Friday, 13 March 2020

Friday the Thirteenth! Panic In The Markets.


Baltic Dry Index. 633 +02   Brent Crude 33.65 Spot Gold 1589

Covid-19 Pandemic finally underway, according to the WHO, at long last!

Coronavirus Cases 13/3/20 World 139,007  Deaths 5,107 (Maybe.)

In October 1929, the Stock Market Crash in New York heralded the worldwide Great Depression. John Maynard Keynes, who had not predicted the slump, said, "'There will be no serious direct consequences in London. We find the look ahead decidedly encouraging."


Did we just repeat “Black Monday” 1987? 

Back then, “Bubbles” Greenspan rigged the next days openings. He delayed most stock market openings, ordered the NY Fed’s market riggers to buy up everything on sale on the MMI futures in Chicago, whose opening wasn’t delayed, causing the Major Market Index futures to surge higher, trapping the shorts on the NYSE and Nasdaq markets, forcing them to cover at the delayed openings.  Tipped off, the Fed’s cronies joined in the buying, and the insiders were laughing all the way to the bank.

Sadly, that won’t work in a coronavirus pandemic that’s killing the global economy everywhere. We haven’t seen anything like this since the 1930s, which means no active traders have seen anything like this stock and commodity rout before.  With the pandemic now surging globally, and Italy leading the rump-EU into recession, the rest of the world will enter recession shortly behind Europe.

When a 1987 style panic hits, the longs are forced to sell anything and everything to desperately raise cash. Getting out first is existential, getting carried out last is fatal.

With no coronavirus relief in sight for many months, and a near depression looming, the shattered hedge funds are now facing a great tidal wave of redemptions at month and quarter end.  Any central bankster rigging attempt will just be bailing out the hedge funds raising cash ahead of the redemptions.

But even that might not be enough. Someone or something seems to have gone wrong in the US bond market. The Fed has had to pump in trillions since last September, with another trillion expected later today.

Though I suspect we will get a Fedster assisted (plus cronies,) stock market rally today, I would not want to hold any positions into the weekend. There is simply no way to know what’s coming next. Too many cancellations are hitting the global economy.
Alan Schwartz, CEO Bear Stearns, March 12, 2008. Bust March 16, 2008.

Stocks crash as pandemic panic sweeps markets

March 12, 2020 / 11:25 PM
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global stock markets crashed on Friday, ending a years-long bull run, with coronavirus panic selling hitting almost every asset class and leaving investors nowhere to hide.

Half a trillion dollars in liquidity from the U.S. Federal Reserve and the promise of more were not enough to calm the fear that has wiped some $14 trillion from world stocks in a month.
On Friday, Japanese stocks were in freefall and markets from Seoul to Jakarta punched through downlimit circuit breakers. 

The Nikkei .N225 dropped as far as 10% and is heading for its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis. Not one stock on the index is in positive territory. [.T]

Losses were equally staggering outside Japan, driving MSCI’s broad Asia-Pacific index .MIAPJ0000PUS back to where it was in 2017. Gold and oil fell and once-safe sovereign bonds slumped as investors liquidated everything they could to cover losses.

Even after its worst crash since Black Monday in 1987 overnight, Dow futures YMc1 are down about 3% in Asia, as are S&P 500 futures ESc1. [.N]

“There is a sense of fear and panic,” said James Tao, an analyst at stockbroker Commsec in Sydney, where phones at the high-value client desk rang non-stop.

“It’s one of those situations where there is so much uncertainty that no-one quite knows how to respond...if it’s fight or flight, many people are choosing flight at the moment.”

Australia's benchmark fell as far as 8% and is set for its worst week on record. In South Korea the won was shredded and the Kospi .KS11 fell 7.7%.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index .HSI fell 5%. China's Shanghai composite .SSEC fell 3%.

---- The plunge, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, gathered pace after U.S. President Donald Trump spooked investors with a move to restrict travel from Europe, and after the European Central Bank disappointed markets by holding back on rate cuts.

In a televised address late on Wednesday, Trump imposed restrictions on travel from Europe to the United States, shocking investors and travelers.

---- Trade was halted on the S&P 500 .SPX. overnight after it hit circuit breakers. It fell further when trade resumed, eventually losing 9.5% to close 27% below February’s peak.

The VIX volatility index - Wall Street’s “fear gauge” - and an equivalent measure of volatility for the Euro Stoxx 50 .V2TX hit their highest since the 2008 financial crisis.

---- To try and head off the sort of dislocation that saw markets seize up during the financial crisis more than a decade ago, the New York Federal Reserve surprised by pumping huge amounts of cash into the banking system.

After adding $500 billion on Thursday, it will inject another $1 trillion on Friday in an effort to stop borrowing costs from rising. Australia’s central bank injected an unusually large $5.5 billion into the financial system.

In commodities, Brent crude is set for its biggest weekly drop since 1991 and was going backwards on Friday.

Brent LCOc1 was down 50 cents, or 1.5%, at $32.74 a barrel after falling more than 7% on Thursday. U.S. crude CLc1 was down 1.6% at $30.99 per barrel.

Coronavirus: Australian Grand Prix called off

By Andrew Benson Chief F1 writer
The Australian Grand Prix has been called off after teams and drivers forced the hand of Formula 1's bosses.

A decision to cancel the race was made in the early hours of Friday morning after a McLaren team member tested positive for the coronavirus in Melbourne.

The race's abandonment was not made official for another eight hours.

By that time Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and Alfa Romeo's Kimi Raikkonen had flown home.

And McLaren said later on Friday that 14 further team members had been placed in quarantine in their hotel for the next 14 days because of their close contact with the infected employee.

The decision throws into doubt the rest of the F1 season, with the Bahrain Grand Prix due to take place next weekend without spectators the next race to come under scrutiny.

BBC Sport understands Ferrari were the first team to make it clear they were not prepared to race in Melbourne in the circumstances.
More

 Broadway goes quiet, the Met shuts as New York bans large gatherings

Published: March 12, 2020 at 7:36 p.m. ET
NEW YORK — Museums prepared to shut their doors, the opera was silenced, lights dimmed on Broadway, big gatherings were banned and the subway was shunned as the largest city in the United States wound down Thursday amid a rise in coronavirus cases.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that gatherings with more than 500 people will temporarily be banned in New York state, one of several “dramatic actions” to contain the new virus.

The governor said the ban would start for most places statewide at 5 p.m. Friday, though he said it does not apply to schools, hospitals, nursing homes and mass transit. Cuomo said it would be “tremendously disruptive” to close schools en masse. He gave broad outlines of plans to reduce “sustained close contact,” including a requirement to reduce crowding at smaller events, but offered few details.

The ban for Broadway theaters started at 5 p.m. Thursday. Producers said they hoped to resume shows on April 13, according to a statement from The Broadway League, an organization of theater owners and producers.

“The last 24 hours have been very, very sobering,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a separate briefing later Thursday. The mayor declared a state of emergency for the city.

Cuomo said the city has 95 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Thursday afternoon. There are more than 320 cases statewide, with the largest cluster in the suburb of New Rochelle north of New York City. De Blasio predicted the city could be at 1,000 cases by next week and said the crisis could last six months or longer.

The ban comes as some of New York City’s most esteemed cultural institutions announced Thursday they are temporarily shutting down because of the coronavirus, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall.

----The cascade of closings left some tourists shaking their heads in disbelief. Ken and Theresa Winter, visiting from Colorado, headed to Broadway on Thursday after the Big East basketball tournament was hastily scrapped.

Theresa Winter said the reaction to the coronavirus reminded her of the uncertain days following the Sept. 11 attacks. She noted their plane to New York City was less than half full.

“Hopefully we can get back to Denver,” she said.

The closings come amid signs that New Yorkers are acting on their own to avoid crowds. Ridership on the subway and commuter rail lines has plunged, state officials said.

Cuomo announced late Wednesday that New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade would be postponed for the first time in its 258-year history. De Blasio later tweeted that the parade will take place at some future date “whether it’s in the heat of summer or on a clear fall day.”
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/broadway-goes-quiet-the-met-shuts-as-new-york-bans-large-gatherings-2020-03-12?mod=mw_latestnews

Disneyland closed through end of month amid coronavirus outbreak

Published: March 12, 2020 at 5:27 p.m. ET
Disneyland is closed.

The iconic holiday destination became just the latest American institution to close because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“While there have been no reported cases of COVID-19 at Disneyland Resort, after carefully reviewing the guidelines of the Governor of California’s executive order and in the best interest of our guests and employees, we are proceeding with the closure of Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure, beginning the morning of March 14 through the end of the month,” a Disneyland Resort spokesperson said in a statement.

“The Hotels of Disneyland Resort will remain open until Monday, March 16 to give guests the ability to make necessary travel arrangements; Downtown Disney will remain open. We will monitor the ongoing situation and follow the advice and guidance of federal and state officials and health 
agencies. Disney DIS, -12.98% will continue to pay cast members during this time,” according to the statement.

Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif., will work with guests who wish to change or cancel their visits, and will provide refunds to those who have hotel bookings during this closure period, the company spokesperson added.

Shares of Disney were down 1.8% in after-hours trading Thursday.
 
This marks only the fourth time the 64-year-old park has closed full operations. The other instances were the morning after JFK’s assassination in November 1963, the Northridge earthquake in January 1994, and the Sept. 11 attacks in September 2001.
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disneyland-in-california-closed-through-end-of-month-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-2020-03-12?mod=home-page

Dire forecast: U.S. economy could tank 4% in the second quarter as nation shuts down to fight coronavirus

Published: March 12, 2020 at 3:09 p.m. ET
The U.S. economy could contract by a whopping 4% in the second quarter in light of the European travel ban, the suspension of professional sports, a shutdown of the Broadway theater district in New York and the like to combat the coronavirus epidemic.

That’s the most recent guesswork by Capital Economics. The advisory firm’s dire forecast is based on a rash of major closures involving schools, workplaces, sports leagues and venerated cultural institutions.

“As a result, we now expect GDP to fall by 4% annualized in the second quarter and to stagnate in the third,” wrote Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

In short, a U.S. recession.

The last time the economy deflated that much was in 2008-2009 during the worst of the Great Recession. The U.S. contracted 8.4% in the 2008 fourth quarter and 4.4% in the 2009 first quarter.
Capital Economics also cut its estimate for gross domestic product in 2020, saying the economy would shrink 0.6% instead of expanding 1.8% as previously forecast.

Capital Economics predicts a rebound in 2021 on the assumption that strict social distancing works to contain the coronavirus epidemic.

“If such measures helped to stem the spread of the virus ... they may reduce the risk of a worse-case scenario, in which one-third of the population become infected resulting in a prolonged recession,” Hunter said.

----U.S. financial markets, for their part, are reflecting the newfound pessimism. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -9.98% tumbled again in Thursday trades, with the Dow falling as much as 2,000 points. The Dow has lost some 8,000 points in the past few weeks

Coronavirus can live in air for 3 hours, on surfaces for 2-3 days

March 11, 2020 / 6:40 PM
March 11 (UPI) -- According to new research, the novel coronavirus can remain in the air for up to 3 hours and survive on some surfaces for two to three days.

The research, which was carried out by scientists from the National Institutes of Health, Princeton University and UCLA, suggests it's possible for the virus to spread through the air as well as through the touching of contaminated surfaces.

"Our results indicate that aerosol and fomite transmission of HCoV-19 is plausible, as the virus can remain viable in aerosols for multiple hours and on surfaces up to days," researchers wrote in the study's abstract.

The research was published on medRxiv, a site where health and medical science studies can be shared prior to peer review and acceptance into a scientific journal.

For the study, scientists used a nebulizer to spray the coronavirus into the air in a manner similar to a cough. The virus could be detected in the air up to 3 hours later. Researchers also placed samples on a variety of surfaces. They found the virus could survive for up to 4 hours on copper, as many as 24 hours on cardboard, and two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.

Tests showed the genetically related virus responsible for the 2003 SARS outbreak is similarly durable, so the ability of the new coronavirus to survive in the air and on surfaces doesn't explain its ability to spread more rapidly.

"Overall, stability is very similar between HCoV-19 and SARS-CoV-1," researchers wrote.

---- The new coronavirus can be killed using a range of disinfectants, including rubbing alcohol and diluted hydrogen peroxide. The Environmental Protection Agency has a complete list of the commercially available cleaning products that can kill the virus.
more

Coronavirus Can Live in Patients for Five Weeks After Contagion

By Claire Che  March 12, 2020, 10:29 AM GMT
Patients with the new coronavirus keep the pathogen in their respiratory tract for as long as 37 days, a new study found, suggesting they could remain infectious for many weeks.

In yet another sign of how difficult the pandemic may be to contain, doctors in China detected the virus’s RNA in respiratory samples from survivors for a median of 20 days after they became infected, they wrote in an article published in the Lancet medical journal.

The new coronavirus has spread to 118 countries and infected about 125,000 people since first emerging in Wuhan, China, at the end of last year, evading drastic efforts by local authorities and subsequent containment attempts in other nations.

The findings have “important implications for both patient isolation decision-making and guidance around the length of antiviral treatment,” Fei Zhou from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the other authors wrote.

Currently, the recommended isolation period after exposure is 14 days to avoid spreading the virus. But if people remain contagious long after their symptoms have vanished, they may unwittingly propagate the pathogen after they return from quarantine.

By comparison, only a third of patients with SARS still harbored the virus in their respiratory tract after as long as four weeks, the Chinese scientists said. They studied the medical records and laboratory data from 191 Covid-19 patients treated at Jinyintan Hospital and Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital, including 54 who died from the infection.

Insurers face double whammy from coronavirus crisis

March 12, 2020 / 7:13 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Having initially brushed off the potential impact from coronavirus-linked claims, global insurers are waking up to the prospect of a double whammy - a sharp rise in payouts at a time of big investment losses.

Because epidemics are excluded from many business insurance policies, the early prognosis was for a low levels of claims. But as recession threatens the global economy along with rising insolvencies, all sorts of companies with trade credit insurance, from airlines to retailers are coming under strain.
Meanwhile, insurers’ investments are coming under pressure.

They manage more than $20 trillion (15 trillion pounds)in assets globally but their big government bond holdings are becoming problematic as the threat of recession grows and central banks’ interest rate cuts have sent yields plunging.

The $11 billion trade credit insurance market covers the risk that a company’s customers cannot pay for goods or services bought on credit. There was already a rising trend in 2019 in big corporate insolvencies, according to figures from insurer Euler Hermes at the end of the year.

Moody’s expects rising claims to hit three of the world’s biggest trade credit insurers Atradius, Coface and Euler Hermes. The ratings agency cited data from Atradius and Coface showing that for each, nearly 15% of their total net potential exposure is in Asia and Australia, two of the worst hit regions.

The insurers declined to comment, but Atradius said recently it expected corporate insolvencies to grow 2.4% globally in 2020, “largely resulting from the coronavirus outbreak”.

Coface chief executive Xavier Durand told analysts two weeks ago that hotels and airlines in Asia would feel the worst impact, while Euler Hermes saw coronavirus costing $320 billion of trade losses every quarter this year.

The stress could spiral as governments lock down regions or whole countries and if major events such as the Olympics are postponed.

“It’s not a good time for anyone in the credit world,” said Jeremy Shallow, head of speciality at insurer Argo Global.
More

Postcards from Asian airports as coronavirus tightens its grip

March 12, 2020 / 10:25 AM
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - From Beijing to Jakarta, many usually bustling Asian airports have become eerily empty and quiet as coronavirus tightens its grip over the region where the outbreak first began late last year.

Airline staff looking more like surgeons in their face masks and other protective gear shepherd trickles of passengers towards sparsely populated, and well-disinfected, departure lounges. Many flights have been cancelled. 

At Beijing International Airport, passengers arriving to check in for flights are greeted with the message: “Please keep one metre away from each other while queuing.”

In January, passenger numbers through this airport fell more than 15% from the previous year to 7.295 million. February’s figures are expected to be worse.

Tokyo’s huge Haneda airport has a similar deserted feel.

In March last year, over 1.6 million people passed through this airport, but this month relatively few passengers cross its gleaming floors or visit its bars and restaurants.

Passengers using Seoul’s Incheon Airport also faced no tiresome wait to check in for their flights.

Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport, which mainly serves overseas routes to Japan and China, had no international flights on Thursday for the first time in 40 years, local media said. Nobody at the airport was immediately available to confirm the reports.

More normal scenes prevailed at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, Singapore’s Changi Airport and Sydney Airport on Thursday, though many passengers queuing to board their flights wore face masks.

Airports in Europe and beyond are likely to increasingly resemble those in South Korea and Japan in coming weeks.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered travel from Europe to the United States restricted for 30 days to contain the spread of coronavirus, a move that has battered global airline stocks and thrown the travel plans of thousands of people into confusion.

Thailand reports biggest daily jump in new coronavirus cases

March 12, 2020 / 4:19 AM
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai officials played down the possibility of “super spreading” of the coronavirus on Thursday as they reported a group of friends were responsible for the biggest daily rise in the country’s cases since the outbreak began.

Officials reported 11 new cases, taking the national tally to 70. One person has died. 

The new patients are a group of friends who appeared to pass the virus to each other after one of their number was first infected by a tourist who has since returned to Hong Kong, officials said.

The male and female friends, all Thai nationals aged in their 20s and 30s, socialised and shared drinks and cigarettes on two occasions in late February.

“The first patient was infected from a tourist from a dangerous communicable disease area,” Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai, director-general of the Disease Control Department, told reporters. “After that, the person had two social activities with close friends.”

Officials stressed the foreign source of the group infection and announced they were stepping up travel restrictions for visitors from a list of “designated dangerous communicable disease areas” announced last week. Those include South Korea, China, Macao, Hong Kong, Italy and Iran.
more

New York City postpones St. Patrick’s Day Parade due to coronavirus

Published: March 11, 2020 at 10:29 p.m. ET
NEW YORK — The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been postponed for the first time in its 258-year history because of coronavirus concerns, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday. 

The postponement of the March 17 parade adds to the roster of events and holidays upended around the world by the spreading infection. The New York parade honoring Irish heritage dates back longer than the United States and draws tens of thousands of marchers and throngs of spectators to Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

Cuomo, a Democrat, said while the risk of transmission might be lower in an outdoor gathering, health experts had urged him to call it off.

St. Patrick’s Day parades in some other big cities, including Chicago, Boston and even the Irish capital of Dublin, were called off earlier.

New York City officials had held off, saying they weren’t certain that a large outdoor event — as opposed to a more intimate setting — posed enough of a risk of spreading the virus to warrant cancellation. But officials had noted that they would keep weighing the question as more information developed.


Joseph J. Cassano, a former A.I.G. executive, August 2007, on Credit Default Swaps that wiped out A.I.G in 2008.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, so just how bad is it in China?

Coronavirus crushes China car sales

BEIJING--Auto sales in China collapsed in February, as the coronavirus epidemic shut factories and dealerships and forced consumers to stay home.

Sales were down 79% from a year earlier, with just 310,000 vehicles sold nationally, the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Thursday.

"The auto consumption was stagnant and the demand was seriously suppressed, which will have a significant impact on the auto market in the first half of the year," said Chen Shihua, the deputy secretary-general of the association.

China's auto market, the world's biggest by number of vehicles sold, was already coming off two straight years of sales declines. Among the makers reporting severe February declines from a year earlier were SAIC Motor Corp., the country's largest car manufacturer, down 87%; Great Wall Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., both 85%; Nissan Motor Co., 80%; Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., 75%; and Toyota Motor Corp., 70%.

Mar 11, 2020 08:07 PM

Update: Wuhan Doctors Say Colleagues Died in Vain Amid Official Cover-Up

The hospital where coronavirus whistleblower Li Wenliang worked and died has been hit harder than any other by Covid-19 due in part to throttling of information by officials, a Caixin investigation has found.

The Central Hospital of Wuhan, where Li died, has seen over 230 of its 4,000 medical staff diagnosed with Covid-19, the highest rate of infection at any hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, according to data Caixin has obtained.

On Monday, ophthalmologist Zhu Heping was the fourth doctor at the hospital to succumb to the disease, following the deaths of doctors Li Wenliang, Jiang Xueqing and Mei Zhongming on Feb. 7, Mar. 1 and Mar. 3, respectively. The hospital’s deputy chief cardiothoracic surgeon and deputy chief urologist remain in critical condition, the head nurse said.

A Central Hospital department head blamed authorities for endangering lives by spreading false information. “The false information released by the relevant departments — claiming the disease was controllable and would not spread from human-to-human — left hundreds of doctors and nurses in the dark, doing all they could to treat patients without knowing about the epidemic,” the department head told Caixin. “And even when they fell ill, they could not report it. They could not alert their colleagues and the public in time despite their sacrifice. This is the most painful loss and lesson.”

Doctors at the hospital discussed a handful of key factors behind their plight in a series of interviews with Caixin. First, as one of the closest hospitals to the South China Seafood Market believed to be a major source of infections, Central Hospital treated the most patients in the early stage of the outbreak, the doctors said. First-generation virus infections can be more deadly, they said, and Li and Mei could have been infected by the same patient.

Second, the hospital was overwhelmed by fever patients in early January. At that time, another hospital was designated to take in patients with coronavirus symptoms, but it only accepted those with contact history from the seafood market. The overflow went to other departments at the Central Hospital, where staff were not contagious disease specialists and could be easily infected, according to the doctors.

The doctors also blamed incompetent management. For years, the head of the hospital has only worked pushing papers, they said, far removed from frontline medical work. The hospital’s Communist Party chief, who was originally head of human resources at the city’s health authority, did not sufficiently understand infectious disease and even banned doctors from spreading critical public health information, the doctors said.
More, much, much, more.


Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former Luxembourg P.M., serial liar, ex-president of the European Commission. Scotch connoisseur.



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?

Magic twist angles of graphene sheets identified

Researchers identify how twisted graphene sheets behave and their stability at different sizes and temperatures

Date: March 11, 2020

Source: University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering

Summary: Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel and can be as much as 6 times lighter. These characteristics alone make it a popular material in manufacturing. Researchers have now identified how twisted graphene sheets behave and their stability at different sizes and temperatures.

Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel and can be as much as 6 times lighter. These characteristics alone make it a popular material in manufacturing. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently uncovered more properties of graphene sheets that can benefit industry.
Doctoral student Soumendu Bagchi, along with his adviser Huck Beng Chew in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in collaboration with Harley Johnson from Mechanical Sciences and Engineering identified how twisted graphene sheets behave and their stability at different sizes and temperatures.

"We concentrated on two graphene sheets stacked on top of each other but with a twist angle," said Bagchi. "We did atomistic simulations at different temperatures for different sizes of graphene sheets. Using insights from these simulations, we developed an analytical model -- you can plug in any sheet size, any twist angle, and the model will predict the number of local stable states it has as well as the critical temperature required to reach each of those states."

Bagchi explained that bilayer graphene exists in an untwisted Bernal-stacked configuration, which is also the repeated stacking sequence of crystalline hexagonal graphite. When bilayer graphene is twisted, it wants to untwist back to its original state because that's the most stable state and placement of the atoms.

"When the twisted atomic structure is heated, it tends to rotate back, but there are certain magic twist angles at which the structure remains stable below a specific temperature. And, there is a size dependency as well. What's exciting about our work is, depending upon the size of the graphene sheet, we can predict how many stable states you will have, the magic twist angles at these stable states, as well as the range of temperatures required for twisted graphene to transition from one stable state to another," Bagchi said.
More

 Another weekend and a weekend of waiting for the other shoe to drop. What will the decider tweet? Who will start to fess up to losses? What will the Trump re-election Fed do?  Have a great northern Spring weekend everyone. Time to enjoy nature’s rapid reawakening.
Below, the sanitised official version of that 1987 stock market rig.

Blast from the past: How Futures saved Stocks






December 11, 2013
---- Fortunately, that wasn’t the case for the latest re-release – last year’s documentary, “Cancel Crash,” which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the 1987 market crash by the floor traders of Chicago as the saviors of the stock market’s Black Monday crash.
---- But the story within the story was what was going on the next day, October 20th. Many of us now look at that day as the single best buying opportunity maybe ever. But it wasn’t that easy. The real story is there were no buyers the next day, to the point where the specialists on the NYSE who were supposed to be the buyers of last resort would not step up and offer to buy any stock.

---- So next thing you know, the market is looking at the NYSE, the CBOE, and the CME closing because there are no buyers; sending further panic through all market participants. But the CBOT stayed resistant, remaining open, trading MMI Futures (Major Market Index) which was a market linked to a portion of companies/stocks in the Dow (essentially an earlier version of Dow futures, since there was no Dow futures at the time).

And it was in the MMI pit, so the movie says, where one trader – Chicago market maker Blair Hull – did what no other trader would do….BUY the plummeting market with 150 contracts between prices of 285 and 292. Being a thinner market with much less volume than the S&P futures across town, these 150 contracts sent the MMI futures screaming higher, moving 25% higher in hours.
More
https://www.rcmalternatives.com/2013/12/blast-from-the-past-how-futures-saved-stocks/

If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else's is going down, too.

Lloyd Blankfein’s ex-CEO Goldman Sachs, threat 2008. “Mr. Goldman Sacks.”

The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished February

DJIA: 25,409 +75 Down. NASDAQ: 8,567 +171 Up. SP500: 2,954 +133 Up.

In current circumstances, this is no time to be blindly following technical signals.

No comments:

Post a Comment