Baltic Dry Index. 1445 -26 Brent Crude 44.36
Spot Gold 1940
Coronavirus Cases 03/9/20 World 26,098,203
Deaths 871,419
"You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than
you can with a kind word alone."
Alphonse Capone. Traveller.
Humpty Dumpty stocks, the higher they go, the greater the
fall. But will it be President Trump or a President Biden blamed for the coming
crash?
Below, we all know what’s coming in the stock casinos,
just not when or what the trigger will be.
Ignore oil sinking again along with the Baltic Dry
(shipping) Index. Ignore that it took just four days to go from 25 million
confirmed Covid-19 global cases to 26 million cases. That’s the real world far
from the central banksters “no billionaire left behind” world.
Can the Fed fuelled stock mania last past the US election
on November 3rd?
How much further can the Fed go to try to re-elect
President Trump?
Suppose it doesn’t work? What happens under Democratic
Socialism?
What happened to Humpty Dumpty anyway?
Asian shares firm on U.S. stimulus hopes, upbeat China data
September 3, 2020
/ 12:21 AM
SYDNEY
(Reuters) - Asian equities started strong on Thursday as a sustained recovery
in China’s services sector and the prospect of additional U.S. stimulus whetted
risk appetite, while the dollar pared gains.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan climbed
0.5%, clocking its third straight session of gains to hover near a recent
2-1/2-year high.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.9% and Japan’s Nikkei added 1.3%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 0.2% while China’s blue-chip index was 0.35%
higher.
E-mini futures for the S&P 500 were barely changed.
A closely-watched survey showed China’s service sector activity grew for
a fourth straight month in August, staying above the 50-mark, while companies
hired more people for the first time since January.
The services sector, which accounts for about 60% of the economy and
half of urban jobs, had been slower to return to growth initially than large
manufacturers, but the recovery has gathered pace in recent months as COVID-19
restrictions on public gatherings lifted.
Analysts expect the equity markets rally to extend further as investors
focus on the “easy money” dimension, though risks were growing.
---- Data on Wednesday showed U.S. private
employers hired fewer workers than expected for a second straight month in
August, suggesting that the labour market recovery was slowing.
More
Apple more valuable than the entire FTSE 100
2 September 2020
Apple's shares rose 4% on Tuesday, valuing it at $2.3 trillion (£1.7tn), compared to the £1.5tn value of all the companies in the FTSE 100.
Apple shares fell back on Wednesday, but remained ahead of the London index at the close of trading on Wednesday.
It is just two weeks since Apple became the first US firm to be valued at $2tn.
Investors have been snapping up US tech stocks as demand for tech goods has surged amid the coronavirus pandemic.
More people are relying on technology to work and shop from home, and Apple has been one of the major beneficiaries.
The iPhone-maker has seen its share price more than double since March, when panic about the coronavirus pandemic swept the world's stock markets.
Demand for Apple's shares was also said to be boosted on Tuesday by company's decision to divide its shares, swapping four new ones for every old one investors held. The move is expected to make it easier for individuals to invest.
----"The FTSE 100 is a dinosaur, full of rather lumbering old-world stocks with precious little growth to offer," said Neil Wilson, chief market analyst for Markets.com. He added that it is also "a very good proxy for the global economy, which we know is on its knees".
With the exception of Ocado, "there is no tech to speak of, which
is where the real money has been made this year," he added.
"Whilst the US has Zoom, we have BT and Vodafone. The US boasts
Netflix and Amazon - the FTSE can muster ITV and Sainsbury's."
The FTSE 100 is trading at 5,972 points, down 22% from its 2020 high of
7,675 in January.
By contrast, the Nasdaq index in the US, which includes many large tech
companies, hit a fresh record on Tuesday. It has almost doubled since the
collapse in share prices in the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus
outbreak.
----Stimulus from central banks to support struggling economies - including quantitative easing and historic low interest rates - have buoyed the value of many companies and assets.
In another sign of booming tech valuations, Tesla's 12% stock gain propelled founder Elon Musk's personal fortune to $115bn this week, briefly making him the third-richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg. He temporarily overtook Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
David Rosenberg: No matter how you slice it, markets are in a bubble of historic proportions
And the higher they are, the harder they fall
Sep 02, 2020
History shows multiples at these levels leave the market exposed
compared to when they are at more reasonable or normal levels, writes David
Rosenberg. Photo by Getty Images/File Photos
We are in a huge bubble now. Vaccine or no vaccine. Economic and
earnings recovery or not. With or without the massive monetary creation by the
U.S. Federal Reserve. This is a bubble of historic proportions.
Some will say that the valuations are supported by interest rates.
Frankly, real 10-year rates moved into negative terrain in January, before the
stock market plunged and before the recession began.
Now, they have become even
more negative.
There is actually no such thing as a free lunch and the thing about
negative rates is that they coexist over time with a flat economy. And that
economy is where earnings are derived from.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that the monthly U.S. data are beating
“expectations” (like earnings). At the margin, economic momentum is starting to
wane in the more up-to-date data. The bounce we saw previously in consumption
growth is ebbing. Initial U.S. jobless claims are back rising at a one-million
pace over the past two weeks. The latest information on mobility, retail
traffic and airline activity has softened, and bankruptcies are mounting.
The other reality is that positive real rates tend to coincide with real
growth of three per cent, or better, historically. Yes, the discount rate
inflates the present value of those future earnings streams.
But these same
rates tell us that the profit growth itself before the discount factor is
applied is going to be anemic for a long period of time. You can’t have it both
ways.
That said, the bulls are in charge. The market is always right, so they
say. Indeed, it was right in September 1929 and then right again a month later.
It was right in September 2007 and then right again a month later. It was right
in February 2020 and also right a month later.
It’s not even so much about being right. It’s more about the assumptions
that are underlying the price action at any given moment in time. And we are
back to being priced for perfection and the complacency is a major concern to
us.
Valuations
are at extreme levels. No matter what decision you make, know that. The S&P
500, on a trailing basis, now has a 27.4x price-to-earnings multiple. Only 0.4
per cent of the time in the past 70 years has the multiple been so rich. On a
forward 12-month basis, only 0.1 per cent of the time has the market been more
extreme than its current 23x. As for the Nasdaq, it, too, is in the top one per
cent of valuation rankings ever recorded.
The smoothed cyclically adjusted PE ratio (CAPE) multiple says the same
thing. It never did actually compress to a normal recession-trough multiple in
March: it briefly touched 24.8x and has since jumped to 30.6x. It is almost
back to the 30.7x peak it had in February (ahem) and the prior peak before that
in October 2018 when it was as high as 31x (next thing you know, we are in for
an unforeseen near-20-per-cent correction).
The current multiple actually exceeds the 27.3x peak of October 2007…
and we know what happened next. Before the tech mania, that is, before June
1997, not once did we have the CAPE north of 30x for one month, until we go all
the way back to September 1929 (32.6x).
More
"The tumultuous
populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded."
George Washington, Revolutionary, General and 1st United States
President
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.Fear and dread haunt COVID-19 'long-haulers'
September 3, 2020
/ 5:06 AM
LONDON (Reuters) -
Until March 19 this year, Felicity Callard, a 49 year-old British university
professor and lecturer, was fit, active and strong. Now, she says, she’s
exhausted, frail and scared.
Her mind fills with fears about what kind of damage might have been done
to her heart, lungs and brain when she suffered what is classified as a “mild”
case of COVID-19 more than five months ago - and she’s terrified it might
happen again.
“I was absolutely, completely destroyed by this illness,” she told
Reuters. “My life has completely changed. I’m basically confined to a kilometre
from my house and back - because that’s as far as I can walk.”
Back in March, she says, she felt more individual control over her
health. She was reassured in part by messages that the vast majority of cases are
mild, and that good infection control, hand hygiene and social distancing would
reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19. Now, however, she feels as though “the
threat is everywhere.”
Callard is one of thousands of people worldwide who are reporting a wide
range of ongoing symptoms many months after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Some
call themselves COVID “long haulers”, while others have adopted the term “long
COVID” to describe their condition.
More
Steroids cut death rates among critically ill COVID-19 patients, major study finds
September 2, 2020
/ 2:09 PM
LONDON
(Reuters) - Treating critically ill COVID-19 patients with corticosteroid drugs
reduces the risk of death by 20%, an analysis of seven international trials
found on Wednesday, prompting the World Health Organisation to update its
advice on treatment.
The analysis - which pooled data from separate trials of low dose
hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone - found that steroids improve
survival rates of COVID-19 patients sick enough to be in intensive care in
hospital.
“This is equivalent to around 68% of (the sickest COVID-19) patients
surviving after treatment with corticosteroids, compared to around 60%
surviving in the absence of corticosteroids,” the researchers said in a
statement.
“Steroids are a cheap and readily available medication, and our analysis
has confirmed that they are effective in reducing deaths amongst the people
most severely affected by COVID-19,” Jonathan Sterne, a professor of medical
statistics and epidemiology at Britain’s Bristol University who worked on the
analysis, told the briefing.
He said the trials - conducted by researchers in Britain, Brazil,
Canada, China, France, Spain, and the United States - gave a consistent message
throughout, showing the drugs were beneficial in the sickest patients
regardless of age or sex or how long patients had been ill.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, reinforce results that were hailed as a major breakthrough and
announced in June, when dexamethasone became the first drug shown to be able to
reduce death rates among severely sick COVID-19 patients.
Dexamethasone has been in widespread use in intensive care wards
treating COVID-19 patients in some countries since then.
Martin Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the
University of Oxford who worked on the dexamethasone trial that was a key part
of the pooled analysis published on Wednesday, said the results mean doctors in
hospitals across the world can safely switch to using the drugs to save lives.
More
Large antibody study offers hope for virus vaccine efforts
Antibodies that people make to fight the new
coronavirus last for at least four months after diagnosis and do not fade
quickly as some earlier reports suggested, scientists have found.
Tuesday’s report, from tests on more than
30,000 people in Iceland, is the most extensive work yet on the immune system’s
response to the virus over time, and is good news for efforts to develop
vaccines.
If a vaccine can spur production of
long-lasting antibodies as natural infection seems to do, it gives hope that
“immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be
fleeting,” scientists from Harvard University and the U.S. National Institutes
of Health wrote in a commentary
published with the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
One
of the big mysteries of the pandemic is whether having had the coronavirus
helps protect against future infection, and for how long. Some smaller studies
previously suggested that antibodies may disappear quickly and that some people
with few or no symptoms may not make many at all.
The new study was done by Reykjavik-based
deCODE Genetics, a subsidiary of the U.S. biotech company Amgen, with several
hospitals, universities and health officials in Iceland. The country tested 15%
of its population since late February, when its first COVID-19 cases were
detected, giving a solid base for comparisons.
Scientists used two different types of
coronavirus testing: the kind from nose swabs or other samples that detects
bits of the virus, indicating infection, and tests that measure antibodies in
the blood, which can show whether someone was infected now or in the past.
Blood samples were analyzed from 30,576 people
using various methods, and someone was counted as a case if at least two of the
antibody tests were positive. These included a range of people, from those
without symptoms to people hospitalized with signs of COVID-19.
In a subgroup who tested positive, further
testing found that antibodies rose for two months after their infection
initially was diagnosed and then plateaued and remained stable for four months.
Previous studies suggesting antibodies faded
quickly may have been just looking at the first wave of antibodies the immune
system makes in response to infection; those studies mostly looked 28 days
after diagnosis. A second wave of antibodies forms after a month or two into
infection, and this seems more stable and long-lasting, the researchers report.
----The study also
found:
— Testing through the bits-of-virus method
that’s commonly done in community settings missed nearly half of people who
were found to have had the virus by blood antibody testing. That means the
blood tests are far more reliable and better for tracking spread of the disease
in a region and for guiding decisions and returning to work or school,
researchers say.
— Nearly a third of infections were in people
who reported no symptoms.
— Nearly 1% of Iceland’s population was
infected in this first wave of the pandemic, meaning the other 99% are still
vulnerable to the virus.
— The infection fatality rate was 0.3%. That’s
about three times the fatality rate of seasonal flu and in keeping with some
other more recent estimates, said Dr. Derek Angus, critical care chief at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Although many studies have been reporting death
rates based on specific groups such as hospitalized patients, the rate of death
among all infected with the coronavirus has been unknown.
The Latest: India’s daily surges making it world’s epicenter
India registered 78,357 new coronavirus cases
in the past 24 hours, raising its total over 3.7 million as the government
eases pandemic restrictions nationwide to help the battered economy.
India, a nation of 1.4 billion people, is fast
becoming the world’s coronavirus epicenter. It has been reporting the highest
daily increases in new cases for more than three weeks, and at its current rate
is likely to soon pass Brazil and ultimately the United States in total
reported cases.
The Health Ministry on Wednesday also reported
1,045 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total fatalities up to 66,333. It now
has the third-most deaths after recently passing Mexico’s toll, according to a
Johns Hopkins University tally.
India registered 78,357 new coronavirus cases
in the past 24 hours, raising its total over 3.7 million as the government
eases pandemic restrictions nationwide to help the battered economy.
India, a nation of 1.4 billion people, is fast
becoming the world’s coronavirus epicenter. It has been reporting the highest
daily increases in new cases for more than three weeks, and at its current rate
is likely to soon pass Brazil and ultimately the United States in total
reported cases.
The Health Ministry on Wednesday also reported
1,045 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total fatalities up to 66,333. It now
has the third-most deaths after recently passing Mexico’s toll, according to a
Johns Hopkins University tally.
Infections have been spreading fast from people
in India’s big cities to smaller towns and rural areas.
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
In later editions, Mackay added a footnote referencing the Railway Mania of the 1840s as another
"popular delusion" which was at least as important as the South Sea Bubble. Mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has pointed out, in a published
lecture, that Mackay himself played a role in this economic bubble; as leader
writer in the Glasgow Argus,
Mackay wrote on 2 October 1845: "There is no reason whatever to fear a
crash"
Railway Mania was an instance of a stock market bubble
in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the 1840s. It followed a
common pattern: as the price of railway shares increased, speculators invested
more money, which further increased the price of railway shares, until the
share price collapsed. The mania reached its zenith in 1846, when 272 Acts of Parliament
setting up new railway companies were passed, with the proposed routes totaling
9,500 miles (15,300 km). About a third of the railways authorised were
never built—the companies either collapsed due to poor financial planning, were
bought out by larger competitors before they could build their line, or turned
out to be fraudulent enterprises to channel investors' money into other
businesses.
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.
Team's flexible micro LEDs may reshape future of wearable technology
Novel devices can be folded, cut, attached to surfaces
Date:
August 31, 2020
Source:
University of Texas at Dallas
Summary:
Researchers have developed a method to create micro LEDs that can be folded,
twisted, cut and stuck to different surfaces.
The research, published online in June in the journal Science
Advances, helps pave the way for the next generation of flexible, wearable
technology.
Used in products ranging from brake lights to billboards, LEDs are ideal
components for backlighting and displays in electronic devices because they are
lightweight, thin, energy efficient and visible in different types of lighting.
Micro LEDs, which can be as small as 2 micrometers and bundled to be any size,
provide higher resolution than other LEDs. Their size makes them a good fit for
small devices such as smart watches, but they can be bundled to work in
flat-screen TVs and other larger displays. LEDs of all sizes, however, are
brittle and typically can only be used on flat surfaces.
The researchers' new micro LEDs aim to fill a demand for bendable,
wearable electronics.
"The biggest benefit of this research is that we have created a detachable
LED that can be attached to almost anything," said Dr. Moon Kim, Louis
Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering at UT
Dallas and a corresponding author of the study. "You can transfer it onto
your clothing or even rubber -- that was the main idea. It can survive even if
you wrinkle it. If you cut it, you can use half of the LED."
Researchers in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer
Science and the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics helped develop the
flexible LED through a technique called remote epitaxy, which involves growing
a thin layer of LED crystals on the surface of a sapphire crystal wafer, or
substrate.
Typically, the LED would remain on the wafer. To make it detachable,
researchers added a nonstick layer to the substrate, which acts similarly to
the way parchment paper protects a baking sheet and allows for the easy removal
of cookies, for instance. The added layer, made of a one-atom-thick sheet of
carbon called graphene, prevents the new layer of LED crystals from sticking to
the wafer.
"The graphene does not form chemical bonds with the LED material,
so it adds a layer that allows us to peel the LEDs from the wafer and stick
them to any surface," said Kim, who oversaw the physical analysis of the
LEDs using an atomic resolution scanning/transmission electron microscope at UT
Dallas' Nano Characterization Facility.
Colleagues in South Korea carried out laboratory tests of LEDs by
adhering them to curved surfaces, as well as to materials that were
subsequently twisted, bent and crumpled. In another demonstration, they adhered
an LED to the legs of a Lego minifigure with different leg positions.
Bending and cutting do not affect the quality or electronic properties
of the LED, Kim said.
The bendy LEDs have a variety of possible uses, including flexible
lighting, clothing and wearable biomedical devices. From a manufacturing
perspective, the fabrication technique offers another advantage: Because the
LED can be removed without breaking the underlying wafer substrate, the wafer
can be used repeatedly.
"You can use one substrate many times, and it will have the same
functionality," Kim said.
In ongoing studies, the researchers also are applying the fabrication
technique to other types of materials.
"It's very exciting; this method is not limited to one type of
material," Kim said. "It's open to all kinds of materials."
US Politics Betting Odds
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished August
DJIA: 28,430 Up. NASDAQ: 11,775 Up. SP500:
3,500 Up.
The NASDAQ
remained up. The DJIA and SP500 turned up in uly. With stock mania running
fueled by trillions of central bankster new fiat money programs, especially
tech stock mania in the NASDAQ, the indicators are essentially worthless after
all these years. I will discontinue this section at the end of the month.
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