, though sadly not a Great every 33 years Leonid meteor shower.
But first this
damning report on the self driving Uber car fatality in Tempe, Arizona in 2016.
11.05.2019 09:22
PM
Uber’s Self-Driving Car Didn’t Know Pedestrians Could Jaywalk
The National Transportation Safety Board releases
hundreds of pages related to the 2018 crash in Tempe, Arizona, that killed
Elaine Herzberg.
The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent government safety panel that more often probes airplane crashes and large truck incidents, posted documents on Tuesday regarding its 20-month investigation into the Uber crash. The panel will release a final report on the incident in two weeks. More than 40 of the documents, spanning hundreds of pages, dive into the particulars of the March 18, 2016 incident, in which the Uber testing vehicle, with 44-year-old Rafaela Vasquez in the driver's seat, killed a 49-year-old woman named Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a darkened road in the city of Tempe, Arizona. At the time, only one driver monitored the experimental car’s operation and software as it drove around Arizona. Video footage published in the weeks after the crash showed Vasquez reacting with shock during the moments just before the collision.
The new documents indicate that some mistakes were clearly related to Uber’s internal structure, what experts call “safety culture.” For one, the self-driving program didn’t include an operational safety division or safety manager.
The most glaring mistakes were software-related. Uber’s system was not equipped to identify or deal with pedestrians walking outside of a crosswalk. Uber engineers also appear to have been so worried about false alarms that they built in an automated one-second delay between a crash detection and action. In addition, the company chose to turn off a built-in Volvo braking system that the automaker later concluded might have dramatically reduced the speed at which the car hit Herzberg, or perhaps avoided the collision altogether. (Experts say the decision to turn off the Volvo system while Uber’s software did its work did make technical sense, because it would be unsafe for the car to have two software “masters.”)
Much of that explains why, despite the fact that the car detected Herzberg with more than enough time to stop, it was traveling at 43.5 mph when it struck her and threw her 75 feet. When the car first detected her presence, 5.6 seconds before impact, it classified her as a vehicle. Then it changed its mind to “other,” then to vehicle again, back to “other,” then to bicycle, then to “other” again, and finally back to bicycle.
More. Much, much, more.
Now back to that
meteor shower.
The Great Leonids Meteor Storm of 1833
The Leonids meteor shower is one of the 10 biggest meteor showers of the year. Every 33 years, however, it becomes even more intense as the comet 55P/Temple-Tuttle makes its closest approach to the Earth and Sun. The Great Leonids Meteor Storm of 1833, however, was unusually prolific and became one of the most spectacular astronomical sights ever seen in the modern era, with many people believing that the world was coming to an end. It also occurred at a time before electric street lights had been invented, and the Moon had set in the early evening providing North America with an unobstructed view of the sublime celestial phenomenon.
Needless to say, the story was picked up in various newspaper reports as the “night the stars fell”, with the following description of the Wall family’s experience giving an insight into thoughts and feelings of witnesses at the time. As the report written by Bruna McGuire and Betty Wall explains:
“The stars showered down so thickly and fast that it looked as though every star in the heavens was falling. When they touched the ground, they burst and drifted away. Stars were still falling when the Sun arose the next morning. Never before had there been such a sight witnessed, nor has there been since the greatest meteoric display of our age.”
The Leonids in History
From a purely historical perspective, the Leonids meteor shower is one of the oldest known. In the year 902 AD, Chinese astronomers described the night “stars fell as rain”, with the event also picked up by observers in Egypt and Italy. Much later, anecdotal records from 1630 recount tales of unusually large numbers of meteors two days after the funeral of Johannes Kepler, which many authorities of the time saw as a “salute to Kepler from God”.---The practical effect of this is therefore that once every 33 years, Earth encounters such a high-density debris trail within the broader trail, which is what happened in 1833, 1866, 1899, 1933, 1966, and 1999, with the next major storm expected to occur in 2031/2.
“When
life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too
practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much
sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it
should be!”
Don Quixote
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October
DJIA: 27,046 +59 Up. NASDAQ: 8,292 +67 Up. SP500: 3,038 +67 Up.
Another inconclusive month,
but all three continued to move up weakly. A buy signal. But, like the Fed, I
would await more data.
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