Wall Street Bets On Biden. Get Gold.

Baltic Dry Index. 1970 -74  Brent Crude 43.30

Spot Gold 1909

Coronavirus Cases 09/10/20 World 36,588,950

Deaths 1,065,257

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

George Bernard Shaw, socialist.

Everyone likes a winner, or at least on Wall Street, to be seen as backing the winner. The winner hands out the spoils of office, favours, and most precious of all to Wall Street, money.

Coming early next year, “the people’s Magic Money Tree.”

In the C suites of the rich and powerful of the one percent, there’s suddenly a scramble underway to get ingratiated deep into the Biden-Harris, Democrat Socialist camp.

Wall Streeters never let anything get in the way of access to money.

Asian shares close in on 2-1/2-year peak as U.S. stimulus hopes return

October 9, 202012:41 AM  By Hideyuki Sano, Imani Moise

TOKYO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Asian shares inched close to 2-1/2-year highs on Friday as revived hopes for a U.S. stimulus deal eclipsed weaker-than-expected jobs data, while mainland Chinese markets jumped after a week-long holiday.

Investors are also increasingly expecting the Democrats to take back the White House, and possibly the Senate as well, in the Nov. 3 U.S. election, analysts said.

A widening lead for Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden is seen as reducing the risk of a contested election and opening the way for a big economic stimulus, helping to counter investors’ wariness about a Democrat pledge to hike corporate tax rates.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.15%, inching closer to its Aug. 31 peak, which was its highest level since March 2018. China's CSI300 index .CSI300 gained 1.68% after the Golden Week holidays.

Japan's Nikkei .N225 dipped 0.1% after hitting a 7 1/2-month high, while futures for the S&P 500 EScv1 gained 0.47%.

“Markets are starting to assume a Biden victory,” said Osamu Takashima, chief FX strategist at Citigroup Global Markets Japan.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said talks with Congress had restarted on targeted fiscal relief, after calling off negotiations earlier this week.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed confidence about reaching an agreement on the amount of aid in new legislation.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.80% and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.5%.

The S&P 500 energy index .SPNY led sector percentage gains, rising 3.8% on the day, after a jump in oil prices due to production shutdowns ahead of a storm in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and the possibility of supply cuts from Saudi Arabia and Norway.

Still, in a sign markets are pricing in a victory by Biden, clean energy-related shares have outperformed in recent weeks.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-shares-close-in-on-2-1-2-year-peak-as-u-s-stimulus-hopes-return-idUKKBN26T3SI?il=0

More than 6.6 million Americans have already voted, suggesting record turnout

October 8, 202011:15 PM  By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are rushing to cast ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election at an unprecedented pace, early voting numbers show, indicating a possible record turnout for the showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

With less than four weeks to go before Election Day, more than 6.6 million Americans already have voted, more than ten times the number who had at this time in 2016, according to the United States Elections Project, which compiles early voting data.

The shift has been driven by an expansion of early and mail-in voting in many states as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic and an eagerness to weigh in on the political future of Trump, said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project.

“We’ve never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” McDonald said in an interview earlier this week. “People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgment about Trump.”

The early surge has led McDonald to predict a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65% of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.

Biden leads Trump in national opinion polls, although surveys in crucial battleground states indicate a tighter race.

The numbers reported so far come from 34 states plus the District of Columbia. All but about a half-dozen states allow some level of early in-person voting.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-early-vote/more-than-6-6-million-americans-have-already-voted-suggesting-record-turnout-idUKKBN26T3PA?il=0

Dollar slips and yuan soars as investors eye Biden presidency

October 9, 20201:33 AM  By Tom Westbrook

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The dollar drifted toward a small weekly loss on Friday, while the Chinese yuan soared to a 17-month high, as investors wagered on a Joe Biden presidency and on more U.S. stimulus spending.

The yuan’s leap, when China’s markets reopened after the Mid-Autumn break, was partly a catch-up since the offshore yuan has gained against a softening dollar during the week.

But as it extended gains beyond 1%, its biggest daily jump in nearly two years, traders said it provided one of the clearest indications yet that Biden’s lead in the polls is driving bets on a steadier Sino-U.S. relationship.

A stronger-than-expected setting of the yuan’s trading band also signalled that policymakers in China don’t mind its rise.

The yuan was last up 1% at 6.7218 per dollar in onshore trade and it rallied half a percent to 6.7083 per dollar offshore. The dollar eased 0.1% against a basket of currencies and it is down 0.4% for the week.

“I think the main message is that the (People’s Bank of China) is allowing further renminbi appreciation at this level,” said Ken Cheung, chief Asian FX strategist at Mizuho Bank in Hong Kong. “So markets are positioning for a renminbi rally.”

The prospect of a Biden administration less inclined toward tariffs and trade disputes was another boost, he added.

“Polls are showing that Biden is taking the lead... it means the risks of resuming a new trade war are getting smaller, so I think this is positive for the renminbi.”

Reuters/IPSOS polling this week put Biden, a Democrat, narrowly ahead of Republican President Donald Trump in five states - Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Arizona - that will play critical roles in deciding the victor.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex/dollar-slips-and-yuan-soars-as-investors-eye-biden-presidency-idUKKBN26U013

Next, sensing a Biden presidency, did Goldman just switch horses? Below, Goldie moves to appease the Democrat Socialists. Be nice to the crocodile in the hope he eats you last?

Goldman’s Abby Joseph Cohen Warns Over ‘Considerable’ Market Downside

By Ksenia Galouchko, Tom Keene, and Francine Lacqua

October 8, 2020, 2:44 PM GMT+1

Strategist sees ‘intense’ volatility ahead of U.S. elections

·         ‘Blue wave’ can give investors policy certainty: Joseph Cohen

The stock market faces the possibility of significant declines ahead of the U.S. election as economic and political unpredictability dumbfound strategists, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Abby Joseph Cohen.

“I’m quite concerned that there could be considerable downside,” depending on “factors that we can’t fit easily into our models,” the senior investment strategist said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “This includes: What will the Congress do? What will the President say? And of course, the election outcome.”

Cohen, who in the 1990s was the most famous equity strategist in America, pointed to “wide gaps” in valuations within the stock market, with the recovery rally since March having been largely driven by a handful of mega-cap technology companies. This, she warned, can make the market more vulnerable to disappointments. Only this week, markets slid after President Donald Trump announced he was halting stimulus talks until after next month’s election.

“Those of us who have lived our professional lives really focusing in on the math, I think should feel very humble right now because what we recognize is that the models may not be able to properly reflect all of the volatility not just in the markets, but in the economy, in policy and of course in investor sentiment,” Cohen said.

Goldman’s house view is that the S&P 500 Index is currently “modestly” undervalued based on expectations of corporate profit growth and accommodative U.S. Federal Reserve policy actions, the strategist said. She cautioned that “intense” volatility has been rising ahead of the election and all eyes are currently on the fiscal stimulus negotiations.

A “blue wave” of wins for Joe Biden’s Democrats could bring more certainty to the government’s fiscal actions, according to Cohen. Investors are now viewing the possibility of a Democratic victory as positive for the longer-term outlook on corporate profits and economic growth in 2021 and beyond, she said.

“What we’re seeing from investors over the last several days is that a ‘blue wave’ might not be such a bad thing because it would give us more certainty with regard to policy, particularly with regard to the use of fiscal policy to help our economy at this point,” the strategist said.

She echoed the comments of Fed Chair Jerome Powell that more fiscal support is needed to sustain the economic recovery.

Cohen said that based on her conversations with investors, market participants are uncertain what Trump’s plans would be for the second term, adding that there’s “disappointment” on infrastructure policy and concern about possible environmental and healthcare actions.

U.S. stocks rose on Thursday after Trump advocated a piecemeal approach in a barrage of overnight tweets, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled openness to a standalone airline-relief bill.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-08/goldman-s-joseph-cohen-warns-over-considerable-market-downside?cmpid=BBD100820_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=201008&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Finally, whose idea was it to give mortgage borrowers a payment holiday? And let’s not get started on no eviction, non-rent paying “renters.” Sooner or later, “extend and pretend” ends in tears.

Britain's banks turn cyber sleuths to crack £75 billion mortgage mystery

October 8, 20207:13 AM  By Lawrence White

LONDON (Reuters) - Does a cancelled gym membership spell financial disaster?

That is the type of question British banks are asking as they try to work out whether borrowers owing some 75 billion pounds in home loans will be good for it when a payment holiday, introduced when the coronavirus crisis first hit, ends.

Lenders are scouring current account transactions, credit card spending and trends in Internet searches for clues about customer finances as part of a wider effort to understand the damage to their portfolios from the pandemic.

The once-in-a-lifetime mix of economic shutdowns, unprecedented government support and an uncertain path to recovery have upended old risk models, based on historical data, necessitating a more dynamic, forward-looking way of analysing lending risk. The searches involve pouring over anonymised data and are a way of surveying overall risk rather than individual customer habits.

The stakes are high: underestimate the risks and bank bosses and shareholders could be in for a nasty jump in losses, overestimate them and banks could rein in lending when it is needed most.

Executives at Britain’s top banks say calculating the hit to loans, from mortgages to corporate debt, is the biggest risk management challenge they have seen since the 2008 crisis.

"This time there is economic volatility beyond what we have ever seen, there is unprecedented government support, and to try and model it all with 100% accuracy is impossible," said Matt Waymark, director of finance at NatWest Group NWG.L.

Some 300 billion pounds in payment breaks were granted on British mortgages, part of a series of measures aimed at propping up households hit by the virus, and around 70-80% of those have resumed payments, bankers and analysts told Reuters.

That leaves nearly $100 billion (77.2 billion pounds) outstanding at a time when banks also face wider defaults on their corporate loans and plunging income due to near-zero interest rates.

That is a small proportion of the £1.5 trillion in mortgages outstanding in Britain, but a big default on that stock of home loans coupled with an expected rise in defaults on corporate loans could see bad debts rise from 1.4% of their books to 4.1% by 2022, analysts at ratings agency Moody’s said.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-banks-risks-focus/britains-banks-turn-cyber-sleuths-to-crack-75-billion-pounds-mortgage-mystery-idUKKBN26T0RS?il=0

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Henry Kissinger

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

India Cases Near 7 Million; China Joins WHO Effort: Virus Update

Bloomberg News

October 7, 2020, 11:56 PM GMT+1 Updated on October 9, 2020, 6:19 AM GMT+1

China joined a World Health Organization-backed initiative to ensure everyone across the globe is inoculated against Covid-19, without saying how much money it plans to put into the $18 billion project.

India continued on a trajectory to overtake the U.S. as the country with the most cases, as infections climbed to 6.91 million. Outbreaks from New Jersey to North Dakota strained health care in parts of the U.S., less than a month before the general election. European countries from Spain to Ukraine posted record increases in infections.

U.S. President Donald Trump -- who’s back in the Oval Office after being hospitalized with Covid-19 -- is able to return to public engagements on Saturday, his doctor said. Trump said in a Fox News interview he will probably do a coronavirus test Friday and is aiming to hold rallies over the weekend in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Key Developments:

• Global Tracker: Cases pass 36.4 million; deaths top 1.06 million
• Dual flu-covid nasal spray vaccine to start trail in Hong Kong
• How one of the world’s biggest slums stopped the coronavirus
• Suicide spike in Japan shows mental health toll of Covid-19
• One week at the White House was America’s pandemic in a microcosm

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-07/trump-touts-treatment-brazil-tops-5-million-cases-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus

India's coronavirus infections rise by 70,496 to 6.91 million

October 9, 20205:09 AM

BENGALURU (Reuters) - India’s total coronavirus cases rose by 70,496 in the last 24 hours to 6.91 million on Friday morning, data from the health ministry showed.

Deaths from COVID-19 infections rose by 964 to 106,490, the ministry said.

India’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose past 100,000 on Saturday, only the third country in the world to reach that bleak milestone, after the United States and Brazil, and its epidemic shows no sign of abating.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-india-cases/indias-coronavirus-infections-rise-by-70496-to-6-91-million-idUKKBN26U0BD?il=0

With winter coming, Germany's corona cases start to spiral

October 8, 20204:33 AM

BERLIN (Reuters) - The daily tally of new confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany leapt by almost half, official data showed on Thursday, a day after ministers agreed emergency measures to tamp down on domestic tourism to try to contain the second wave.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 4,058 to 310,144, a rate not seen since April, lending weight to officials’ warnings that Germany is headed down the path of its neighbours if citizens don’t adhere to rigid social distancing.

“The number of new infections has gone over 4,000,” tweeted senior conservative legislator Norbert Roettgen, a candidate to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel. “It has almost doubled and is once again in the field of exponential growth... Everyone must do what they can to stop it from getting out of control again.”

The reported death toll rose by 16 to 9,578, the tally by the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed.

New cases have been spiralling elsewhere in Europe as the coming winter drives more people indoors, with cases soaring in neighbouring countries including Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

Germany’s capital Berlin and financial hub Frankfurt have already imposed a curfew on evening entertainment.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-germany-cases/with-winter-coming-germanys-corona-cases-start-to-spiral-idUKKBN26T0E6?feedType=nl&feedName=ukmorningdigest&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2018%20Template:%20UK%20MORNING%20DIGEST%202020-10-08&utm_term=NEW:%20UK%20Morning%20Digest

France plans to put Lyon and Lille on maximum COVID-19 alert - radio

October 8, 20207:53 AM

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will put Lyon and Lille on maximum COVID-19 alert, France Inter radio reported on Thursday, paving the way for new restrictions to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in the two cities.

Health Minister Olivier Veran will announce the decision at a news conference on Thursday, it said on its website.

Officials at the French Health Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

Paris and Marseille are already on maximum alert. This has resulted in bars in the capital having to close for two weeks and restaurants have had to set up new sanitary protocols to stay open.

Health authorities on Wednesday reported a record 24-hour rise in new COVID-19 infections, with almost 19,000 additional cases reported, and President Emmanuel Macron said new restrictions would be imposed to contain the pandemic.

France has the ninth-highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, with 32,445 casualties. (here)

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-france/france-plans-to-put-lyon-and-lille-on-maximum-covid-19-alert-radio-idUKKBN26T0XQ?il=0

Czech republic reports 5,335 new coronavirus cases, highest one-day tally since pandemic started

October 8, 202012:43 AM

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech Republic reported 5,335 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its highest one-day tally since the pandemic started, Health Ministry data showed on Thursday.

The rise surpassed a previous record of 4,457 reported the previous day as the country of 10.7 million had Europe’s fastest per-capita spike in cases in the past two weeks. In total, it has recorded 95,360 cases since March, along with 829 deaths.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-czech/czech-republic-reports-5335-new-coronavirus-cases-highest-one-day-tally-since-pandemic-started-idUKKBN26S3NL?il=0

Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.

World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

Stanford Website. https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132

Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Some other useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Rt Covid-19

https://rt.live/

Covid19info.live

https://wuflu.live/

 

"Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest."

Warren Buffett.

 

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 21^st century onwards.

"World's fastest electrodes" triple the density of lithium batteries

By Loz Blain  October 06, 2020

French company Nawa technologies says it's already in production on a new electrode design that can radically boost the performance of existing and future battery chemistries, delivering up to 3x the energy density, 10x the power, vastly faster charging and battery lifespans up to five times as long.

Nawa is already known for its work in the ultracapacitor market, and the company has announced that the same high-tech electrodes it uses on those ultracapacitors can be adapted for current-gen lithium-ion batteries, among others, to realize some tremendous, game-changing benefits.

It all comes down to how the active material is held in the electrode, and the route the ions in that material have to take to deliver their charge. Today's typical activated carbon electrode is made with a mix of powders, additives and binders. Where carbon nanotubes are used, they're typically stuck on in a jumbled, "tangled spaghetti" fashion. This gives the charge-carrying ions a random, chaotic and frequently blocked path to traverse on their way to the current collector under load.

Nawa's vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, create an anode or cathode structure more like a hairbrush, with a hundred billion straight, highly conductive nanotubes poking up out of every square centimeter. Each of these tiny, securely rooted poles is then coated with active material, be it lithium-ion or something else.

The result is a drastic reduction in the mean free path of the ions – the distance the charge needs to travel to get in or out of the battery – since every blob of lithium is more or less directly attached to a nanotube, which acts as a straight-line highway and part of the current collector. "The distance the ion needs to move is just a few nanometers through the lithium material," Nawa Founder and CTO Pascal Boulanger tells us, "instead of micrometers with a plain electrode."

This radically boosts the power density – the battery's ability to deliver fast charge and discharge rates – by a factor of up to 10x, meaning that smaller batteries can put out 10 times more power, and the charging times for these batteries can be brought down just as drastically. Nawa says a five-minute charge should be able to take you from 0-80 percent given the right charging infrastructure.

Also, because there are gaps in that ultra-lightweight nanotube scaffolding and less extraneous binder and additive materials, a battery containing a given amount of active material can become much, much lighter and more compact. Energy density, both by weight and by volume, stands to jump by factors of 2-3.

Oh, and the rigid structure and vast surface area of that nanotube array, as well as the broad distribution of tiny lithium blobs attached to it, eliminate a number of factors that cause batteries to dwindle, lose performance and die over time. Nawa says a battery's lifespan should be five times longer using this technology.

----At around this point, we'd expect to find a catch, so we reached out to seek a reality check from Dr. Cameron Shearer, Research Fellow at the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Flinders University, South Australia and an independent expert on battery technologies and carbon nanotubes.

"Research has shown vertically aligned – or even just well distributed – carbon nanotubes have far greater properties than randomly placed carbon nanotubes," said Dr. Shearer. "I am not surprised a x10 in conductivity is possible. Controlling the placement of carbon nanotubes is really the way to unlock their potential. The issue in commercialization is the cost associated with producing aligned carbon nanotubes. My guess is the cost would be much more than x10."

We put the question of cost to Nawa. "The million dollar question!" said Boulanger. "Here's a million dollar answer: the process we're using is the same process that's used for coating glasses with anti-reflective coatings, and for photovoltaics. It's already very cheap."

"In high volume, like those processes, yes," added Nawa CEO Ulrik Grape. "We are firmly convinced that this will be cost-competitive with existing electrodes."

"Just to give you some numbers," continues Boulanger, "the cost for depositing anti-reflective coating inside a PV panel is a few cents per square meter. It's the same, we just deposit our material, because we've mastered the process. The growth rate for vertically aligned carbon nanotubes is known as being very, very fast. We can grow vertically aligned nanotubes up to, let's say, 100 microns per minute. It needs only one minute in the furnace. We've scaled this process on very large surfaces, and with a process that works at atmospheric pressure, at lower temperature, we can do it a little bit like making a newspaper. Not that fast, but almost the same idea."

The company has moved past its pilot unit and now has a full production unit up and running, supplying vertically aligned carbon nanotubes for its ultracapacitor devices. Nawa says the electrode technology is more or less agnostic; it can be used on cylindrical cells or flat cells of all sizes.

And it doesn't have to be lithium-ion, either. The company has developed processes to make the nanotubes more compatible with a range of active materials including silicon, nickel-manganese-cobalt and sulfur chemistries, and some other more exotic ones it's exploring with specific cell manufacturers.

More

https://newatlas.com/energy/nawa-vertically-aligned-carbon-nanotube-electrode/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=c87b4f71c8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_10_07_08_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-c87b4f71c8-90625829

US Politics Betting Odds

https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics

Another weekend and another week closer to the US elections. Will the USA suddenly go Democrat Socialist? What does it mean for the rest of the world if it does? More Trump v Biden comedy next week but no face to face fight? Can Donald Trump still pull off another unexpected upset? Wall Street is now betting that he can’t.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

George Bernard Shaw