Baltic Dry Index. 1090 -13 Brent
Crude 68.00 Spot Gold 1513
Never ending Brexit now January 31.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.
Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit,
you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twain.
Another year-end and President Trump has the Powell Fed buried
deep in his back pocket. The punch bowl’s back and going nowhere all next year.
Stocks have nowhere to go but up at the start of the roaring 20s.
There’s the biggest, best ever, trade deal lite, win,
part one, about to be signed too, at least according to a desperate President
Trump. After that comes the new NAFTA lite, too. What’s not to like about
buying greater fool buyer stocks?
We are about to enter the new roaring 20s, where just
like the old roaring 20s, everyone and their dog is about to get rich speculating
in stocks.
Still to this old dinosaur market follower, why is gold
rallying and freight indexes falling?
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the
lip
English proverb.
Asian markets advance as more records fall on Wall Street
By Marketwatch
and Associated
Press Published: Dec 26, 2019 10:44
p.m. ET
Asian markets mostly gained in early trading Friday, after
yet more record highs on Wall Street.Japan’s Nikkei NIK, -0.29% was about flat, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index HSI, +1.10% gained 1.2%. The Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +0.40% advanced 0.7% while the Shenzhen Composite 399106, -0.10% edged up 0.5%. South Korea’s Kospi 180721, -0.02% inched up 0.5%. Benchmark indexes in Taiwan Y9999, +0.75% , Singapore STI, +0.11% and Indonesia JAKIDX, +0.01% rose, while stocks were little changed in Malaysia FBMKLCI, +0.10% . Australia’s S&P ASX 200 XJO, +0.40% rose 0.3%.
---- U.S. stocks returned from the Christmas holiday and powered higher again Thursday, helped by reports of record year-end retail sales. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.78% closed at 9,000 for the first time ever, closing above 9,022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.37% and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.51% closed at record highs as well.
European markets will reopen Friday after a two-day Christmas holiday.
Investors welcomed President Donald Trump’s comment that an interim “Phase 1” trade deal was “getting done.” Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping would hold a signing ceremony.
Markets have been encouraged by positive comments about the agreement,
though details have yet to be released.
Chinese customs data this week showed soybean imports rose in November
in a possible boost to American farmers. Midwestern farm states were battered
by Beijing’s suspension of purchases of U.S. soybeans, the biggest Chinese
import from the United States, in response to Trump’s tariff hikes in a fight
over China’s technology ambitions and trade surplus.
“Broadly risk sentiment is positive,” Mizuho Bank said in a report.
More
Stocks rally to record highs; gold gains
December 26, 2019
/ 4:45 PM / Updated 6 hours ago
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of global equity markets and Wall Street’s three major
indices finished at all-time highs on Thursday in light holiday trade as a
year-end rally advanced further on optimism over a U.S.-China trade agreement.
Oil rose to three-month highs, buoyed by a report showing lower U.S.
crude inventories, hopes the pending Sino-U.S. trade deal will soon be signed
and efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to
curb crude supply.
Gold prices also rose.
MSCI’s all-country world index and Wall Street’s Dow Industrials, the
benchmark S&P 500 and the technology-rich Nasdaq all closed at record
highs.
---- Wall Street was boosted by U.S.-China trade optimism and gains in Amazon.com (AMZN.O) after a report signalled robust online holiday sales.
Amazon shares jumped 4.4% after Mastercard said U.S. shoppers spent more online during the holiday shopping season than in 2018, with e-commerce sales hitting a record.
The S&P 500, up 29% so far this year, is less than four-tenths of 1 percentage point shy of its best annual gain since 1997.
Investors in major equity markets around the world have chalked up strong gains this year, marking a contrast to a plunge late last year, noted Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at INTL FCStone Financial Inc in New York.
---- Fourth-quarter earnings will soon come into focus in January, which should highlight whether sentiment among corporate management has improved, Abbasi said.
Recession fears scuttled capital expenditure plans during much of 2019,
but strong employment and signs of an improving global economy suggest that
will change next year.
The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits
fell last week in a sign of ongoing labour market strength.
A spokesman for China’s commerce ministry said Chinese and U.S.
officials are in close touch and going through necessary procedures before
signing a Phase 1 trade deal.
More
In other news, does China even need a US trade deal at
all? With the trade deal lite, part one,
all but ready to sign, at least according to trade war team Trump, China’s
economy seems to be bottoming out.
President Xi, unlike President Trump, isn’t facing
re-election next year and certainly not ever facing impeachment. After the
trade war lite deal, part one, is signed, President Xi holds all of the high
cards in negotiating any further trade deals with President Trump, and doesn’t
he know it.
China's industrial profits improved in November
By MarketWatch
Published: Dec 26, 2019 10:20 p.m. ET
BEIJING--Chinese industrial companies returned to profit growth in
November, in line with recovering factory production as government policies
start to take effect.
Industrial profits rose 5.4% on year to 593.9 billion yuan ($84.9
billion) last month compared with October's 9.9% on-year decline, according to
data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday.
In the first 11 months of the year, China's industrial businesses
recorded a 2.1% profit decline from the same period a year ago, the bureau
said.
China's bloated state enterprises posted the biggest profit decline in
the January-to-November period, falling 11.2% on year. Private companies were
the only group that record profit growth in the 11-month period with a 6.5%
on-year rise.
China's Xi turns to financial experts to tame economic risks
December 27, 2019
/ 5:13 AM
SINGAPORE/BEIJING
(Reuters) - As China struggles to deal with the slowdown of the world’s
second-largest economy, it has embarked on a new strategy of placing financial
experts in provinces to manage risks and rebuild regional economies.
Since 2018, President Xi Jinping has put 12 former executives at
state-run financial institutions or regulators in top posts across China’s 31
provinces，regions and
municipalities, including some who have grappled with banking and debt
difficulties that have raised fears of financial meltdown.
Only two top provincial officials had such financial background before
the last big leadership reshuffle in 2012, according to Reuters research.
Among financial experts recently promoted is Beijing vice mayor Yin
Yong, a former deputy central bank governor, and Shandong deputy provincial
governor Liu Qiang, who rose through the country’s biggest commercial banks,
from Agricultural Bank of China to Bank of China.
Another newly promoted official, Chongqing vice mayor Li Bo, had until
this year led the central bank’s monetary policy department.
The appointments - overseeing economies larger than those of small
countries - would appear to put those officials in the fast lane as China
prepares a personnel reshuffle in 2022, when about half of the 25 members of
the Politburo could be replaced, including Liu He, a vice-premier who is
leading economic reform while doubling as chief negotiator in U.S. trade talks.
More
Finally, more on the insanity of negative interest rates.
Our central banksters have run out of ammo and talent.
Deepening negative rates would do more harm than good - ex-BoJ deputy governor Mutoh
December 27,
2019 / 3:52 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan has nearly exhausted its policy
ammunition to boost the economy as deepening negative interest rates, seen as
the most likely step if it were to expand stimulus, will do more harm than
good, former BOJ Deputy Governor Toshiro Mutoh said.
Under a policy dubbed yield curve control (YCC), the BOJ guides
short-term interest rates at -0.1% and long-term rates around 0% via huge asset
buying to hit its 2% inflation target.
Mutoh, who retains influence on economic policy due to his close ties
with incumbent financial bureaucrats, said it made sense for the BOJ to
maintain its massive stimulus as inflation remained distant from its target.
But he questioned BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s argument that the
central bank could take short-term rates deeper into negative territory if the
economy needed more stimulus.
“There are too many demerits to deepening negative rates,” Mutoh told
Reuters in an interview conducted on Thursday.
“Even if the BOJ judged that it needs to ease, the tools available are
limited. It would be hard for the BOJ to do anything more that would have a
positive impact on the economy,” said Mutoh, currently honorary chairman at
private think tank Daiwa Institute of Research.
The remarks by Mutoh, a former colleague of Kuroda during their stints
at the Ministry of Finance, underscore the challenge the BOJ faces in balancing
the need to support the economy and minimising the strain put financial
institutions’ profits by prolonged ultra-low interest rates.
Japan also has little room to deploy large-scale fiscal stimulus given
its huge public debt, Mutoh said, warning against overly relying on spending
packages to spur growth.
More
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, more on those naughty European car makers again. They can resist
anything, except temptation in North America. US auto tariffs anyone?
BMW probed by SEC over sales practices
BERLIN -- The
Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into German
luxury car maker BMW AG, a company spokesman said on Monday.
The SEC is
looking into whether the Munich-based auto maker engaged in the practice known
as sales punching in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.
Sale punching
occurs when a company boosts sales figures by having dealers register cars as
sold when the vehicles actually are still standing on car lots.
"We have
been contacted by the SEC and will cooperate fully with their
investigation," the spokesman told The Wall Street Journal, declining to
elaborate further on the investigation.
The SEC
couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
The probe comes
as the U.S. officials continue to pursue companies suspected of falsifying data
and misleading investors.
Fiat Chrysler
Automobiles N.V. in September agreed to pay $40 million to settle claims by the
SEC that the company had for years paid dealers to report exaggerated sales
numbers. The company said at the time it had reviewed and refined its sales
reporting procedures and was committed to maintaining strong controls.
The company
also revised monthly sales results going back several years, nullifying a
75-month streak of sales increases. Under those revised methods, the streak
ended in September 2013, three years earlier than previously stated.
This year, Fiat
Chrysler joined General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. in ending the practice of
reporting monthly U.S. sales numbers. The Detroit companies now report their
U.S. sales quarterly, while most other major car companies still disclose
results each month.
The SEC
investigation also follows 2015 indictments against Volkswagen AG on charges of
defrauding U.S. consumers and the U.S. government and violating the Clean Air
Act by rigging diesel-powered vehicles to cheat emissions test. That case was
brought by the Justice Department.
Volkswagen
pleaded guilty to the charges in 2016 and has faced more than $30 billion in
fines, penalties, and compensation fees.
In addition,
BMW faces litigation by European authorities on allegations of colluding with
rivals to manipulate prices on technology to control emissions. BMW, which has
vowed to fight the case, in April took a $1.1 billion charge against earnings
as a provision for potential fines from the case.
BMW sold
322,862 vehicles in the U.S. in the first nine months of the year, an increase
of 1.7% from a year ago, including its namesake BMW brands and its Mini brand.
BMW also has
been under pressure in the U.S. because of the Trump administration's trade war
with China, which has hit BMW's SUV exports from its Spartanburg, S.C.,
factory. BMW has responded by shifting some production from the U.S. to China.
The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.
Mark
Twain.
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?
Tweaks behind the rebirth of nearly discarded organic solar technologies
Date:
December 19, 2019
Source:
Georgia Institute of Technology
Summary:
A minuscule chemical tweak is advancing an organic solar technology that was
once thought unviable.
A solar energy material that is remarkably durable and affordable is
regrettably also unusable if it barely generates electricity, thus many
researchers had abandoned emerging organic solar technologies. But lately, a
shift in the underlying chemistry has boosted power output, and a new study has
revealed counterintuitive tweaks making the new chemistry successful.
The shift is from "fullerene" to "non-fullerene
acceptors" (NFAs), terms detailed below, and in photovoltaic electricity
generation, the acceptor is a molecule with the potential to be to electrons
what a catcher is to a baseball. Corresponding donor molecules
"pitch" electrons to acceptor "catchers" to create electric
current. Highly cited chemist Jean-Luc Brédas at the Georgia Institute of
Technology has furthered the technology and also led the new study.
"NFAs are complex beasts and do things that current silicon solar
technology does not. You can shape them, make them semi-transparent or colored.
But their big potential is in the possibility of fine-tuning how they free up
and move electrons to generate electricity," said Brédas, a Regents Professor
in Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Gaining on silicon
In just the last four years, tuning NFA chemistry has boosted organic
photovoltaic technology from initially converting only 1% of sunlight into
electricity to 18% conversion in recent experiments. By comparison,
high-quality silicon solar modules already on the market convert about 20%.
"Theory says we should be able to reach over 25% conversion with
organic NFA-based solar if we can control energy loss by way of the
morphology," said Tonghui Wang, a postdoctoral researcher in Brédas' lab
and first author of the study.
Morphology, the shapes molecules take in a material, is key to NFA solar
technology's heightened efficiency, but how that works on the molecular level
has been a mystery. The new study carefully modeled tiny tweaks to molecular
shapes and calculated corresponding energy conversion in a common NFA electron
donor/acceptor pairing.
----Marketable NFA-based solar cells could have many advantages over silicon, which requires mining quartz gravel, smelting it like iron, purifying it like steel, then cutting and machining it. By contrast, organic solar cells start as inexpensive solvents that can be printed onto surfaces.
Silicon cells are usually stiff and heavy and weaken with heat and light
stress, whereas NFA-based solar cells are light, flexible, and
stress-resistant. They also have more complex photoelectric properties. In
NFA-based photoactive layers, when photons excite electrons out of the outer
orbits of donor molecules, the electrons dance around the electron holes they
have created, setting them up for a customized handoff to acceptors.
More
If you
pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is
the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November
DJIA: 28,051 +76 Up. NASDAQ: 8,665 +94 Up. SP500: 3,141 +90 Up. All higher again, but it’s
not a buy signal I would follow. I would wait for the next sell signal.
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