Baltic Dry Index. 1296 -32 Brent Crude 40.61
Spot Gold 1945
Coronavirus Cases 10/9/20 World 27,946,712
Deaths 915,784
Prices are never too high to begin buying, or too low to begin
selling.
Jesse Livermore
This morning we are spoiled for choice of topic.
Massive forest fires burning out of control across the
Democrat controlled USA west.
Two more Atlantic storms expected to become hurricanes
and headed west.
Her Majesty’s UK Government proposing to break
international law!
The never-ending coronavirus crisis seemingly getting
second wind.
A Norwegian MP has nominated President Trump for a Nobel
Peace Prize.
President Trump has been busy talking himself out of
office.
Everyone and their dog in America, seems to have a book
to sell slamming President Trump as unfit for office. But that’s probably why
most people voted for him in 2016, and what got him the job.
That said, stock market gamblers in central bankster’s
casinos better soon start planning on a very left-wing Democrat Socialist USA,
starting in late January 2021.
But this morning we opt for “whipsaw Wall Street” in the
casinos. Sadly, for all Fed fuelled easy money casino gamblers, the casino is
on the RMS Titanic speeding full steam ahead for its iceberg. What could
possibly go wrong?
Asian stocks gain after Wall Street rebounds from tech slump
BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets gained
Thursday after Wall Street rebounded from a three-day slump for tech stocks.
Benchmarks in Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney
advanced.
Wall Street’s S&P 500 index ended Wednesday
up 2% for its best day in three months.
Investors were snapping up lower-priced shares
and were encouraged by hopes of possible additional stimulus from the European
Central Bank, analysts said. But they warned the recovery was fragile.
“To the extent that ‘buy the dip’ mentality
persists, this market may possess a somewhat more stubborn bullish streak,”
said Mizuho Bank. However, “markets will be prone to more volatility given the
opportunistic elements of the rebound and potential pain that ‘group think’
begs.”
The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.3% to
3,264.71 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo added 0.5% to 23,141.91. The Hang Seng in
Hong Kong was little-changed at 24,460.08.
The Kospi in Seoul advanced 0.8% to 2,396.23
and Sydney’s ASX-S&P 500 gained 0.5% to 5,909.90.
New Zealand advanced while Singapore and
Jakarta declined.
Global stock markets have recovered most of
this year’s losses, but that was based largely on strong gains for tech stocks
while other companies still are lower.
Forecasters warn the stock price recovery might
be too big and too early to be supported by uncertain economic activity as
coronavirus infection numbers rise in the United States, Brazil and some other
countries. Some governments have re-imposed anti-disease controls that are
hampering business.
----The U.S. Congress is at an impasse on
whether to approve a new economic aid package after additional unemployment
benefits ran out. and other stimulus that it approved earlier ran out.
A Senate vote this week on a trimmed-down
relief package proposed by Republicans has only a slim chance of passage as
Democrats insist on more sweeping aid.
In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude lost 23
cents to $37.82 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile
Exchange. The contract rose $1.29 on Wednesday to settle at $38.05. Brent
crude, the international standard, declined 16 cents to $40.63 per barrel in
London. It added $1.01 the previous session to $40.79.
David Rosenberg: Five signs that show this stock market is in a bubble
Tesla makes no money, Apple has no growth and Amazon makes no money in its delivery business. These are the stocks everyone feels they need to own
Sep 08, 2020
• Last Updated 19 hours ago
• 3 minute read
One can argue that the current stock-market bubble isn’t as big as the one that burst in 2000, when the dot-com implosion occurred. But so what? A bubble is still a bubble. But how do you define a bubble? Here are the five ways.
Price
The FAANGM stocks (Facebook Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Netflix Inc., Google (Alphabet Inc.) and Microsoft
Corp.) soared 50 per cent in 15 weeks. That is completely abnormal. As is the
30-per-cent gap between the level of the Nasdaq and its 200-day moving average
heading into last Thursday’s correction (the index is down 6.2 per cent from
Wednesday’s close). The 15-per-cent gap we had last week between the S&P
500 and its 200-day trendline classified as a 2.5 standard deviation event.
Valuation
The S&P 500’s trailing P/E
multiple has soared to 29.8x from 18.6x in March. The cyclically adjusted
price-to-earnings ratio (CAPE) multiple has expanded from 24.8x to 30.6x —
right where we were in February this year. Consider that at the market peak in
October 2007, the CAPE was 27.3x. We are in bubble territory. Trailing or
forward, valuation multiples last week on the S&P 500 were in the top 0.5
per cent of all time.
Leverage
This is a classic bubble sign, and
equity customer margin debt soared five per cent in July, 5.8 per cent in June,
5.3 per cent in May and 9.5 per cent when the party started in April. All this
the product of the “Don’t fight the Fed” mantra. How does U.S. Federal Reserve
chairman Jay Powell feel about being responsible for encouraging people to take
on debt to buy stocks? In any event, between April and July, margin debt
balances have absolutely ballooned at a 110-per-cent annual rate. This is
exactly what we had on our hands in March 2000 and July 2007, when nobody saw
any trouble brewing (“bubble, what bubble?”).
More
Back in the real world, we’re all still sleepwalking
along to the edge of the cliff.
Refinancing and Delinquencies Soar in Divided Mortgage Era
John Gittelsohn
September 8, 2020, 12:01 AM EDT
A record $1.1 trillion in loans originated in second
quarter The U.S. mortgage market shows a widening gap between winners and losers as affluent borrowers take advantage of record-low rates while protracted unemployment drives serious delinquencies to their highest levels since 2010.
About 2.25 million mortgages were at least 90 days late in July, a 450% increase from pre-pandemic levels and the biggest number since the global financial crisis, according to industry tracker Black Knight Inc.
Meanwhile, new mortgage originations reached a record $1.1 trillion in the second quarter. Rates on 30-year home loans slipped below 3% for the first time in history in July, enabling more homeowners with the ability to refinance to save hundreds of dollars a month.
There are still nearly 18 million homeowners with good credit and at least 20% equity who stand to cut at least 0.75% off their current rate by refinancing, according to Ben Graboske, president of Black Knight data and analytics.
----The diverging trends illustrate how government intervention is aiding many financially secure households while the more vulnerable face mounting threats to their homeownership as the pandemic continues to batter the U.S. economy. Real estate made up $30.3 trillion, or 24% of total U.S. household wealth, in the first quarter, according to the Federal Reserve.
“The money is in the homes and people with college education are still working, but the pain is being felt where people are unemployed,” Susan Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. “Covid-19 will drive an increase in the already high income-inequality gap, and wealth inequality, actually, which is much more extreme.”
While the unemployment rate fell to 8.4% in August, more than 11 million jobs were still lost in the pandemic, the Labor Department reported last week. Supplemental benefits for the unemployed of $600 a week expired in July and Congress has been at an impasse over a follow-up aid package.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-08/refinancing-and-delinquencies-soar-in-divided-mortgage-market?srnd=premium-canada
Manhattan’s Office Buildings Are Empty. But for How Long?
As they grow accustomed to working from home, many businesses are delaying signing new leases until rents drop and the pandemic passes.
Even as the coronavirus pandemic appears to recede in New York, corporations have been reluctant to call their workers back to their skyscrapers and are showing even more hesitation about committing to the city long term.
Fewer than 10 percent of New York’s
office workers had returned as of last month and just a quarter of major
employers expect to bring their people back by the end of the year, according
to a new survey. Only 54 percent of these companies say they will return by
July 2021.
Demand for office space has slumped.
Lease signings in the first eight months of the year were about half of what
they were a year earlier. That is putting the office market on track for a
20-year low for the full year. When companies do sign, many are opting for
short-term contracts that most landlords would have rejected in February.
At stake is New York’s financial health and its status as the
world’s corporate headquarters. There is more square feet of work space in the
city than in London and San Francisco combined, according to Cushman &
Wakefield, a real estate brokerage firm. Office work makes up the cornerstone
of New York’s economy and property taxes from office buildings account for
nearly 10 percent of the city’s total annual tax revenue.
What is most unnerving is that a
recovery could unfold much more slowly than it did after the Sept. 11 attacks
and the financial crisis of 2008. That’s largely because the pandemic has
prompted companies to fundamentally rethink their real estate needs.
----Less than 10
percent of workers had returned to New York’s skyscrapers as of last month,
according to a survey by the Partnership for New York.Vincent Tullo for The New
York Times
Robert Ivanhoe, a real estate lawyer at Greenberg Traurig, said he had
about 20 clients that had postponed searches for new offices. “They are putting
a lot of thought into coming up with a new operating model — how much of my
work force is going to work from home and for how much time?” he said. “It has
never been turned upside down like this before.”
More
The ripple effects of closed office buildings
13:00 is usually the peak of the lunch rush in the passageways beneath Brookfield Place in downtown Toronto. On a Thursday in August, though, the food court sat mostly empty, save for a smattering of workers, a lone security guard who ambled past the still-shuttered Starbucks and signs telling visitors to maintain physical distancing (though from whom it wasn’t clear).At Nutrition House, a health and supplement chain, franchise owner Paul Park rang up a single nutrition bar – his only sale for the hour – while his wife Johanna reviewed the long list of unsold, expired inventory they’d been forced to take off the shelves since April, worth thousands of dollars overall.
The shop is one of more than 1,200 businesses located in the PATH, a labyrinthine network of underground halls connecting Toronto’s downtown office towers, subway stations and sports arenas. Since the Covid-19 crisis began, companies have sent the bankers, lawyers and tech executives who normally work in the area home, leaving corridors that once teemed with more than 200,000 people per day deserted.
Even as most of Toronto has reopened, with Stage 3 activities including cycling classes and indoor dining allowed to resume on 31 July, many of the financial district’s biggest employers have announced plans to keep their staff working from home until at least 2021. It’s a move the mayor’s office has encouraged as a means of reducing pressure on public transit.
For the restaurants, retailers and services whose businesses revolve around keeping Bay Street (Toronto’s answer to Wall Street) fed, dressed and dry cleaned, the future has never looked more uncertain.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200826-the-ripple-effects-of-closed-office-buildings
Finally, a warning from the World Bank of coming food
shortages. Yes, but probably not for the G-7 nations.
Global food prices have been rising during the coronavirus pandemic, hitting food security
Published Wed, Sep 9 202012:38 AM EDT
Food prices are rising during the coronavirus pandemic, hitting food
security.Last Thursday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported global food prices rose for the third straight month in August, hitting their highest levels since February.
The FAO Food Price Index tracks the international prices of the most commonly traded food commodities.
The rise in food prices was due to firmer demand and a weaker dollar, the FAO said. As commodities, including raw material for food, is usually denominated in the greenback, a weaker dollar lends support to prices.
On Wednesday, China’s Bureau of Statistics said the country’s food prices rose 11.2% from a year ago in August on the back of high pork prices due to the African swine fever outbreak which has decimated China’s hog herds. In August, pork prices rose 52.6% from a year ago.
Hot and rainy weather in the country have also hit prices, with vegetable prices rising 6.4% from July. Egg prices rose 11.3% in the same period due to seasonal demand outpacing low inventory levels.
Experts have said that while there is no pressing food shortage, farms have been roiled as the coronavirus pandemic upended supply chains and curbed movements.
“As the coronavirus crisis unfolds, disruptions in domestic food supply chains, other shocks affecting food production, and loss of incomes and remittances are creating strong tensions and food security risks in many countries,” The World Bank said last Monday.
Although global food prices are generally stable, many countries are experiencing varying levels of food price inflation due to measures taken to contain the spread of coronavirus, it added.
In July, a survey by agri-business Olam found more than half of 2,400 smallholder farmers growing cocoa, coffee, sesame, cotton, and other crops in Africa and Indonesia were experiencing shortages in basic food and nutrition due to movement restrictions, food price increases and insufficient stocks at home.
Of the farmers surveyed, 70% of them said their ability to afford food was impacted as they had less income than usual in the prior four months.
The World Bank in its post warned of disruption to supply ahead if farmers continue to have limited access to food.
More
I did exactly the wrong thing. The cotton
showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out.
Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a
losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a
profit.
Jesse Livermore
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.NIH Chief Says No Way to Know When Safe Vaccine Will Be Ready
By Anna Edney, Jacquie Lee, and Riley Griffin
September 9, 2020, 6:40 PM GMT+1
Contradicting President Donald Trump, the head of the National Institutes of Health said there’s no way to tell if a safe vaccine will be available before the Nov. 3 election. But he remains hopeful that we can have one by year’s end.
“Will it be done by a certain date?” NIH Director Francis Collins said during a congressional hearing Wednesday. “I could not possibly tell you right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Collins and Surgeon General Jerome Adams appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions to discuss the importance of vaccines generally, but the focus naturally was on a Covid-19 vaccine with the health leaders attempting to reassure senators the process for reaching a vaccine would be focused on science not politics.
The hearing comes as the chase for a vaccine has been drawn into the political debate, with Trump saying he expects to see a vaccine approved prior to the Nov. 3 presidential election and Democrats citing concern the president will pressure health officials to make that happen. That tension became clear at times during the hearing.
“I just hope Americans will choose to take the information they need from scientists and physicians, and not from politicians,” Collins said in response to questions from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, who cited a series of statements by Trump in the past.
Collins said he has “cautious optimism” that a vaccine will be available by the end of the year. “But even that,” he added, “is a guess.”
Independent Panel
The NIH chief defended the process for approving a safe and effective vaccine, pointing out that study results will be closely reviewed by an independent panel and that political issues will not be involved. He cited AstraZeneca Plc’s decision this week to pause its vaccine study after one patient became ill as an example of a company not compromising on safety.More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-09/nih-chief-says-no-way-to-know-when-safe-vaccine-will-be-ready?srnd=coronavirus
COVID Vaccine Trial Paused After Volunteer Develops Mysterious Illness
"In large trials, illnesses will happen by chance but must be independently reviewed to check this carefully."
by Dan Robitzski / September 9, 2020
After one of its volunteers fell sick with an unexplained illness, the clinical trial testing AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine has been temporarily put on hold.
There’s no available evidence suggesting that the illness is linked to the vaccine, CNN reports. But AstraZeneca still needs to investigate and review its safety data before the trial can proceed.
Otherwise, the researchers won’t know whether the volunteer just happened to get sick or if the vaccine has more side effects than they thought.
“This is a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials,” AstraZeneca said in a statement sent to CNN.
As vaccines are developed and tested on an accelerated timeline to meet the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the biggest challenges will be making sure the public trusts whichever one gets distributed.
Of course, it’s just as important to make sure any vaccines are indeed safe. Russia, China and a group of MIT researchers have all sidestepped the conventional clinical trial process to administer experimental vaccines, but AstraZeneca and other pharma companies recently signed a pledge to not release any vaccines for the virus until they’ve been thoroughly tested for any safety issues.
It’s not clear whether AstraZeneca or a regulatory body made the call to pause the clinical trial, but doing so is an important part of making sure the experimental vaccine isn’t just rushed out of the gate.
“In large trials, illnesses will happen by chance but must be independently reviewed to check this carefully,” reads the AstraZeneca statement. “We are working to expedite the review of the single event to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline. We are committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our trials.”
England to Limit Gatherings; Vaccine Safety Pledge: Virus Update
Bloomberg News
Updated on September 9, 2020, 1:19 AM GMT+1
Frontrunners in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine pledged to avoid shortcuts on science as they face pressure to
rush a shot to market. AstraZeneca Plc put its Phase 3 study on hold after a
suspected adverse reaction, STAT reported.Europe’s fears of a virus resurgence are becoming reality with France’s health minister calling the surge in infections “worrisome.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson is poised to announce bans on social gatherings of more than six people in England.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said colleges that have more than 100 Covid-19 cases may have to switch to remote learning, citing outbreaks at Cornell, Hoftstra and other universities. Arizona, Florida and California reported the fewest new cases in months.
Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases surpass 27.4 million; deaths exceed 894,000
- Death of doctor who didn’t wear mask sparks anger in Angola
- Weight gain is flip side of Covid food crisis for richer nations
- For Covid apps, a tug of war between privacy and efficiency
- Pandemic do-it-yourself boom turns all of us into hipsteaders
- Dear Wall Street: Your boss wants you to come back to the office
- Vaccine Tracker: Where we are in the quest for treatments
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.
Plant-based supercapacitor keeps costs low and energy storage high
Nick Lavars September 08, 2020
Supercapacitors
have the potential to pave the way for electric vehicles that charge in minutes
rather than hours, overcoming one of the barriers to widespread adoption and
being good for drivers and the environment. In a step towards such a reality,
scientists at Texas A&M University have demonstrated a plant-based
supercapacitor with excellent energy storage potential.
With
an ability to charge almost in an instant and discharge huge amounts of power
as its needed, supercapacitors are an energy storage technology with massive
potential. And we have seen a number of interesting advances made in building
the devices out of sustainable materials, including upcycled plastic
bottles, hemp and
even discarded
cigarette butts.
The authors of the new study, however, hope to use it to supercharge the performance of a material used in supercapacitor electrodes called manganese dioxide. Nanoparticles of this compound offer a number of benefits over other solutions, but the electrochemical performance is where they tend to fall down.
“Manganese dioxide is cheaper, available in abundance and is safer
compared to other transition metal oxides, like ruthenium or zinc oxide, that
are popularly used for making electrodes,” says study author Hong Liang. “But a
major drawback of manganese dioxide is that it suffers from lower electrical
conductivity.”
Previous research had indicated that lignin combined with metal oxides
could boost the electrical performance of supercapacitor electrodes, but the
team wanted to investigate how it could enhance the function of manganese oxide
specifically. So they designed a supercapacitor in which these two components
formed the key building blocks.
The team started by purifying the lignin in a common disinfectant and
then applied heat and pressure, which caused the liquid to break down and for
manganese dioxide to be deposited onto the lignin. This mixture was then used
to coat an aluminum plate to form the electrode, which was paired with another
electrode made of aluminum and activated charcoal to form the supercapacitor,
with a gel electrolyte sandwiched in between.
The researchers describe the new device as light, flexible and cost effective, increasing its potential to be used as structural energy storage elements in vehicles. They also report that it stood up extremely well in testing, finding that it had “very stable electrochemical properties,” and that it maintained its ability to store an electrical charge over thousands of cycles.
The performance was compared to other cutting-edge supercapacitor designs through existing literature, including ones with electrodes made wholly from activated carbon, or graphene combined with other materials. It outperformed them all in terms of specific capacitance, a measure of the device's ability to store a charge. When compared to one supercapacitor with an electrode made from tin diselenide, the new device offered a specific capacitance that was 900 times greater.
“Integrating biomaterials into energy storage devices has been tricky because it is difficult to control their resulting electrical properties, which then gravely affects the devices’ life cycle and performance” says Liang. “Also, the process of making biomaterials generally includes chemical treatments that are hazardous. We have designed an environmentally friendly energy storage device that has superior electrical performance and can be manufactured easily, safely and at much lower cost.”
The research was published in the journal Energy Storage.
https://newatlas.com/energy/plant-based-supercapacitor-energy-storage/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=5c0ba3b760-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_09_08_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-5c0ba3b760-90625829
I learned early that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again. I’ve never forgotten that.
Jesse Livermore
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 July. 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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