Baltic Dry Index. 1123 -28 Brent Crude 66.14
Spot Gold 1482
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.
“I’m just a banker doing God’s work”
Lloyd Blankfein,former CEO Goldman Sachs. “Mr. Goldman Sacks.”
With the Fed monetising faster than a
drunken sailor spends, the Great Fed funded Trump re-election Stock Market
bubble, soars on. To this old dinosaur market follower since 1968, it’s still
an exit bubble not an entry bubble. Stormy times lie directly ahead.
But unless or until the Fed stops
monetising, the Great Final Trump Bubble makes Trump’s re-election look unstoppable.
With the Democratic Party headed off into the Comrade Corbyn swamps of the far
left, a Trumpian second term look all but assured.
Below, a far different picture from December
2018, when the Fed caved in to President Trump.
"There are some gambling banksters upon this earth of yours," returned God, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in “Gods” name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.”
With apologies to A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens.
S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq close at record highs, notch fourth straight week of gains
By Chris
Matthews and Joy
Wiltermuth Published: Dec 20, 2019
4:55 p.m. ET
U.S. stock indexes again set records Friday, after
encouraging U.S. economic data and optimism about international trade deals
helped end the decade’s last full week of trading on a high note.The benchmark S&P 500 index rose for seven of the last eight days and has now risen for four consecutive weeks.
Check out: Here’s when markets will be closed for Christmas and the New Year
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.28% rose 78.13 points, or 0.3%, at 28,455, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.49% added 15.85 points, or 0.5% to 3,221.22, while the Nasdaq Composite index COMP, +0.42% picked up 37.74 points, or 0.4%, at 8,924.96.
The Dow, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite index all ended at record closing highs.
Year-to-date the Dow is up 21.98%, the S&P 500 up 28.55 and the Nasdaq up 34.51%
On Thursday, the Dow rose 137.68 points, or 0.5%, to a record 28,376.9 close, while the S&P 500 index gained 14.23 points, or 0.5%, at 3,205.37, its all-time high. The Nasdaq Composite Index added 59.48 points, a gain of 0.7%, at 8,887.22, extending its seventh-day winning streak and setting another record.
The Commerce Department’s third estimate of third-quarter GDP, published Friday, left growth unchanged 2.1%, with strong consumer spending offset by weaker business investment in inventories.
In other U.S. economic data, Americans increased spending in November at the fastest rate in four months, suggesting households still have plenty of buying power to keep the economy growing at a steady pace through the holiday shopping season.
---- Congress also passed spending bills Thursday to avoid a partial government shutdown and the White House confirmed President Trump would sign the bills.
“If the
economy is not rolling over and going into a recession ditch, and tame core
consumer inflation is low at 1.6 percent, you can bet your bottom dollar, the
Federal Reserve is going to keep enough punch in the punch bowl to make sure
that 2020 is going to be a super year for stocks,” MUFG chief economist Chris
Rukey wrote in a note. “The S&P 500 is paying more in dividends than the
Federal Reserve is paying on cash.”
Morehttps://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-futures-drift-higher-as-investors-watch-for-gdp-update-with-stocks-headed-for-weekly-gains-2019-12-20?mod=home-page
In great UK news, Christmas came early.
After 46 years in the EUSSR jail, 3
years of a clown Parliament, 3 years of media and deep state establishment
blocking of Brexit, Great Britain is now just 41 days away from escape and release
from that EUSSR prison.
UK on track for January 31 Brexit as PM Johnson wins vote on deal
December 19, 2019 / 10:35 PM
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris
Johnson won approval for his Brexit deal in parliament on Friday, the first
step towards fulfilling his election pledge to deliver Britain’s departure from
the European Union by Jan. 31 after his landslide victory.
Lawmakers voted by 358 to 234 to pass the
second reading of the legislation, underlining Johnson’s large majority in
parliament that should ensure a smooth ratification of the divorce deal to
implement Britain’s biggest policy shift in more than 40 years.
More than
three years since Britain voted to exit the EU in a 2016 referendum, the deep uncertainty
over Brexit has now been replaced by a firm deadline of the end of January.
Only after that will the prime minister face talks to secure a trade deal with
the bloc and another target date of the end of next year.
Getting “the
Brexit vote wrapped up for Christmas” was the main aim for Johnson showing
that, unlike his predecessor Theresa May who was thwarted in parliament, he now
has free rein to drive Brexit forward despite continued criticism from
opposition lawmakers.
---- The final stages of ratification will
take place after Christmas, with the lower house of parliament having until
Jan. 9 to approve the legislation, or Withdrawal Agreement Bill, giving it just
over three weeks to then pass through the upper house and receive Royal Assent.
The European Commission said it was ready
to take formal steps to adopt the deal on its side too.
More
UK economy's growth in third quarter revised up, smallest current account gap since 2012
December 20, 2019 / 9:39 AM
LONDON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Britain’s
economy grew a little faster in the third quarter than first estimated and the
country’s current account deficit shrank to its smallest since 2012, official
data showed on Friday.
Figures from
the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the economy grew 0.4% in the
third quarter of the year, better than a previous estimate of 0.3% and boosted
by upward revisions to services and construction output.
A Reuters
poll of economists had pointed to an unrevised reading.
The ONS said
a surge in goods exports helped Britain’s current account deficit narrow to
15.860 billion pounds in the third quarter of 2019 from 24.152 billion pounds
in the second quarter, roughly in line with expectations.
As a
percentage of economic output, the deficit fell to 2.8%, its smallest since
early 2012.
More
Next, Boeing ends a disastrous year in
style. 2020 can only be better, can’t it? I mean, it can’t get worse, can it?
Boeing's Starliner astronaut capsule fails key test to reach space station
December 20, 2019 / 11:51 AM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Boeing
Co’s new astronaut capsule failed after liftoff on Friday to climb high enough
in orbit to reach the International Space Station, cutting short a critical
unmanned test mission in the embattled aerospace giant’s race to send humans to
the orbital outpost.
The CST-100
Starliner astronaut capsule was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral in
Florida, but an automated timer error, which Boeing could not immediately
explain, prevented the spacecraft from attaining the orbit that would have put
it on track to rendezvous and dock with the space station, NASA said.
The
Starliner’s debut launch to orbit was a milestone test for Boeing, which is
vying with SpaceX, the privately held rocket company of billionaire high-tech
entrepreneur Elon Musk, to revive NASA’s human spaceflight capabilities. SpaceX
carried out a successful unmanned flight of its Crew Dragon capsule to the
space station in March.
The
Starliner setback came as Boeing, whose shares dropped 1.6% on the day, sought
an engineering and public relations victory in a year punctuated by a corporate
crisis over the grounding of its 737 MAX jetliner following two fatal crashes
of that aircraft.
The
implications for any further design and testing requirements before Starliner
is approved for its first crewed mission also remained unclear. The prospect
that Boeing might need to repeat an unmanned orbital test flight could
substantially delay NASA’s timeline and drive up costs.
The plan now
is for the capsule to return to Earth on Sunday, about a week ahead of
schedule, parachuting to the ground at its designated landing site in White
Sands, New Mexico, Boeing’s space chief executive, Jim Chilton, said.
The craft,
while stable, has already burned too much fuel to risk further manoeuvres
trying to dock with the space station at this point, NASA Administrator Jim
Bridenstine said at a news conference.
More
Finally, a boondoggle project that GB’s
new majority government should kill off ASAP. Let price rationing of landing
and take-off slots at the existing runways at Heathrow, solve the overcrowding
at London’s main airport. What’s wrong with a market based solution?
Heathrow's new runway delayed until at least 2028
December 20, 2019 / 8:56 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - An expansion plan for
Britain’s Heathrow Airport will be delayed by more than a year and a third
runway now will probably be completed between early 2028 and late 2029, the
airport said.
The delay
came after Britain’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, said the
airport could not increase its spending on early construction costs to ensure
that the runway was built by the end of 2026, as it wanted.
The CAA said
it was in the best interests of consumers for Heathrow to spend more than 1.6
billion pounds on early construction, rejecting the airport’s 2.4 billion-pound
plan.
British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has opposed Heathrow’s expansion, but parliament
has approved the 14 billion-pound plans, which include building the first
full-length new runway in the London area for 70 years.
The
expansion plan is also opposed by climate change protesters and some local
residents. It is being challenged in the courts.
The CAA said
that limiting costs to 1.6 billion pounds was in the best interests of
passengers, who could end up footing the bill through higher airport charges if
Heathrow does not win planning permission.
More
This weekend’s musical diversion. Italy’s Arcangelo Corelli again.
Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto in D Major Op. 6 No. 4, complete. Voices of Music; original instruments
Once again, another year draws to a close and it’s
time for my annual year-end appeal.
If you are a regular reader who finds the LIR
informative, interesting, occasionally amusing or entertaining, please consider
making a small donation via the Paypal button on the right of the LIR website.
For obvious reasons in our new age of mainstream media fake news, and data
tracking, I want to keep the LIR advertising free, but capitalist. But in any
event thank you for reading and sending along helpful articles and suggestions.
Christmas is coming and the
geese are getting fat, Please put a trillion in the banksters’ hat. If you
haven’t got a trillion a billion will do, If you haven’t got a billion, God
damn you!
Ebenezer Squid
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November
DJIA: 28,051
+63 Up. NASDAQ: 8,665 +94 Up. SP500: 3,141 +90 Up. All higher again, but it’s not a buy signal I would
follow.
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