Saturday 28 December 2019

Weekend Update 28/12/2019 2020 The Sunlit Uplands for GB Beckon.


Baltic Dry Index. 1090 -13 Brent Crude 68.16 Spot Gold 1511

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.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Mark Twain

It’s near to the end of 2019, a year remembered for the Fed caving in to President Trump and setting off the Great Everything bubble, which if/when it all goes awry, might yet usher in the next Great Depression. Certainly, the end of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, communist money, as we currently know it.

A time of year to be positive though, in the spirit of our new “roaring 20s” age. While extreme left-wing lunatics rant and rave in the “Comrade Corbynistic” USA Democratic Party, they all seem headed towards a Comrade Corbyn style comeuppance in next November’s presidential election. Does history repeat? America’s Democrats seems determined to find out next year.

Just as Maggie Thatcher was “John the Baptist,” to Ronald Reagan, without the same grisly ending, so Comrade Corbyn seems to be that role model for the thousands of obscure extreme left wing Democrats, auditioning for the US role of Comrade Corbyn in next year’s US presidential election.

“It’s a funny old world,” as they saye in Merrie Olde England. While John Bull breaks out of the European continent’s wealth and jobs destroying prison, how many more will break out next year into the sunlit uplands and well-watered plains of 21st century economic opportunity?

I wonder what they make of it in Moscow and Beijing?

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Mark Twain

Nasdaq snaps 11-session win streak but Dow and S&P 500 end at records to wrap up Christmas week trade

By Mark DeCambre  Published: Dec 27, 2019 4:06 p.m. ET
U.S. stock benchmarks on Friday closed out a holiday-shortened week modestly lower, as the main indexes lost steam at the end of a stretch that has mostly seen investors scoop up risky assets with just two trading sessions remaining in 2019. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.17% snapped an 11-day streak, finishing down 0.2%, at 9,006, holing above a psychologically significant level at 9000, which it broke above for the first time on Thursday. The technology-laden index had produced 11 straight gains and 10 consecutive record finishes before Friday's close.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.08% finished slightly higher at 28,645, marking a fresh record, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.00% ended the session virtually unchanged at 3,240 (and could notch a record if it settles in the green. All closing levels are on a preliminary basis). All three benchmarks ended Thursday trade at all-time highs and have produced healthy weekly gains.

For the week, the Nasdaq logged a 0.9% gain, the S&P 500 closed up 0.6% and the Dow gained 0.7% on the week. In corporate news, shares of Tesla Inc. TSLA, -0.13% finished slightly lower, down 0.1%, even as the electric-car maker said it was set to deliver China-made Model 3 cars starting on Monday. Separately, shares of Michaels Cos. MIK, +32.89% surged 33% after the arts-and-crafts retailer said it was hiring Ashley Buchanan, a top e-commerce executive from Walmart Inc. WMT, +0.06% to become its president and CEO. Markets will see another abbreviated session next week, with markets closed for the New Year on Wednesday.

Here’s a warning for investors who are tempted by this year-end rally for stocks

By Barbara Kollmeyer  Published: Dec 27, 2019 10:33 a.m. ET

----Onto our call of the day, which warns individual investors against getting sucked into this Santa Rally, lest they want to pay the piper come January.

“This is the time to be taking profits, not adding new money. Without a doubt, most of the people buying today will come to regret that decision over the next few weeks as prices dip back under these levels,” writes popular financial blogger Jani Ziedins of Cracked Market. While he says that a pullback may not occur until February.

That bit of gloom flies in the face of optimism that’s been swirling around — that stocks are due for some first-quarter lift off. However, as Ziedins reminds us, “institutional money managers are on vacation and not participating in this price action.

 “That means whatever happens over the next few days is meaningless and has no bearing on what comes next,” said Ziedins. In fact, it could have the opposite effect. “A good few days now could be stealing profits from January and the higher we go now, the less room we have left next month,” he says.

To be sure, someone has to be trading all those Amazon shares. See the stat below.

After Thursday’s record session, the Dow DJIA, +0.08%  , S&P 500 SPX, +0.00%   are up, but the Nasdaq COMP, -0.17%  is slipping. The dollar DXY, -0.53% is down. Europe stocks SXXP, +0.21% are mixed, while Asia markets ADOW, +0.83% gained, thanks to Wall Street’s rally.

Our chart comes from The Market Ear blog, which shows the rising and falling fortunes of two exchange-traded funds this year. On the upside, we’ve got the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, -0.02%, which is a popular play on that index, while the cannabis-company focused ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF MJ, -0.18% shows just how tough 2019 has been for that nascent sector.
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-a-warning-for-investors-who-are-tempted-by-this-end-year-run-up-for-stocks-2019-12-27?mod=home-page

Recession, robots and rockets: another roaring 20s for world markets?

December 27, 2019 / 10:24 AM

LONDON (Reuters) - Helicopter cash, climate crises, smart cities and the space economy — investors have all those possibilities ahead as they enter the third decade of the 21st century.

They go into the new decade with a spring in their step, after watching world stocks add over $25 trillion in value in the past 10 years and a bond rally put $13 trillion worth of bond yields below zero.

They also saw internet-based firms transform the way humans work, shop and relax. Now investors 
are positioning for the tech revolution’s next 10 years.

Could we see a repeat of the roaring twenties, as the 1920s were known — years of prosperity, technological innovation and such social developments as women winning the right to vote?

Possibly. But there’s unease, along with all the euphoria. The current economic cycle is already the longest in U.S. history and a recession looks inevitable in the new decade — which also will mark 100 years since the Wall Street crash of 1929.

And solutions may need to be unconventional, even more so than the extraordinary policies of negative interest rates and bond-buying that eased the post-2008 global funk.

With those policies maxed out, “in the 2020s it seems inevitable that a world of helicopter money awaits,” Deutsche Bank predicts.

That would entail central banks or governments providing citizens with large amounts of money, as though it was being dropped from helicopters, a strategy rejected even by the unorthodox policymakers of the 2010s.

Another radical option under discussion is modern monetary theory, when governments create and spend as much money as needed, so long as inflation stays low.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-markets-outlook-2030-analysis/recession-robots-and-rockets-another-roaring-20s-for-world-markets-idUKKBN1YV0QQ

Finally, something different, but interesting, for the last weekend of 2019.

12.27.2019 10:00 AM

This Cave Contains the Oldest Story Ever Recorded

Archaeologists say the 43,900-year-old cave painting might also include the oldest known religious images.

At this very moment, you're a participant in one of the things that makes us human: the telling and consumption of stories. It's impossible to say when our species began telling each other stories—or when we first evolved the ability to use language to communicate not only simple, practical concepts but to share vivid accounts of events real or imagined. But by 43,900 years ago, people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi had started painting some of their stories in images on cave walls.

A newly discovered painting in a remote cave depicts a hunting scene, and it's the oldest story that has been recorded. And if Griffith University archaeologist Maxime Aubert and his colleagues are right, it could also be the first record of spiritual belief—and our first insight into what the makers of cave art were thinking.

A 44,000-Year-Old Hunting Story

Across a 4.5 meter (14.8 foot) section of rock wall, 3 meters (9.8 feet) above the floor of a hard-to-reach upper chamber of a site called Liang Bulu'Sipong 4, wild pigs and dwarf buffalo called anoa face off against a group of strangely tiny hunters in monochrome dark red. A dark red hand stencil adorns the left end of the mural, almost like an ancient artist's signature. Through an opening in the northeast wall of the cave, sunlight spills in to illuminate the scene.

Liang Bulu'Sipong 4 is a living cave, still being reshaped by flowing water, and layers of rock have begun to grow over the painting in spots. The minerals that form those layers include small traces of uranium, which over time decays into thorium-230. Unlike the uranium, the thorium isn't water-soluble and can only get into the rock via decay. By measuring the ratio of uranium-234 to thorium-230 in the rock, archaeologists can tell how recently the rock layer formed.

The deposits have been slowly growing over the hunting mural for at least 49,300 years, which means the painting itself may be even older than that. That makes the Liang Bulu'Sipong 4 mural the oldest record (that we know of) of an actual story. At first glance, it seems to suggest a game drive, in which people flush animals from cover and drive them toward a line of hunters with spears or other weapons. If Aubert and his colleagues are right about that, it means that somebody 44,000 years ago created a firsthand record of how they made a living.

A Scene From Legend?

But the oldest story ever recorded by human hands may be something more than a hunting record. "Some, or all, aspects of this imagery may not pertain to human experiences in the real world," wrote Aubert and his colleagues. Up close, the tiny hunters don't look quite human; many of them have strangely elongated faces, more like animal muzzles or snouts. One has a tail, and another appears to have a beak.
More

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Mark Twain

This weekend’s musical diversion.  Prague’s almost unknown Antonin Reichenauer, who died at the early age of 35 or 36.

Reichenauer - Sonata For Two Trumpets, Timpani, Strings And Basso Continuo


Antonin Reichenauer

Finally, on this date in the past:

1065 Westminster Abbey consecrated.

1612 Galileo first observes the planet Neptune.

1836  The colony of Adelaide, and British province of  South Australia is formally 
proclaimed.

1846 Iowa becomes 29th state of the USA.

1879 The Tay railway bridge disaster happens.

1926 Imperial Airways commences England – India services.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

William McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

‘Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

----So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

More, sadly much, much more bad Scots poetry from the “worst poet in history.”

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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