Baltic Dry Index. 498 Fri. Brent Crude 36.08
Spot Gold 1734
Coronavirus Cases 26/5/20
World 5,616,490
Deaths 350,533
To put the coronavirus crisis into some perspective, March 29 just 2 months ago, approximately 725,000 cases with about 34,000 deaths.
To put the coronavirus crisis into some perspective, March 29 just 2 months ago, approximately 725,000 cases with about 34,000 deaths.
Would
you buy a used car from Chairman Powell?
Another week of
dubious economic news, another week to put all of the central bankster’s newly
minted cash into our stock casinos to dress up the coming month-end figures.
I think this is the
massive malinvestment of our new century so far. Our investment world is
heading into a new depression. An Andes long, global debt mountain range is
about to go into default.
Years of central
bankster mispricing of interest rates discouraged thrift and encouraged debt fecklessness.
Massive new sudden unemployment, and the collapse of tourism, airlines, cruise
lines, auto manufacturing, retailing, oil fracking, among other sectors, are
all only in month three of our new economic reality.
I think it better to
wait for year three of our new economic reality before calling a bottom in the
stock casinos.
Besides, we don’t
know if Sars-Cov-2 will return like flu each year, nor if it will mutate. Bad
as the reported daily figures are, we all know they’re only an approximation of
reality. Everyone counts the figures differently. Some cheat, and some don’t
count at all.
Worse, outside of the
G-7 there’s almost no social safety net at all for 5 billion people now getting
hammered by the coronavirus crisis.
To this old dinosaur
market follower, it’s sell in May and don’t return till Labour Day 2023.
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.
Japan shares hit 10-week peak, S&P 500 tests 3,000
May 26, 2020 /
1:34 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) -
Asian shares forged ahead on Tuesday while U.S. stock futures challenged a
major chart barrier as investors looked past Sino-U.S. trade tensions to more
stimulus in China and a re-opening world economy.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 led the way with a rise of 2% to its highest since early March when the economic impact of the coronavirus was just becoming clear.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 1.4%, while South Korea .KS11 rose 1.1%.
While Wall Street had been shut on Monday, E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 climbed 1.3% to test the 3,000 level. EUROSTOXX 50 futures STXEc1 added 0.6% and FTSE futures FFIc1 1.8%.
Chinese blue chips .CSI300 firmed 0.8% after the country's central bank said it would strengthen economic policy and continue to push to lower interest rates on loans.
While largely reiterations of past comments, they helped offset the war of words between Washington and Beijing over trade, the coronavirus and China’s proposals for stricter security laws in Hong Kong.
European sentiment also got a lift when a survey showed German business morale rebounded in May as activity gradually returned to normal after weeks of lockdowns.
“U.S.-China tensions continue to simmer in the background, but equity investors appear more interested on the prospect of economies reopening around the globe,” said Rodrigo Catril, a senior FX strategist at NAB.
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Oil Climbs Above $34 on Hopes Market May Balance in Coming Weeks
By Sharon Cho and James Thornhill
May 25 2020
Oil rose above $34 a barrel following a prediction from Russia that the
market may rebalance as early as next month after historic output cuts from
global producers to drain a glut.Russia, a member of the OPEC+ alliance that has pledged to trim daily supply by almost 10 million barrels a day, expects the market to balance in June or July. Energy Minister Alexander Novak said global curbs have so far exceeded those agreed by the coalition. Futures in New York were 2.7% higher from Friday’s close after there was no settlement Monday due to a holiday.
Oil has surged more than 80% this month as demand returned following the easing of lockdown restrictions in some countries, while output cuts have started to chip away at the oversupply. Despite expectations that a recovery will be long and uncertain, the International Energy Agency forecast oil consumption will be reduced only briefly before expanding past the level seen before the outbreak.
The world consumed nearly 100 million barrels a day of oil last year, which some in the energy industry believe could mark the peak for demand. Their hypothesis is that the coronavirus pandemic will trigger changes of lifestyle like working-from-home and less overseas travel.
“The market is starting to witness the effect of output cuts along with a reduction in inventories, while the global economy is on its path to recovery,” Will Sungchil Yun, commodities analyst at VI Investment Corp., said by phone from Seoul. “Still, there’s caution with the absence of a cure for the pandemic as well as the possibility of a second wave of infections.”
More
In other news, buy more!
Slump in consumption, exports push Germany into recession in first quarter
May 25, 2020 /
7:41 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - A slump in capital investments, private consumption
and exports pushed the German economy into a recession in the first quarter,
detailed data showed on Monday, giving a glimpse of the damage caused by the
coronavirus pandemic.
The Federal Statistics Office said capital investments fell by 6.9%,
private consumption by 3.2% and exports by 3.1%.
This meant that private consumption took off 1.7 percentage points of
overall economic activity and net trade shaved off 0.8 percentage points,
leading to a first-quarter contraction of 2.2%.
China's pork imports in April jump 170% to record high
May 25, 2020 /
4:16 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China, the world’s top pork consumer, imported a record 400,000 tonnes in
April, up nearly 170% from a year earlier, customs data showed, as buyers took
advantage of low prices to stock up on meat.
China imported 1.35 million tonnes of pork in the first four months of
this year, surging 170.4% from the same period a year ago, after a plunge in
domestic production kept prices much higher than other markets.
The deadly African swine fever disease has reduced China’s pig herd by
at least 40%, slashing pork output and sending prices of the country’s favorite
meat to record highs.
China has been buying from overseas markets, including the United
States, where pork prices are among the cheapest in the world, and initially
fell as infections with COVID-19 began spreading in the country, hitting
demand.
Though Chinese pork prices have also fallen steadily since early
February, they are still about double where they were a year ago, and were
three to four times U.S. pork prices in March, before plant shutdowns caused
the latter to spike in mid-April.
The jump in U.S. prices is likely to reduce imports in the coming month,
while Chinese pork prices are still falling on weak domestic demand.
U.S. pork exports to China set a record for the period from January to
March, according to data from the U.S. Agriculture Department.
China also brought in 160,000 tonnes of beef in April, up 28% from the
previous year. Imports of the meat in the first four months of the year rose
54% to 680,000 tonnes, customs data showed.
Next, for those in
the market for a used, low mileage car at a bargain basement price, call
bankrupt Hertz.
Alternately, you
could call one Jay Powell at the Fed, since the Fed now owns defaulted Hertz
bonds via Blackrock buying up high risk junk bond ETFs at the Fed’s
instruction. Chairman Powell probably doesn’t need his share of some 500,000
used Hertz rental vehicles and as a distressed seller he might be even keener
to cut a deal, before he ends up with
even more used vehicles as Avis, Budget, Enterprise, follow Hertz into auto
rental Hell.
Still, given his
dissembling nature, would you buy a used car from Chairman Powell?
Where You Can Buy Hertz Cars At Huge Discounts
Sat, 05/23/2020 - 15:21
After 102 years of operation, Hertz
is now bankrupt and with $25 billion in debt, it just made the list of the
25 biggest bankruptcies in history.
And with creditors now looking for creative ways to recover as much of
their investment as possible, the Hertz fleet of just over 506,000 vehicles is
a hot commodity for what's left of the company.
Of course, Hertz already tried selling enough cars to stay afloat previously, and it didn’t work. In early March Hertz sold 41,000 used cars in the U.S., but pumped the brakes as returns shrank and auto auctions stopped as traffic fell off a cliff. Used car prices then fell 34.4% in April, and with a ton of new inventory on the market will likely push prices down even more, making it extremely difficult for Hertz to climb out of the hole it is in according to Jalopnik.
Well maybe not: after all, everything can be sold if the price is low enough, and it appears that Hertz is finally realizing that is has no choice but to drastically slash prices on its fleet sales, and will continue to do until it finds a clearing price since we doubt the Fed will step in and buy these cars any time soon.
As we reported previously, earlier this week Hertz dumped a bunch of Corvette z06s on to the used car market in what experts said was a great deal for buyers. And more used car deals are starting too roll out Saturday morning on Hertz’s website after the filling announcement. As caught by Jalopnik, here’s a 2020 BMW 740i for $52,949 and only 8,595 miles on the odometer, more than $10K below Blue Book value for cars in the same area.
Want a 2019 Range Rover Sport with 14K miles for less than $60K? They have that too.
But the real bargains are in the entry/mid level range where Hertz will unleash a deflationary neutron bomb that will cripple the used car market for years to come, which of course will be a huge benefit for consumers seeking great values, even if it forces car companies to drastically slash used car prices resulting in even more defaults, even more liquidation sales, and so on until cars are suddenly... affordable.
For those hoping to get on the early deals, just go to the Hertz Car Sales website and start browsing the half a million or so cars for sale: everything there is priced for liquidation.
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative
tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results
far much less.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
Covid-19 Corner
Though
hopefully, we are passing/have passed the peak of new cases, at least of the
first SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, this section will continue until it becomes
unneeded.
Oxford University Vaccine Trials Run Into Hurdle: Telegraph
By Anchalee Worrachate
May 24, 2020, 10:08 AM GMT+1
The Oxford University team in charge of developing a coronavirus vaccine
said a decline in the infection rate will make it increasingly difficult to
prove whether it’s been successful, the Telegraph reported.
“It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time,”
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the university’s Jenner Institute, told the
newspaper. “We said earlier in the year that there was an 80% chance of
developing an effective vaccine by September. But at the moment, there’s a 50%
chance that we get no result at all.”
Hill said he expects fewer than 50 of the 10,000 people who have
volunteered to test the vaccine trial in coming week to catch the virus. If
fewer than 20 test positive, the results may be useless, the newspaper cited
him as saying.
Although developers globally are working on as many as 100 experimental vaccines for Covid-19, the process is likely to take time. Finding a vaccine and distributing it globally will be a “massive moonshot,” Dr. Michael Ryan, executive of director of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Program, said earlier this month. There’s a chance the disease may be here to stay, he said.
The British government has agreed to pay for as many as 100 million doses, adding that 30 million may be ready by September. The daily rate of new infections has fallen by almost two thirds since hitting a peak of almost 9,000 on April 10.
Separately, Reuters reported that Oxford University may join Moderna in a large-scale testing program in July.
Number of coronavirus cases at Dutch meatpacking plant jumps to 147
May 25, 2020 / 10:16 AM
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The number of people diagnosed with the
coronavirus at a Dutch pork processing plant near the German border has jumped
to 147 since it was closed last week and workers asked to go into quarantine.
The Vion plant in Groenlo, located east of Arnhem and west of the
northern German city of Muenster, employs 657 people, many of them German.
Health authorities ordered it shut and the workers quarantined after 45 infections
were detected on May 20.
Seventy-nine German workers and 68 Dutch workers at the plant have now
tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel
coronavirus.
“The size of such a group of people with positive tests is very
worrying,” said Ton Heerts of the regional security agency VNOG. “Townships
involved will try to answer questions from residents and support companies
locally as much as possible.”
Regional health authorities are conducting a extensive track and trace
program to see who infected workers may have been in contact with, Heerts said.
Coronavirus outbreaks have also hit meatpacking and abattoir workers in
adjacent northwestern Germany.
Nationwide, the Netherlands has reported 45,236 cases of COVID-19 infections
and 5,822 deaths, according to the latest Reuters tally.
China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Warns Coronavirus Is Just Tip of the Iceberg
Bloomberg News
Shi Zhengli, a virologist renowned for her work on coronavirus in bats,
said in an interview on Chinese state television that viruses being discovered
now are “just the tip of the iceberg” and called for international cooperation
in the fight against epidemics.
Known as China’s “bat woman,” the deputy director of the Wuhan Institute
of Virology said research into viruses needs scientists and governments to be
transparent and cooperative, and that it is “very regrettable” when science is
politicized.
“If we want to prevent human beings from suffering from the next
infectious disease outbreak, we must go in advance to learn of these unknown
viruses carried by wild animals in nature and give early warnings,” Shi told
CGTN. “If we don’t study them there will possibly be another outbreak.”
Her interview with TV channel CGTN coincided with the start of the
National People’s Congress, an annual meeting of China’s top leadership in
Beijing. This year’s NPC comes as the country’s relationship with the U.S.
turns increasingly frayed, with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State
Michael Pompeo both saying the coronavirus sweeping the world is likely linked
to the Wuhan laboratory.
China has rejected the accusations. Shi has said that the genetic
characteristics of the viruses she’s worked with didn’t match those of the
coronavirus spreading in humans. In a social media post, she wrote she would
“swear on my life” the pandemic had nothing to do with her lab. In another
interview with CGTN over the weekend, the director of the Wuhan Institute of
Virology, Wang Yanyi, said the idea that the virus escaped from the lab was
“pure fabrication.”
The outbreak has infected more than 5.4 million people worldwide and
killed over 345,000.
China tells U.S. to stop wasting time in coronavirus battle
May 24, 2020 /
8:44 AM
BEIJING
(Reuters) - The United States should stop wasting time in its fight against the
coronavirus and work with China to combat it, rather than spreading lies and
attacking the country, the Chinese government’s top diplomat Wang Yi said on
Sunday.
Sino-U.S. ties have nosedived since the outbreak of the new coronavirus,
with the administrations of President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping
repeatedly trading barbs over issues related to the pandemic, especially U.S.
accusations of cover-ups and lack of transparency.
The two top economies have also clashed over Hong Kong, human rights,
trade and U.S. support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan.
State Councillor Wang, speaking at his annual news conference on the
sidelines of China’s parliament, expressed his deep sympathies to the United
States for the pandemic, where the death toll is expected to surpass 100,000 in
the coming days, the highest number of any country.
“Regretfully, in addition to the raging
coronavirus, a political virus is also spreading in the United States. This
political virus is using every opportunity to attack and smear China,” said
Wang, who is also China’s foreign minister.
“Some politicians have ignored the most basic facts and concocted too
many lies about China and plotted too many conspiracies,” he added.
“I want to say here: Don’t waste precious time any longer, and don’t
ignore lives,” Wang said.
“What China and the United States need to do the most is to first learn
from each other and share their experience in fighting against the epidemic,
and help each country fight it.”
China and the United States also need to start coordinating macro
policies for their respective economies as well as the world economy, he added.
China remains prepared to work with the United States in the spirit of cooperation and mutual respect, Wang said, when asked if Sino-U.S. relations would further worsen.
“China has always advocated that, as the world’s largest developing country and the largest developed country, both of us bear a major responsibility for world peace and development,” he said. “China and the United States stand to gain from cooperation, and lose from confrontation.”
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Those who want China to pay virus compensation are daydreaming-diplomat
May 24, 2020 /
8:55 AM
BEIJING
(Reuters) - Those who want to make China pay compensation for the coronavirus
outbreak are daydreaming, the Chinese government’s top diplomat Wang Yi said on
Sunday.
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.
Researchers breaking new ground in materials science
Date:
May 20, 2020
Source:
McGill University
Summary:
A new study could usher in a revolutionary development in materials science,
leading to big changes in the way companies create modern electronics.
A study by a team of researchers from Canada and Italy recently
published in Nature Materials could usher in a revolutionary development
in materials science, leading to big changes in the way companies create modern
electronics.
The goal was to develop two-dimensional materials, which are a single
atomic layer thick, with added functionality to extend the revolutionary
developments in materials science that started with the discovery of graphene
in 2004.
In total, 19 authors worked on this paper from INRS, McGill, Lakehead,
and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, the national research council in Italy.
This work opens exciting new directions, both theoretical and
experimental. The integration of this system into a device (e.g. transistors)
may lead to outstanding performances. In addition, these results will foster
more studies on a wide range of two-dimensional conjugated polymers with
different lattice symmetries, thereby gaining further insights into the
structure vs. properties of these systems.
The Italian/Canadian team demonstrated the synthesis of large-scale
two-dimensional conjugated polymers, also thoroughly characterizing their
electronic properties. They achieved success by combining the complementary
expertise of organic chemists and surface scientists.
"This work represents an exciting development in the realization of
functional two-dimensional materials beyond graphene," said Mark
Gallagher, a Physics professor at Lakehead University.
"I found it particularly rewarding to participate in this
collaboration, which allowed us to combine our expertise in organic chemistry,
condensed matter physics, and materials science to achieve our goals."
Dmytro Perepichka, a professor and chair of Chemistry at McGill
University, said they have been working on this research for a long time.
"Structurally reconfigurable two-dimensional conjugated polymers
can give a new breadth to applications of two-dimensional materials in
electronics," Perepichka said.
"We started dreaming of them more than 15 years ago. It's only
through this four-way collaboration, across the country and between the
continents, that this dream has become the reality."
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A senior citizen drove his brand new Corvette convertible out of the dealership.
Taking off down the road, he floored it to
80 mph, enjoying the wind blowing through what little gray hair he had left.
Amazing, he thought as he flew down I-94, pushing the pedal even more.
Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw a state trooper behind him, lights flashing and siren blaring. He floored it to 100 mph, then 110, then 120. Suddenly he thought, What am I doing? I'm too old for this, and pulled over to await the trooper's arrival.
Pulling in behind him, the trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch, and said, "Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I've never heard before, I'll let you go."
The old gentleman paused. Then he said, "Years ago, my wife ran off with a state trooper. I thought you were bringing her back."
"Have a good day, sir," replied the trooper.
Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw a state trooper behind him, lights flashing and siren blaring. He floored it to 100 mph, then 110, then 120. Suddenly he thought, What am I doing? I'm too old for this, and pulled over to await the trooper's arrival.
Pulling in behind him, the trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch, and said, "Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I've never heard before, I'll let you go."
The old gentleman paused. Then he said, "Years ago, my wife ran off with a state trooper. I thought you were bringing her back."
"Have a good day, sir," replied the trooper.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: 24,346 +26 Down. NASDAQ: 8,890 +162 Up.
SP500: 2,912 +89 Down.
The NASDAQ has rebounded to
up. The S&P and the DJIA remain down.
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