Baltic Dry Index. 1357 -07 Brent Crude 63.30 Spot Gold 1468
Never ending Brexit now January 31,
maybe sooner.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs
Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October
18. Now in effect.
“Markets can remain
irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
The Great Disconnect between stocks and economic
and socio-political reality just keeps getting wider. The stock bubble builds,
but gets nearer to its pin.
While the US stock index bubbles bubble
on to new highs on never ending hype of a US trade deal “lite” part one with
China, and hopes that President Trump will force his captive Fed lower, perhaps
even into negative interest rates, in the real world outside of the
Washington-Wall Street political-financial fantasy land, things are fast going from bad to worse.
At some point reality will intrude,
though when that happens, and what triggers it, remains unknown. But to this old
dinosaur market follower since 1968, the upside reward, is nowhere near enough
to offset the downside risk.
With each new stock index bubble high,
the chances of a new October 19, 1987, increase.
If the US stock market breaks before
November 3rd 2020, President Trump is sunk, and a very hard left Democratic
socialist agenda sweeps into Washington, District of Crooks.
Dow closes above 28,000 — marks first milestone finish in 90 trading days
By Mark DeCambre Published: Nov 15, 2019 4:29 pm ET
The Dow Jones Industrial Average marked history on Friday—
carving out its first breach of a psychological milestone since mid July, as
equity benchmarks mounted an assault on records on the back of hope for
progress in U.S.-China trade negotiations. The Dow DJIA+0.8% closed up 222 points, or 0.8%, at 28,004, at last check, representing the blue-chip index’s 11th record close of 2019 and its first 1,000-point milestone since July 11.
It has been 90 sessions since the blue-chip
benchmark achieved a 1,000 milestone and it took 372 days to trade above the
last such psychological level. Here’s a look at the past round-number
milestones for the 123-year-old stock gauge.
The rally for the Dow comes as the S&P 500 index SPX+0.77% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP+0.73% also notched all-time closing highs after White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Thursday said negotiators are getting close to an agreement, but that President Donald Trump wasn’t yet ready to sign off.
Trump “likes what he sees, he’s not ready to make a commitment, he hasn’t signed off on a commitment for phase one, we heave no agreement just yet for phase one,” he said at a Council on Foreign Relations event, according to The Wall Street Journal.
President Trump’s international trade policies have been the biggest catalyst for volatility in U.S. stocks this year.
To be sure, there is nothing necessarily significant about the Dow eclipsing a round-number level but some market experts say such moves can spark so-called animal spirits, or bullish enthusiasm, among stock-market investors when benchmarks hit major milestones.
U.S. industrial output falls by most in 17 months in October
By Greg Robb Published: Nov 15, 2019 9:24 a.m. ET
The numbers: U.S. industrial production dropped 0.8% in October, the largest decline since May 2018, the Federal Reserve reported Friday. It was the third decline in output in the past four months. The drop was steeper than Wall Street expectations of a 0.5% fall.
The report was impacted by the United Auto Workers strike at General Motors GM, -1.05% , which pushed down auto production by 7.1%.
The weakness was not limited to auto manufacturing though. Excluding autos, industrial production was down 0.5%.
Manufacturing output fell 0.6% in October. Manufacturing ex-autos in October was down 0.1%.
Industrial capacity in use slumped to 76.7 in October. That’s the lowest level in 25 months.
Mining
output, which has been a driver for growth, fell 0.7% in October. That’s the
third decline in the past four months. Utility production slumped 2.6% after a
sharp rise in the prior month.
On a
year-on-year basis, U.S. industrial production is down 1.1%.
Big picture:
The
manufacturing sector is being hit hard by several headwinds, including weak
global demand, uncertainty over international trade policy and the woes at
Boeing Co. Some economists had detected a trough in the manufacturing sector
but this report belies that impression.
More
Recession Warning: Freight Volumes Negative YoY for 11th Straight Month
Donald Broughton, founder of Broughton Capital and author the Cass Freight Index says the index signals contraction, possibly by the end of the year.
That's just one one month away.
Six Key Points
- With the –5.9% decline in October, following the string of declines in May through September (ranging from -3.0% to -6.0%), we repeat our message from the previous five months: the shipments index has gone from “warning of a potential slowdown” to “signaling an economic contraction.”
- We acknowledge that: all of these negative percentages were against tough comparisons (some extremely tough), and the Cass Shipments Index has gone negative before without being followed by a negative GDP. However, demand is weaker across almost all modes of transportation, both domestically and internationally.
- Several key modes, and key segments of modes, are suffering material increases in the rates of decline, signaling the contraction is getting worse********.**
- We know that freight flows are a leading indicator, so by definition there is a lag between what they are predicting and when the outcome is reported. Nevertheless, we see a growing risk that GDP will go negative by year’s end.
- The weakness in spot market pricing for many transportation services, especially trucking, along with recent airfreight and railroad volume trends, heightens our concerns about the economy. Weakness in commodity prices, and the ongoing decline in interest rates, have all joined the chorus of signals calling for an economic contraction.
- The Index on a 2-year percentage change basis went negative (-0.1%). This suggests that the great surge of 2018, or ‘Trump bump’ as it was characterized by many, has now been completely erased at least from a freight flow perspective, as measured by the volume of freight bills paid by Cass.
----"Airfreight
volumes in Europe continue to suggest that the region’s economy continues to
cool."
---- Airfreight
volumes in Asia suggest that the region is on the verge of, or is already
entering, a recession. As we’ve highlighted before, when
trade tariffs slow the rate of growth for our global trading partners, it poses
a real threat to the U.S. rate of economic growth."
More, plus charts.
‘Hindenburg Omen’ and ‘Ohama Titanic Syndrome’ form in a key stock-market index
By Mark
DeCambre Published: Nov 15, 2019
2:57 p.m. ET
The ominous-sounding chart pattern crystallized in the Nasdaq and has presaged market corrections
The Omen was
created by Jim Miekka, a blind mathematician, marksman and teacher, who died
several years ago. Miekka claimed that his indicator had been an accurate
predictor of every market crash since 1987.
More
Serbia Buys Nine Tons of Gold to Heed President’s Crisis Advice
By Gordana Filipovic
Serbia’s
central bank bought nine tons of gold in October, raising its reserves of the
precious metal on the advice of President Aleksandar Vucic.
The biggest
former Yugoslav republic is following Hungary and Poland, where officials
boosted gold reserves in 2018 to create a bulwark against crisis. Central Bank
Governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic, a member of Vucic’s Progressive Party, said the
October 9-11 purchases raised the bank’s gold holdings to 10% of total reserves
and made good on a suggestion from the president in May.
“We have
completed gold purchase transactions and Serbia is safer today with 30.4 tons
of gold worth around 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion),” Tabakovic told
reporters in Belgrade Thursday. “For now, we have no plans to buy more.”
More
In other news, will trade war team Trump
finish off the slumping global auto industry? If they do, bad things will happen
fast in the global economy. But with all his rising Washington political
problems, can President Trump afford to be seen kowtowing to the EU?
In Washington, the Congress sets out to
sabotage any Trump trade deal “lite” part one, with China. Yet another reason
to be exiting stocks at the highs.
Automakers around world await Trump tariff decision
November 15, 2019 / 10:08 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Automakers around
the world are awaiting a decision from U.S. President Donald Trump on whether
he will impose up to 25% tariffs on U.S. car and auto part imports after a
180-day review period elapsed this week.
Trump was
briefed ahead of the expiry of the self-imposed deadline, which he set in May,
to decide whether to again extend a review or impose tariffs that automakers
have warned could cost jobs and dramatically boost vehicle prices.
“I’ll make a
decision fairly soon. I was fully briefed and I’ll make a decision fairly
soon,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Officials
from major automakers told Reuters they believe Trump will not impose new
levies on vehicles from the European Union, Japan or elsewhere amid a trade war
with China.
More
U.S. commission: Strip Hong Kong of special status if China interferes with protests
Nov. 15, 2019 / 5:21 AM
Nov. 15 (UPI) -- A bipartisan U.S. congressional commission advised the government
to strip Hong Kong of its special trading status if China deploys its army or
police to interfere with ongoing pro-democracy protests that have crippled the
semiautonomous region.The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission made the recommendation Thursday as part of its mandated annual report to Congress on the national security implications of bilateral trade and the economic relationship between the two countries.
In the report, the congressional body made five recommendations concerning Hong Kong, including enacting legislation to revoke the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 if China deploys its armed forces to the region.
It also recommended amending the act to direct the State Department to develop benchmarks measuring Hong Kong's maintenance of a "high degree of autonomy" from Beijing and passing legislation to extend export control measures in place for mainland China subsidiaries of Chinese companies operating in Hong Kong, among others.
"The future direction of Hong Kong -- and with it U.S.-Hong Kong policy -- will rest upon the outcome of the anti-extradition bill protest movement and the extent to which the Hong Kong government and Beijing respect the aspirations of Hong Kong citizens," an executive summary of the report said.
Hong Kong has been rocked since June by protests over a now shelved extradition bill that would have allowed for refugees from Chinese law to be sent to the mainland to face Communist Party control courts. However, the movement has since evolved into a greater pro-democracy push that has been met with strong state resistance that has worried U.S. lawmakers to present legislation to revoked its special status.
The Hong Kong government responded to the report, saying in a statement that "foreign legislatures should not interfere in any form in the city's internal affairs."
More
Finally, a long and convoluted weekend read.
US politics, uncensored. The real story behind the Trump impeachment conspiracy
in Washington, District of Crooks. Enjoy.
David Stockman Exposes The Ukrainian Influence-Peddling Rings, Part one.
by Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2019 - 05:00
---- The latter spent the post-Soviet years fomenting "color revolutions" and attempting to steer its politics toward the west and NATO membership. But when the Ukrainian people elected a pro-Russian president in 2010 and all efforts to bribe and bully him westward failed, Washington instigated, funded and instantaneously recognized an illegal putsch on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.
That
blatant, unprovoked assault on a sovereign nation, in turn, set in motion a
destructive civil war internally; a dangerous and utterly unnecessary
politico-military confrontation with Russia on its own doorstep; and, now, a
hysterical campaign by the House Dems and their Deep State allies to impeach a
duly-elected American president for the sin of wading into the very cesspool of
corruption that the Washington establishment itself foisted upon this hapless,
$150 billion sliver of a failed state and crippled economy.
The latest
dispatch from the Wall Street Journal on the stench
wafting westward from Kiev reveals more about the rotten foundation of
UkraineGate than its authors probably understood.
Burisma
Holdings’ campaign to clean up its image in the West reached
beyond the 2014 hiring of Hunter Biden, son of the then-U.S. vice president, to
include other well-connected operatives in Washington, according to officials
in both countries and government records.
The
Ukrainian company, owned by tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, also hired a
lobbyist with close ties to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a consulting
group founded by top officials in the Clinton administration that
specialized in preparing former Soviet-bloc countries to join NATO (Blue Star
Strategies).
Soon the
efforts bore fruit. With the help of a New York-based lawyer, Mr. Zlochevsky’s U.S.
consultants argued to Ukrainian prosecutors that criminal cases against the
company should be closed because no laws had been broken.
Burisma
later became a sponsor of a Washington think tank, the Atlantic Council,
whose experts are often cited on energy and security policy in the former
Soviet Union.
Simple
translation: Zlochevsky was an ally, officeholder (minister of ecology
and natural resources) and inner-circle thief in the ousted government of
Viktor Yanukovych. He therefore needed to powder the pig fast and thoroughly in
order to hold onto his ill-gotten billions.
So he hired
the best Washington influence peddlers that money could buy under the
circumstances. First up
was Hunter Biden, because his old man was running point on what amounted to the
puppet government Washington had installed in Kiev, and Devon Archer, because
he was a former bundler for former Senator (and then Secretary of State) John
Kerry.
But so as to
leave no stone unturned, Zlochevsky also had Burisma hire another Washington influence
peddler just one month after Biden the Younger joined the board in April 2014.
Again, according to the WSJ, the additional lobbyist firepower came
from one,
David Leiter of Washington lobbying firm
M.L. Strategies….. Mr. Leiter was John Kerry’s chief of staff when
Mr. Kerry was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts….According to disclosure
records, Mr. Leiter, who also had worked for the Energy Department, lobbied on
behalf of Burisma on “promoting transparency and good corporate
governances” at both chambers of Congress, the State Department, the
Treasury Department, the Energy Department, and US AID.
Needless to
say, only in Imperial Washington would all the above named arms of the US
government care a whit about "transparency and good governance" at a
two-bit gas producer in Ukraine. During 2018, for example, the company produced
the trivial sum of 1.3 BCF of natural gas and booked revenues of just $400
million – a rounding error in just about any energy market that matters.
But as it
happened, Washington was calling the shots in Kiev, and Burisma needed its
government licenses and gas concessions. So the lobbying happened on the banks
of the Potomac where the real power was actually exercised.
Finally, the
Clinton wing of the Washington racketeering system had to be covered, too –
hence the above mentioned Blue Star Strategies. And the bolded sentence from
the WSJ story quoted below tells you all you need to know
about its business, which was to "….help former Soviet countries
prepare for NATO consideration".
That’s
right. With the Soviet Union gone, its 50,000 tanks on the central front
melted-down for scrap and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, the rational order of the
day was to declare "mission accomplished" for NATO and effect its own
disbandment.
More, much, much, more D. C. scandal.
David Stockman was a two-term
Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management
and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House,
Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street.
“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product
of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”
This weekend’s musical diversion. Dresden’s very underrated J. D. Heinichen
again. Largely forgotten now. Rarely played.
Johann David Heinichen. Sinfonia in F major "Di Moritzburg". Seibel 209
“It is better to be
roughly right than precisely wrong.”
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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