Baltic
Dry Index. 1488 -16 Brent Crude 45.05
Spot
Gold 1965
August 13, 1940 - German bombing offensive against
airfields and factories in England.
August 15, 1940 - Air battles and daylight raids over
Britain.
August 17, 1940 - Hitler declares a blockade of the
British Isles.
August 23/24 - First German air raids on Central
London.
See “Tube
Alloys” below.
As most of GB heads off for
the last long holiday weekend of summer, we ponder on if the phony employment
summer is coming to an end?
How much longer can subsidised
employment last?
How much longer can real
estate rental companies hold on, if most renters are withholding paying rent,
or only partially paying their rent?
I suspect the G-7 economies
are in for a period of harsh readjustment. About to be made all the more severe
if Covid-19 surges again as we enter into the usual northern hemisphere winter
flu season.
Will workers really return to
unhealthy or risky high rise office buildings?
Will passengers really return
to planes, prison cruise ships, and all expenses paid business travelers
return to conventions?
Not that (for now) this is
troubling the technology bubble in the central bank fueled stock casinos.
Still, what if someone tries to sell?
U.S. big tech dominates stock market after monster rally, leaving investors on edge
August 28, 2020 / 6:13 AM
BOSTON,
MA.(Reuters) - U.S. technology giants are increasingly dominating the stock
market in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, even as they draw accusations
of unfair business practices, and some investors fear the pump is primed for a
tech-fueled sell-off.
The combined value of the S&P 500’s five biggest companies - Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) - now stands at more than $7 trillion, accounting for almost 25% of the index’s market capitalization. That compares with less than 20% pre-pandemic.
The quintet’s burgeoning share prices reflect a transition to an increasingly technology-driven economy that has been accelerated by the coronavirus outbreak, as doorways fill with Amazon packages, homebound families stream movies and friends commiserate on Facebook.
Yet the
companies are drawing opposition. U.S. lawmakers are accusing them of stifling
competition, a charge also leveled in recent days against Apple by Epic Games,
creator of the popular game Fortnite.
Some
investors worry the companies powering this year’s equity rally could become
the market’s Achilles’ heel if a legal assault, a shift to undervalued names or
a move higher in bond yields dries up appetite for technology stocks.
“People see
these companies as winners and investors are willing to pay any price to own
them,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading. “That’s
always a risk.”
More
World’s Richest People Smashed Wealth Records This Week
By Devon PendletonThe net worth of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos topped the once-unfathomable amount of $200 billion. Entrepreneur, inventor, provocateur Elon Musk added the title of centibillionaire when his fortune soared past $100 billion fueled by Tesla Inc.’s ceaseless rally. And by Friday, the world’s 500 wealthiest people were $209 billion richer than a week ago.
Musk’s surging wealth expanded the rarefied club of centibillionaires to four members. Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest person, joined Bezos and Bill Gates among the ranks of those possessing 12-figure fortunes earlier this month. Together, their wealth totals $540 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
This week marked just the latest boon for the personal fortunes of the richest of the rich, whose red-hot growth has been largely driven by surging markets, particularly for tech shares. U.S. stocks reached fresh highs on Friday as investors took confidence in the Federal Reserve’s new inflation approach.
Musk’s net worth has grown by $76.1 billion this year, propelled by Tesla’s stock price and a boosted valuation of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX. Also helpful: an audacious pay package -- the largest corporate pay deal ever struck between a CEO and a board of directors -- that could yield him more than $50 billion if all goals are met.
Elon Musk unlocks $2.1 billion award as Tesla hits milestone
Still, Musk’s gain is second to that of Bezos, whose fortune has grown by $84.9 billion in 2020 as pandemic-induced lockdowns spur demand for Amazon deliveries. Bezos’s fortune has doubled since he crested the $100 billion mark in late 2017, even after ceding a quarter of his Amazon stake to ex-wife MacKenzie Scott in a divorce last year.
Scott is now $700 million shy of surpassing L’Oreal SA heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers as the world’s richest woman.
More
In other news, are we on the cusp of
massive lay-offs resuming?
MGM Resorts to lay off nearly 20,000 furloughed workers
Aug. 28, 2020 / 12:52 PM
Aug. 28
(UPI) -- MGM Resorts said Friday it will start laying off nearly 20,000
furloughed employees next week.
In a letter
to employees, MGM President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle blamed the coronavirus
pandemic for ongoing problems nationwide with the gambling and hospitality
industry.
Hornbuckle said about 18,000 workers will be laid off.
MGM owns some of the Las Vegas' best-known properties, including the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, New York New York and the Mirage -- in addition to casinos and hotels in Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Washington, D.C.
MGM has about 63,000 people in its global workforce.
---- MGM Resorts also said, however, it will extend health benefits for laid off workers through September. Employees rehired before the end of the year will retain their seniority, it added.
Tourism in Las Vegas fell by more than 60% in July, the first full month Nevada casinos were allowed to reopen following the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said there were no conventions last month and hotel occupancy was down by more than half compared to July 2019.
Gatwick Airport posts 321 million pound loss as passenger numbers collapse
August 28, 2020 / 7:40 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Gatwick Airport, Britain’s no.2 airport,
said the pandemic had pushed it to a 321 million pound loss in the first six
months of 2020 as passenger numbers collapsed and it prepared for the travel
slump to last for years. Gatwick, owned by VINCI Airports (SGEF.PA) and Global Infrastructure Partners, is located south of London. It said earlier this week it needed to cut 600 jobs to prepare for a smaller travel industry.
Rising levels of infections across Europe and Britain’s quarantine rules on major holiday destinations such as Spain and France have quashed hopes for a swift aviation recovery, and Gatwick said it expected numbers and traffic to stay subdued.
In the six months to the end of June, a period when most planes were grounded for months, Gatwick’s passenger numbers dropped by 66%, pushing revenues down 61% to 144 million pounds and resulting in a 321 million pound loss.
Gatwick said
it had reduced costs by moving all its operations into one terminal, and held
talks with its banks and bondholders over the impact of the crisis on its
financial covenants.
Heathrow,
the country’s no.1 airport, which posted a 1.1 billion pound loss for the first
six months of the year, has been leading a campaign to promote COVID-19 testing
as an alternative to quarantine to help encourage more travel, but so far the
government has not changed its approach.
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.
J. K. Galbraith.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.COVID deaths in U.S. top 1,000 for 3rd day in a row; 46K new cases
Aug. 28, 2020 / 8:21 AM / Updated Aug. 28,
2020 at 3:40 PM
Aug. 28 (UPI) -- There were more than 1,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19 for the third straight day Thursday, new data from Johns Hopkins University showed Friday.
Figures from scientists at the university's Center for Systems Science and Engineering showed 1,100 deaths Thursday. U.S. deaths topped 1,200 on Tuesday and Wednesday after two straight days below 500.
In addition
to the deaths, there were 46,000 new COVID-19 cases nationally on Thursday,
according to Johns Hopkins -- the second-highest daily total in nearly two
weeks.
Since the
start of the pandemic, there have been 5.87 million cases and 180,800 deaths in
the United States, the university's figures show.
The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday clarified its revised testing
guidelines that said asymptomatic patients don't need to be tested, even if
they were exposed to the coronavirus.
Before
Monday, CDC guidelines said all persons exposed to the virus should be tested.
The change said anyone within 6 feet of someone with COVID-19, for at least 15
minutes, does not "necessarily need a test" if they haven't yet
displayed symptoms.
Some
scientists criticized the change, saying it was likely done to keep positive
test numbers down for political reasons.
More
COVID-19 reinfection reported in Nevada patient, researchers say
The report comes several days after the
first confirmed coronavirus reinfection in the world was identified in Hong
Kong.
Aug. 28, 2020, 4:46 PM
BST / Updated Aug. 28, 2020, 8:52 PM BST
A Nevada man appears to be the nation's first confirmed
case of COVID-19 reinfection, researchers say.
The case is detailed in an online preprint, a study that has not yet been peer
reviewed before officially being published.
The case involves a 25-year-old man living in Reno,
Nevada, who first tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-April. He recovered, but
got sick again in late May. The second time around, his illness was more
severe, the case report said.
Researchers reported that genetic
sequencing of the virus revealed that he had been infected with a slightly
different strain, indicating a true reinfection.
It's still unclear why the patient was reinfected. The
cause could lie in his immune system, the virus itself, or a combination of the
two.
Mark Pandori, director the Nevada State Public Health
Laboratory and one of the authors of the report, stressed that reinfection with
the coronavirus appears to be rare. This is the first instance reported in the
U.S. among the nation's nearly 6 million cases so far, and "may not be
generalizable" to the public, Pandori said.
Still, he urged caution. "If you've had it, you
can't necessarily be considered invulnerable to the infection" again, said
Pandori, who is also an associate professor of pathology and lab medicine at
the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.
"The evidence so far suggests that if you've been
infected and recovered, then you're protected for some period of time,"
Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said. "We
don't know how long, and we're going to find individual cases of people for
whom that's not true."
Indeed, on Monday, a case of COVID-19 reinfection was
reported in Hong Kong — the first such confirmation of reinfection during the
pandemic. Two
European patients, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, were also
reported this week to have been reinfected with the virus.
But in those instances, the patients did not get sick
the second time around, or they developed much milder forms of the illness than
their first infection.
"You'd expect the second time around people to
have much milder or ideally no symptoms," Jha said. That's because the
immune system should be able to mount a more robust response, and the Hong Kong
case was "completely consistent with that."
More
Argentina reports record number of new COVID-19 cases but relaxes lockdown
August 29, 2020 / 2:04 AM
BUENOS AIRES
(Reuters) - Argentina registered its highest number of new daily COVID-19 cases
on Friday as the government partially relaxed nationwide lockdown measures to
allow outdoor get-togethers of up to 10 people wearing masks.
Restrictions
related to the pandemic in the country started on March 20. The new, more
relaxed rules are scheduled to last until at least Sept. 20, President Alberto
Fernandez said in a televised address. The country has had 392,009 confirmed
cases of the coronavirus so far, 8,271 of which have been fatal.
“Today we
can take a new step by authorizing meetings of up to ten people in the open
air, maintaining the distance of two meters and the use of a mask. This will be
in force throughout the country,” Fernandez said, although his government
reported an all-time high 11,717 new cases.
The
president said that while COVID-19 statistics in capital city Buenos Aires
showed some positive indicators, the number of cases in the rest of the country
had grown.
More
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
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.
Today, how to lie on
your bank loan application to get a bigger loan and an approval.
08.04.2019 07:00 AM
A Decades-Old Computer Science Puzzle Was Solved in Two Pages
With a stunningly simple proof, a
researcher has finally cracked the sensitivity conjecture, "one of the most
frustrating and embarrassing open problems.
A paper posted online this month has settled a nearly 30-year-old conjecture about the structure of the fundamental building blocks of computer circuits. This “sensitivity” conjecture has stumped many of the most prominent computer scientists over the years, yet the new proof is so simple that one researcher summed it up in a single tweet.
“This conjecture has stood as one of the most frustrating and embarrassing open problems in all of combinatorics and theoretical computer science,” wrote Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas, Austin, in a blog post. “The list of people who tried to solve it and failed is like a who’s who of discrete math and theoretical computer science,” he added in an email.
The conjecture concerns Boolean functions, rules for transforming a string of input bits (0s and 1s) into a single output bit. One such rule is to output a 1 provided any of the input bits is 1, and a 0 otherwise; another rule is to output a 0 if the string has an even number of 1s, and a 1 otherwise.
Every computer circuit is some combination of Boolean functions, making them “the bricks and mortar of whatever you’re doing in computer science,” said Rocco Servedio of Columbia University.
Over the years, computer scientists have developed many ways to measure the complexity of a given Boolean function. Each measure captures a different aspect of how the information in the input string determines the output bit. For instance, the “sensitivity” of a Boolean function tracks, roughly speaking, the likelihood that flipping a single input bit will alter the output bit. And “query complexity” calculates how many input bits you have to ask about before you can be sure of the output.
---- In 1992, Noam Nisan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Mario Szegedy, now of Rutgers University, conjectured that sensitivity does indeed fit into this framework. But no one could prove it. “This, I would say, probably was the outstanding open question in the study of Boolean functions,” Servedio said.
“People wrote long, complicated papers trying to make the tiniest progress,” said Ryan O’Donnell of Carnegie Mellon University.
Now Hao Huang, a mathematician at Emory University, has proved the sensitivity conjecture with an ingenious but elementary two-page argument about the combinatorics of points on cubes. “It is just beautiful, like a precious pearl,” wrote Claire Mathieu, of the French National Center for Scientific Research, during a Skype interview.
Aaronson and O’Donnell both called Huang’s paper the “book” proof of the sensitivity conjecture, referring to Paul Erdős’ notion of a celestial book in which God writes the perfect proof of every theorem. “I find it hard to imagine that even God knows how to prove the Sensitivity Conjecture in any simpler way than this,” Aaronson wrote.
More
Finally, some light holiday reading.
Tube Alloys (The world’s first nuclear bomb attempt.)
Tube Alloys was the code name of the research and development programme authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Starting before the Manhattan Project in the United States, the British efforts were kept classified, and as such had to be referred to by code even within the highest circles of government.The possibility of nuclear weapons was acknowledged early in the war. At the University of Birmingham, Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch co-wrote a memorandum explaining that a small mass of pure uranium-235 could be used to produce a chain reaction in a bomb with the power of thousands of tons of TNT. This led to the formation of the MAUD Committee, which called for an all-out effort to develop nuclear weapons. Wallace Akers, who oversaw the project, chose the deliberately misleading name "Tube Alloys". His Tube Alloys Directorate was part of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
The Tube Alloys programme in Britain and Canada was the first nuclear weapons project. Due to the high costs, and the fact that Britain was fighting a war within bombing range of its enemies, Tube Alloys was ultimately subsumed into the Manhattan Project by the Quebec Agreement with the United States, under which the two nations agreed to share nuclear weapons technology, and to refrain from using it against each other, or against other countries without mutual consent; but the United States did not provide complete details of the results of the Manhattan Project to the United Kingdom. The Soviet Union gained valuable information through its atomic spies, who had infiltrated both the British and American projects.
More
This weekend’s musical diversion. Handel again and in F Major.Handel Organ Concerto Op.4 No.4 in F Major HWV292
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
Edmund Burke.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: 26,428 -1 Up. NASDAQ: 10,745 +243
Up. SP500: 3,271 +89 Up.
The NASDAQ has remained up. The DJIA and SP500 have turned up. With
stock mania running fueled by trillions of central bankster new fiat money
programs, I would not rely on the indicators.
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