Baltic Dry Index. 418 +07 Brent Crude 54.91 Spot
Gold 1565
Brexit Freedom
Underway
Trump’s Nuclear
China Tariffs Now in effect.
Coronavirus Cases
12/2/20 China 45,653 Deaths 1115 (Maybe.)
Markets
can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
John
Maynard Keynes.
Despite
the continuing central bank fuelled bubble in stocks, and propaganda figures
from China on the still rising coronavirus crisis, this old dinosaur market
trader, following commodity and stock markets since 1968, thinks this is still
an exit take profits rally. Probably the sell of the new century so far.
But
with the Fedsters still adding in new quantitative easing, via repos of 50+
billion each day, this is no time to start shorting stocks, though creating
synthetic double option plays in the US stock futures markets, looks very interesting
here for high risk speculators.
Asian markets rise despite coronavirus concerns
By Associated Press
Published: Feb 11, 2020 10:34 p.m. ET
TOKYO — Asian shares were higher Wednesday, although the
outbreak of a new virus in the region continued to weigh on investor
sentiments.Japan’s Nikkei 225 NIK, +0.74% rose 0.5% in morning trading. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 XJO, +0.47% gained 0.6% and South Korea’s Kospi 180721, +0.69% was about flat. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng HSI, +1.02% added 0.7%, while the Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +0.78% inched up 0.1%.
“Despite coronavirus concerns, investors tend to believe that central banks and policymakers have measures to stimulate the economy during and post the public health crisis,” said CMC Markets in a report.
China reported 97 more deaths from the new disease, named COVID-19, pushing the total dead past 1,100, even as the country remained largely closed down to prevent its spread. The number of cases worldwide is about 45,000, all but a few hundred in China.
Investor sentiments in Asia were also cheered somewhat by Wall Street, where modest gains overnight nudged the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to all-time highs for the second straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished essentially flat.
Investors weighed another batch of mostly solid company earnings reports. Sprint S, +77.50% soared after a federal judge cleared a major obstacle to the company being acquired by T-Mobile TMUS, +11.78% . Cruise operators, hotels and other companies that focus on travel made solid gains, the latest sign that traders are feeling less worried about the economic impact from the virus outbreak.
“Stocks are collectively saying, ‘Hey, maybe we can work past some of the noise with the virus; maybe the fallout won’t be as big as we thought,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird. “And the U.S. economy, so far at least, looks like it’s weathering it pretty well.”
The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.17% rose 5.66 points, or 0.2%, to 3,357.75. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.00% slipped 0.48 points, or less than 0.1%, to 29,276.34. It had been up 0.5%. The Nasdaq composite COMP, +0.11% gained 10.55 points, or 0.1%, to 9,638.94.
After a downbeat January, U.S. stocks have been mostly notching gains this month as traders brush off fears about the virus outbreak and its impact on businesses and the global economy. Beijing has promised to take measures to soften the blow to China’s economy and investors are hopeful that other governments will do the same if necessary.
Benchmark crude oil CLH20, +1.42% added 60 cents to $50.54 a barrel. It rose 37 cents to settle at $49.94 a barrel. Brent crude oil BRNJ20, +1.93% , the international standard, gained 92 cents to close at $54.93 a barrel.
Coronavirus cases fall, experts disagree over whether peak is near
February 12, 2020
/ 2:54 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China on Wednesday reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases since
late January, lending weight to a prediction from its senior medical adviser
that the outbreak could be over by April.
Global markets took heart from the outlook but other international
experts remain alarmed by the spread of the flu-like virus, which has killed
more than 1,100 people, all but two in mainland China, and said optimism could
be premature.
China’s foremost medical adviser on the outbreak, Zhong Nanshan, said
the numbers of new cases were falling in some provinces, and forecast the
epidemic would peak this month.
“I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like
April,” Zhong, an epidemiologist whose previous forecast of an earlier peak
turned out to be premature, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Total cases of the new coronavirus in China have hit 44,653, according
to health officials, including 2,015 (???) new confirmed cases on
Tuesday. That was the lowest daily rise in new cases since Jan. 30.
China last week amended its guidelines on prevention and control of the
coronavirus, saying that only when asymptomatic cases show clinical signs
should they be recorded as a confirmed case. However, it is not clear if the government
data previously included asymptomatic cases.
The number of deaths on the mainland rose by 97 to 1,113 by the end of
Tuesday.
More
Coronavirus emergency 'holds a very grave threat' for world - WHO
February 11, 2020
/ 9:22 AM
GENEVA (Reuters) -
China’s coronavirus outbreak poses a “very grave threat for the rest of the world”,
the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday in an appeal
for sharing virus samples and speeding up research into drugs and vaccines.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was addressing the start
of a two-day meeting aimed at accelerating development of drugs, diagnostics
and vaccines against the flu-like virus amid growing concerns about its ability
to spread.
To date China has reported 42,708 confirmed cases, including 1,017
deaths, Tedros said.
“With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for
that country, but one that
holds a very grave threat for the rest of the
world,” he told more than 400 researchers and national authorities, including
some taking part by video conference from mainland China and Taiwan.
Tedros, speaking to reporters on Monday, referred to “some concerning
instances of onward transmission from people with no travel history to China”,
citing cases this week in France and Britain. Five British nationals were
diagnosed with the coronavirus in France, after staying in the same ski chalet
with a person who had been in Singapore.
“The detection of this small number of cases could be the spark that
becomes a bigger fire. But for now it’s only a spark. Our objective remains
containment,” he said.
Hong Kong residents evacuated from a residential building where a man
and woman confirmed with coronavirus live tested negative for the virus, health
authorities said on Tuesday, easing concerns of a cluster of the outbreak in
the Chinese-ruled city.
Many questions remain about the origin of the virus, which emerged at a
wildlife market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, and is spread
by people in droplets from coughing or sneezing.
More
Iran woman dies of suspected coronavirus infection - state daily IRAN
February 12,
2020 / 6:37 AM
DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iranian woman has died of a suspected coronavirus
infection, the state daily newspaper IRAN reported on Wednesday, without citing
any sources.
The 63-year-old woman died in a Tehran hospital on Monday, the newspaper
said, and an investigation has been ordered into the cause of her death.
A spokesman for Iran’s Health Ministry, Kianush Jahanpour, denied the
report.
“There have been no cases of coronavirus in Iran,” he said.
Iranian health authorities have repeatedly said there were no confirmed
cases of coronavirus in the country.
The coronavirus now officially named as COVID-19 has killed more than
1,100 people in China, with total confirmed cases there topping 44,650 as of
Feb. 11. [nL8N2AB6U4]
Hundreds of cases have been reported in dozens of countries and
territories around the world.
Singapore bank DBS evacuates 300 staff after coronavirus case surfaces
·
As a precautionary measure, all 300 colleagues
on Level 43 at MBFC have been evacuated and will work from home, the lender
said
·
Singapore has reported 47 cases of coronavirus,
one of the highest number of infections outside China
Published: 2:47pm, 12 Feb, 2020
Singapore’s biggest bank DBS evacuated 300 staff from its head office on
Wednesday as a precautionary measure following a confirmed coronavirus case at the bank, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
“I regret to inform you that there is one confirmed case of coronavirus
at DBS Asia Central on Level 43 today,” Singapore country head, Tse Koon Shee
said in the memo.
“As a precautionary measure, all 300 colleagues on Level 43 at MBFC have
been evacuated and will work from home for the time being.”
When contacted for comment, DBS said it would put out a statement
shortly.
Singapore has
reported 47 cases of coronavirus, one of the highest number of cases outside
China where it has already claimed over 1,100 lives
China to introduce new coronavirus precautions as 160 million head back to work
Updated 0703 GMT (1503 HKT) February 12,
2020
Hong Kong (CNN)China expects around 160 million employees to return to their workplaces
in the next week, as the country seeks to minimize the economic impact of the
novel coronavirus.
Next
Tuesday marks the official end of the Lunar New Year period, an auspicious
occasion on the Chinese calendar, that this year has been marred by the viral
illness that has claimed more than 1,110 lives in mainland China.
The
huge mobilization of people comes despite prior warnings for citizens to avoid
large crowds. In a news briefing Tuesday, Chinese officials said action would
be taken to reduce the risk of transmission.
These
include limiting the carrying capacity of long-distance coaches, enhancing the
sterilization of public transport, and carrying out temperature checks on
passengers, said Xu Yahua, Director of Transport Services Department.
Deaths
at the center of the outbreak, in Hubei province, appeared to have peaked
Wednesday, though concern was growing over the situation on a cruise ship
docked in Japan, where a quarantine officer himself became the latest case.
An
additional 1,638 confirmed cases were reported in Hubei, central China, as of
Wednesday morning. That is a lower increase than the previous day, suggesting
that the spread of the virus may be leveling off in the central province.
A
large question mark hangs over those figures, however. There remains
uncertainty surrounding the efficiency of virus testing methods, as well as the
length of the incubation period. Hospitals in Wuhan and elsewhere in Hubei are
overwhelmed and struggling to cope, making it possible that some people with
the virus may have been unable to see a doctor for diagnosis.
More
Finally, with much of
China in lock down, and China a major global supplier to the world of
pharmaceuticals, is a drug supply crisis coming next?
The World's Pharma Trade: Which Countries Buy & Sell the Most Drugs?
The pharmaceutical industry is incredibly valuable and is continuing to grow. But just how much of the world’s imports and exports involve pharmaceuticals? To understand the impact of the pharmaceutical industry on the world’s economy, we created two visualizations to demonstrate pharmaceutical imports and exports by country in 2018.- ---- The United States is, by far, the world’s biggest importer of pharmaceuticals at $99.7 billion.
- As the opioid crisis in the United States carries on, pharmaceutical companies are being scrutinized, as was demonstrated in the Johnson and Johnson settlement.
- Despite scrutiny, the pharmaceutical industry is continuing to grow at a rapid rate.
- Pharmaceutical companies are being forced to pay hefty fines for their role in the opioid epidemic.
More
https://howmuch.net/articles/pharmaceutical-trade-around-the-world
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, more on those Chinese propaganda coronavirus figures.
This Is How China Is Rigging The Number Of Coronavirus Infections
by Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/11/2020 - 03:49
We knew something was off a few days ago when China's National Health Commission reported that
the number of people receiving medical attention over the Coronavirus unexpectedly peaked after rising at roughly 15,000-20,000 each day, and flatlined ever since, even posting three days of declines in the past week.
The sense that China was manipulating the data only grew overnight when according to the latest NHC data, the number of suspected coronavirus cases suddenly plunged by more than 5,000 to 23,589 from 28,942 the day before.
All of this emerged even as China reported a welcome, if suspicious tapering in the number of new cases, which had plateaued at just over 3,000 (a number which according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb was not indicative of the actual infection spread but merely China's ability to conduct at most 3,000 successful tests per day) and have since been declining.
In retrospect it turns out that China indeed "took steps" to
demonstrate to the world that it was winning the war against the coronavirus.
And since it wasn't doing so in the real world, it decided to do so by engaging
in the oldest trick in the Chinese book: by moving the goal posts and changing
the definition of what an "infection" means.
As reported by local media this morning, the Chinese National Health
Commission quietly changed its definition of Coronavirus "confirmed case"
in the latest guideline dated 7/2. As a result, going forward patients who
tested positive for the virus but have no symptoms will no longer be regarded
as confirmed. As Alex Lam observes, "this inevitably will lower the
numbers."
As Apple Daily reports, in the latest, fourth edition of the NHC protocol, "mild" is classified as "confirmed cases" but "asymptomatic infected persons" is defined as "persons with no clinical symptoms, respiratory tract specimens, etc. who are positive for new coronavirus pathogenic tests." As a result, "asymptomatic infection" no longer counts as confirmed cases.
Conveniently, the new rule has triggered provinces "to find cases that can be deducted from the total number of confirmed cases." For example, Heilongjiang has axed 13 cases from their tally stating the new definition. Hubei has deducted 87 cases today, but authorities did not explain why."
In total, over 100 cases have been deducted from the running "confirmed case" total over the past 2 days, while also impacting the number of suspected cases. The concerning problem, however, is that authorities do not disclose the number of symptom-less infected patients after they count them separately, and as Alex Lam cautions, "there will be no way of knowing the exact magnitude of the outbreak."
This, of course, is a problem because as a recent article written by a
team led by Dr. Zhong Nanshan, suggested the WuhanCoronavirus can be
transmitted by infected patients even they without them showing symptoms, which
is what makes the virus so infectious, as "sick people could be spreading
it without knowing."
One final note: China's bizarre change in definition conflicts with that
of the WHO itself which put out an interim guidance on the Wuhan Coronavirus
last month, when it present a definition for Confirmed Case: "person with
laboratory confirmation irrespective of clinical signs and symptoms. It is very
clear. "
This shocking "change in definition" of a coronavirus infection naturally prompts the question: just how is China gaming the other infection data to make the disease appear more contained, and more manageable, and can one even remotely trust the official coronavirus numbers published by the National Health Commission?
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/how-china-rigging-number-coronavirus-infections
Hong Kong Coronavirus Expert Warns Outbreak Could Infect "Between 60%-80%" Of Humanity, Causing 51 Million Deaths
by Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/11/2020 - 06:04
---- Professor Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, was one of the first officials anywhere in China to suggest that the government was hiding, or simply hadn't yet confirmed, the true extend of the outbreak.
Though Beijing has been touting a 'slowdown' in the number of newly diagnosed cases, few believe that the outbreak has actually crested, even as a huge percentage of the population in the world's largest country has spent the last week huddled inside.
Which is why we feel Leung's latest warning is worth our attention, and yours.
Riffing off of comments from WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said yesterday that the we might be seeing only 'the tip of the iceberg' in terms of number of cases, Leung said the scientific community's 'overriding concern' is figuring out the 'size and shape' of the iceberg.
Leung added that most experts now believe the virus has a transmission rate of - or r-sub-zero - of 2.5, meaning the average infected individual will transmit the virus to 2.5 others. This also translates to an "attack rate" of 60%-80%, the Guardian reports.
"Sixty per cent of the world’s population is an awfully big number," Leung told the Guardian in London, en route to an expert meeting at the WHO in Geneva on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, Chinese health officials confirmed nearly 100 new deaths, bringing the toll to 1,013 as of late Monday.
If the virus continues to spread at this pace, even a relatively low
fatality rate of 1% - which Leung believes is possible once milder, undetected
cases are accounted for - could still lead to a massive death toll. Rough
calculations indicate that, if two-thirds of the 7.7 billion people living on
earth are infected, a 1% mortality rate would still lead to nearly 51
million deaths.
Once all of these other variables have been determined, Leung said he
would tell the WHO that the main issues would be figuring out the scale of the
worsening global epidemic, and learning whether China's draconian measures have
worked to help suppress the spread.
---- One of the world’s leading experts on coronavirus epidemics, Leung played a major role in fighting the SARS outbreak and has worked closely with other leading scientists, including counterparts in the UK.
Does Leung really think the virus will infect 80% of the world's
population? Or even 60%? Maybe not. The virus has reportedly been mutating and
changing as it has spread, and it's still possible it could change in ways that
inadvertently help humanity suppress it. For example, it could "attenuate
its lethality," as Leung put it.
Epidemiologists and modellers were trying to figure out what was likely
to happen, said Leung. "Is 60-80% of the world’s population going to get
infected? Maybe not. Maybe this will come in waves. Maybe the virus is going
to attenuate its lethality because it certainly doesn’t help it if it kills
everybody in its path, because it will get killed as well," he said.
But if we don't figure out exactly how bad the outbreak has already
gotten, it will be much more difficult to stop it from arriving at the
worst-case scenarios.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hong-kong-coronavirus-expert-warns-outbreak-could-infect-between-60-80-humanity
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?
No
update today, a full update tomorrow.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January
DJIA: 24,999 +76 Down. NASDAQ: 7,282 +124 Down.
SP500:
2,704 +71 Down.
All higher again, but it’s not a buy signal I would take. The rally is all down to the Fed monetizing at a rate of about 100 billion a month. I continue to look on the Fed’s latest stock bubble as an exit rally, made all the more urgent by the rising economic threat from the coronavirus crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment