When
the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't
just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'
Joe
Biden
Easy come easy go in
the central bankster funded gambling casinos. Ominously, this is often how stock
market bubble mania ends.
Speculative excess runs
out of greater fool buyers.
But this blow-off
lasted just over a week. Things happen faster and faster in the 21st
century internet age, but just a week seems a little to short, even for the 21st
century.
Below, what goes up,
must come down. Now comes totting up winners and losers.
Reddit Trades Crumble as
GameStop, AMC and Silver Plunge
GameStop, AMC
shares sink more than 20% in U.S. pre-market
·Robinhood has loosened trading restrictions on
some stocks
The wild run-up of trades popular with Reddit
crowds is starting to come crashing down.
GameStop
Corp. sank 47% to $118.84 as of 9:42 a.m. in New York. It’s now down
65% from its record close of $347.51 on Wednesday. AMC Entertainment Holdings
Inc. slid 39% and Express Inc. lost 26%. Silver tumbled more than 5% after
surging to an eight-year high.
The speculative activity hatched online has captivated
global markets, drawing attention from U.S. politicians and overwhelming
brokerages around the world. Now, the tide is turning.
“The short squeeze momentum met its inevitable end,” said
Mark Taylor, a sales trader at Mirabaud Securities. “It seems reasonably clear
that as the cheerleading and rage against the machine dies down, the man on the
street is left holding the bag again.”
Posts on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, where last week day traders amassed to
drive a furious rally in left-for-dead stocks heavily bet against by Wall
Street, started to pile up with purported tales of big losses.
Part
of the buying pressure that helped fuel last week’s surge lessened. Looking at
short intereste, traders have stopped feverishly buying GameStop to cover
bearish bets. In GameStop, short interest
plunged to 53% of the available shares, from more than 140% just last month,
according to data from financial analytics firm S3 Partners. Trading volume on
Monday slowed to around one-third of the average of the past five sessions.
It’s anyone’s guess whether this marks an inflection point
for the manic gains that have spread from one asset to the next in recent
weeks. But the pullback lends credence to market watchers who’ve said it was
only a matter of time before the rallies began to fade.
For now, the broader market seems largely immune to the
intense volatility in GameStop, AMC and silver. Global equities rallied sharply
into the U.S. morning on Tuesday, with the focus shifting to big tech earnings.
S&P 500 futures were up 1% as of 5 a.m. in New York.
The easing of trading restrictions is likely playing some
role in the recent market action. On Monday afternoon, Robinhood let users to
purchase up to 20 GameStop
shares, compared with one share before the market opened.
In silver, CME Group asked traders to put up more
collateral after reviewing market volatility. The exchange raised margins on
Comex silver futures by 18% to to $16,500 per contract. That mood on Reddit
boards also started to fizzle, with some users urging their fellow investors to
back away from silver.
Silver’s retracement “isn’t surprising, as any longer-term
price upside due to social media-driven collaboration and conspiracy theories
was always going to be unsustainable,” said Gavin Wendt, a senior resource
analyst at MineLife Pty.
Stock falls a
record 60% in Tuesday’s trading, AMC sinks 41%
·Short interest plunges to 51% of the
available shares, S3 says
GameStop Corp.’s rally came to
a screeching halt this week as the shares had their biggest one-day loss on
record, erasing more than $27 billion in market value from their high.
The stock, which has been the poster child for Redditors
looking to squeeze short sellers, fell 60% Tuesday, closing below $100 for the
first time in a week. Several other Reddit favorites -- including movie-theater
chain AMC Entertainment
Holdings Inc. and clothing retailer Express Inc.
-- also tumbled.
GameStop fluctuated around its $90 a share closing level in
after-hours trading.
The stock’s retreat coincided with a sharp reduction in
short interest after bearish investors appeared to cover their positions. That
has loosened a squeeze on the stock caused by day traders who used Reddit
forums to tout and bid up out-of-favor stocks that also included American Airlines Group
Inc. and BlackBerry
Ltd.
“With GameStop, if you trade now you are presumably betting
on what happens tomorrow or next week,” said Craig Birk, chief investment
officer at Personal Capital. “There are online pleas to buy and hold, but this
does not feel like a buy
and hold situation.”
GameStop has now given up more than 80% of the sharp gains
that were fueled by last month’s attack on short sellers. Even with the latest
pullback, however, the Grapevine, Texas-based retailer is still up 377%
year-to-date.
AMC trimmed losses to 41% and at $7.84 is more than 50%
lower than last week’s intraday high. Express declined 32% and has lost more
than three-quarters of its value since peaking on Wednesday.
“Once you get through some of this initial speculation, the
question becomes what are the fundamentals of the company,” said Chad Oviatt,
director of investment management at Huntington Private Bank. “And when you get
back to it, the fundamentals will eventually drive stock prices and that’s
where you’ll see a lot of these names pull back to more reasonable price
levels.”
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban told Reddit investors
on Tuesday morning to hold on to their GameStop stocks if they could afford it.
“If you can afford to hold the stock, you hold. I don’t own
it, but that’s what I would do,” the 62-year-old wrote on Reddit during a “Ask
Me Anything Session” to discuss investment strategies.
Tuesday’s drop came despite a loosening of restrictions
on the amount of shares investors can buy using Robinhood Markets Inc. On
Monday afternoon, the popular trading app started allowing users to purchase up to 20 shares of GameStop, up
from a cap of one before the market opened.
The lower number of shares sold short could also deal a
blow to day traders’ thesis that a higher stock price would only result in more
gains as hedge funds who bet against the Grapevine, Texas-based company would
need to cover their shorts.
Tuesday’s capitulation spread to cult-like figures
including Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy who has taken to social media to
promote his trades since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Portnoy tweeted
that he had “officially sold all my meme stocks. I lost 700k ish.”
Short sellers have reduced their interest, having sustained
multibillion-dollar losses with just over 1 million shares covered on Monday,
S3 Partners data show. The short interest in GameStop tumbled to 51% of its
free float, according to data from the financial analytics firm.
Backlash against short-sellers including Citron Research
had been a key rallying point for retail traders using Reddit to communicate
about their bets.
A record number of Hong Kong residents have relocated to
Taiwan following China’s crackdown on the city’s protest movement and the
implementation of a controversial new national security law.
Newly released figures from Taiwan’s Immigration Agency
show that more than 10,800 Hong Kongers received local resident permits in
2020, nearly double the amount who relocated to the democratic island the prior
year.
The number of Hong Kongers relocating to Taiwan in 2020 is
the highest in at least three decades, according to agency data that goes back
to 1991.
Taiwan
Exodus
A record number of Hong Kongers fled to the island in
2020
The figures underscore the desire among some Hong
Kong residents to seek a new home and more stable political environment outside
of Asia’s main financial hub after monthslong protests and China’s crackdown on
dissent. It also comes as the U.K. launches a new visa program and path to
citizenship for British National (Overseas) passport holders in Hong Kong.
Security Law
Following China’s move on June 30 to impose the security
law on Hong Kong with no local government debate, many prominent activists have
been arrested, charged or fled into exile in the U.K. and elsewhere. In August,
China’s coast guard also apprehended 12 Hong Kong activists
fleeing to Taiwan by boat.
The security law prohibits subversion, terrorism, secession
and “collusion” with foreign forces. While China has said the law is necessary
to restore stability after the protests in 2019, foreign governments said the
legislation has been used to target democracy activists and is eroding freedoms
Beijing pledged to maintain after the 1997 handover.
France to keep ski lifts shut
throughout February holidays
Issued on: 02/02/2021 -
07:51
Ski lifts at mountain resorts in France will stay
closed throughout the month of February, the government has said,
essentially writing off this winter sports tourism season due to the Covid-19
pandemic.
France is currently not in lockdown and people are in
theory free to visit resorts and stay in hotels but the lifts have been closed
for months, effectively making the skiing season
a write-off.
Prime Minister Jean Castex has promised compensation for
the winter sports sector, which counts for between 250,000 and 400,000 direct
and indirect jobs in France.
Castex met industry chiefs to discuss the situation on
Monday, with his office saying afterwards: "The evolution of the health
situation does not allow us at this stage to reopen the ski lifts."
Tourism Minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said that while no
date had been set for the reopening of ski lifts, people could still visit the
resorts.
That means families hoping to take their traditional
February ski breaks during forthcoming holidays will have access to the
resorts, but no lifts to get them to the top of the slopes.
Resort restaurants are also shut because of coronavirus
restrictions and tourists will only be able to practise activities such as
cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing.
France's two-week February school breaks start on Saturday
in some parts of the country.
The government said occupancy rates at ski
resorts collapsed to between 20 and 30 percent during the Christmas
holidays, when ski lifts were already shut.
French football sinks deeper into
crisis as TV rights tender flops
Issued on: 02/02/2021 -
08:59
French football’s latest attempt to replace a collapsed
TV rights deal flopped on Monday when bids on a new tender fell short of the
expected price, pushing alread-strained clubs deeper into crisis.
The news dealt a fresh blow to cash-strapped football
clubs who are facing severe financial hardship from empty stadiums during the coronavirus
pandemic. It heightened fears of a widening gap between the likes of
Qatar-owned Paris
Saint-Germain, who are flush with cash, and smaller clubs.
The French league said it received offers from
American-owned Amazon, Discovery and DAZN to show matches from the top two
divisions, but said all of the bids fell below the minimum required.
“Given that the reserve price has not been met, the
consultations (bids) have been declared unsuccessful,” the league said in a
statement on Monday, without disclosing financial details.
“The LFP gives itself 48 hours to
define the next steps to take in the commercialization of its rights," the
statement added.
Canal+, French football's
traditional broadcaster, and beIN Sports, which has been showing French
games for several years, were tellingly absent from the bidding process.
Mediapro fiasco
French football remains mired in
financial uncertainty months after a huge broadcast rights deal with
Spanish-based Mediapro fell through. The lucrative deal should have
generated more than 4 billion euros ($4.8 billion) over four years for France's
top two leagues. Instead, it capsized after just four months.
In December, the LFP was forced to terminate its accord
with Mediapro, which created a new subscription channel called Telefoot to show
matches but missed scheduled payments of 172 million euros ($209 million) and
152.5 million euros ($185 million) before the plug was pulled.
Mediapro then agreed with LFP to pay 100 million euros
($122 million) so it could relinquish its rights to games, thus paving the way
for the bidding rights at the league's Paris headquarters on Monday morning.
Canal Plus legal fight
Established French broadcaster Canal+ had seemed to many
observers as the likeliest buyer for the newly returned rights. Instead, it
entered into conflict with the LFP in recent weeks, demanding to hand back the
rights it acquired to televise games during the initial bidding process won by
Mediapro.
Canal+ claimed the price paid at the time to sublicense
games from beIN Sports – 332 million euros ($400 million) per year for only two
games each week – was far too high given Mediapro's ensuing meltdown.
Canal+ president Maxime Saada wanted all of the rights to
be returned for a new bidding process, and not just the 80% of games initially
bought by Mediapro. The LFP did not agree, Canal+ took legal action, and
they will meet in court this month.
Manhattan Office Supply Hits
Record High With Skyscrapers Empty
Natalie Wong February
1, 2021
(Bloomberg)
-- There’s a record amount of office space available in Manhattan.
With
workers stuck at home, the office availability rate rose to 14.9% in January,
the highest in data going back to 2000, according to a report by Colliers
International.
Leasing fell by nearly 47% from the same period last year.
That came even as asking rents dipped for the seventh straight month to $73.65
a square foot on average, the lowest in almost three years.
Manhattan’s office supply has surged since March, when the
pandemic emptied out skyscrapers and companies turned to remote working. Efforts to bring employees back to offices have been
hampered by rising Covid-19 cases.
While many companies are reassessing their need for office space in a
bid to cut costs, there are signs of life in the market. Leasing in Manhattan
reached 1.9 million square feet (about 176,500 square meters) in January, the
highest level since July, and 20% higher than the 2020 monthly average.
The January numbers were pushed higher by a handful of
large leases, including Beam Suntory taking nearly 100,000 square feet at 11
Madison Ave.
'It's a perfect storm': A
shipping container crisis has upended the global food trade
Food is piling up in all the wrong places, thanks to
carriers hauling empty shipping containers
Feb 02,
2021
Food is piling up in all the wrong
places, thanks to carriers hauling empty shipping containers.
Global competition for the ribbed
steel containers means that Thailand can’t ship its rice, Canada is stuck with
peas and India can’t offload its mountain of sugar. Shipping empty boxes back
to China has become so profitable that even some American soybean shippers are
having to fight for containers to supply hungry Asian buyers.
“People aren’t getting their goods
where they need them,” said Steve Kranig, director of logistics at IM-EX Global
Inc., a freight forwarder that handles cargoes including rice, bananas and
dumplings from Asia to the U.S. “One of my customers ships 8 to 10 containers
of rice every week from Thailand to Los Angeles. But he can only ship 2 to 3
containers a week right now.”
The core issue is that China, which
has recovered faster from COVID-19, has revved up its export economy and is
paying huge premiums for containers, making it far more profitable to send them
back empty than to refill them.
There are signs that the soaring freight rates are boosting
the cost of some foods. White sugar prices surged to a three-year high last month,
and delays in food-grade soybean shipments from the U.S. could mean higher tofu
and soy milk costs for consumers in Asia, said Eric Wenberg, executive director
of the Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance.
Food costs
While it’s not entirely uncommon for containers to transit
back empty after a voyage, carriers usually try to backfill them to profit from
shipping rates in both directions. But the cost of carrying goods from China to
the U.S. is almost 10 times higher than the opposite journey, prompting liners
to favour empty boxes instead of loading them, Freightos data showed.
At the port of Los Angeles, the U.S.’s biggest for
container cargo, three in every four boxes going back to Asia are travelling
empty compared with the normal 50 per cent rate, said Executive Director Gene
Seroka. In Vancouver, containers remain in the yards. Terminals have shortened
the time to transport the stuffed boxes onto ships from three days to as little
as seven hours, said Jordan Atkins, vice president of WTC Group.
“It’s
not possible to get the amount of volume we have here in Vancouver to return
containers in those tight windows,” said Atkins. “Pulses in general are
struggling getting on the ships,” he said, referring to crops like peas and
lentils. Canada is the world’s second-largest producer of pulses.
Finally, what’s wrong with this? Too many subsidies.
Tesla set for at least 1 billion
euros in German subsidies - Business Insider
By Reuters Staff February 1, 20213:16 PM
BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla stands
to receive at least 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in public funding from
Germany for setting up a battery cell factory near Berlin, Business Insider
reported on Monday.
The European Union last week approved a plan that includes
giving state aid to Tesla, BMW and others to support the production of electric
vehicle batteries and help the bloc cut imports from industry leader China.
The EU’s approval of the 2.9 billion euro European Battery
Innovation project, which includes more than 40 companies, follows the launch
in 2017 of the European Battery Alliance to support the industry during the
shift away from fossil fuels.
Business Insider quoted German government sources as saying
Tesla would get subsidies of more than 1 billion euros from the federal
government and the regional state of Brandenburg, where the Tesla factory is
being built.
A spokeswoman for Germany’s economy ministry said it was
not yet clear how much federal support Tesla would receive.
The ministry said last week that Berlin had made nearly 1
billion euros available for the initial battery cell alliance and planned to
support the second project with another 1.6 billion euros.
A spokeswoman for the economy ministry in the state of
Brandenburg declined to comment.
Tesla was not immediately available for comment.
The federal government is expected to shoulder the lion’s
share of the subsidies with Brandenburg likely to contribute less than 10%. The
final decision on the exact subsidies for Tesla will probably take several more
weeks.
Elon Musk’s
SpaceX Riles Its Rivals for Broadband Subsidies
Competitors say government should think
twice about backing SpaceX’s satellite-based system with nearly $1 billion
By Jan. 31, 2021 11:00 am ET
WASHINGTON— Elon Musk’s SpaceX is facing a final test—and
some resistance—in its bid to secure almost $1 billion in federal subsidies for
its satellite-based broadband service.
SpaceX in the waning weeks of the Trump administration won
preliminary rights to $886 million in government backing to provide rural broadband
service via Starlink, its system of low-Earth-orbiting satellites.
The federal government is now planning a final round of
vetting before it bets big that Mr. Musk’s technology can help close persistent
gaps in U.S. high-speed internet service. Most of the $9.2 billion in subsidies
awarded by the Federal Communications Commission was earmarked for more
established technologies, which included companies laying fiber-optic cable.
The FCC is requiring SpaceX and others in line for
subsidies to demonstrate their financial and technical wherewithal to build out
a network, and Friday was the deadline for submitting those plans.
Rivals of SpaceX for subsidy dollars are calling on the FCC
and its new leadership under the Biden administration to give those plans a
closer look, and they are drumming up support for their cause on Capitol Hill.
More than 150 members of Congress wrote the FCC on Jan. 19
urging it “to thoroughly vet the winning bidders to ensure that they are
capable” and to “consider opportunities for public input on the applications.”
The 193-page paper published
January 29th is titled “A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt
that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived.”
“The purpose of the analysis was to determine the origin of
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Beginning with a likelihood of
98.2% that it was a zoonotic jump from nature with only a 1.2% probability it
was a laboratory escape, twenty-six different, independent facts and evidence
were examined systematically. The final conclusion is that it is a 99.8%
probability SARS-CoV-2 came from a laboratory and only a 0.2% likelihood it
came from nature,” a summary notes.
The author, Dr. Steven Quay, has
360+ published medical studies and has been cited over 10,000 times, placing
him in the top one percent of scientists worldwide.
What’s more, Quay, who recently appeared on War Room:
Pandemic to discuss the study, holds nearly 90 US patents and has invented
seven FDA-approved pharmaceuticals.
“By taking only publicly available, scientific evidence
about SARS-CoV-2 and using highly conservative estimates in my analysis, I
nonetheless conclude that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2
escaped from a laboratory. The additional evidence of what appears to be
adenovirus vaccine genetic sequences in specimens from five patients from December 2019 and sequenced by the Wuhan Institute of
Virology requires an explanation. You would see this kind of data in a vaccine
challenge trial, for example. Hopefully the WHO team can get answers to these
questions,” he adds.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine was 91.6%
effective in preventing people from developing COVID-19, according to
peer-reviewed results from its late-stage clinical trial published in The
Lancent international medical journal on Tuesday.
Scientists said the Phase III trial
results meant the world had another effective weapon to fight the deadly
pandemic and justified to some extent Moscow’s decision to roll out the vaccine
before final data had been released.
The results, collated by the
Gamaleya Institute in Moscow that developed and tested the vaccine, were in
line with efficacy data reported at earlier stages of the trial, which has been
running in Moscow since September.
“The development of the Sputnik V
vaccine has been criticised for unseemly haste, corner cutting, and an absence
of transparency,” Professor Ian Jones of the University of Reading and
Professor Polly Roy, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,
said in a comment shared by The Lancet.
“But the outcome reported here is
clear and the scientific principle of vaccination is demonstrated,” said the
scientists, who were not involved in the study. “Another vaccine can now join
the fight to reduce the incidence of COVID-19.”
The results were based on data from
19,866 volunteers, of whom a quarter received a placebo, the researchers, led
by the Gamaleya Institute’s Denis Logunov, said in The Lancet.
Iowa, South Carolina report first
cases of British COVID-19 variant
Feb. 1, 2021 / 7:35 PM
Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Iowa and South Carolina reported their first cases of the more
contagious B.1.1.7 strain of COVID-19, health officials said.
Health officials in both states reported finding cases of
the variant first reported in Britain, which is believed to be twice as
transmissible as the original strain of the coronavirus that emerged in late
2019.
On Monday, the Iowa Department of Public Health announced it had reported three cases of the variant with
two found in adults aged 18 to 40 and one aged 41 to 60.
"Viruses constantly change through mutation and new
variants of a virus are expected to occur over time. Sometimes new variants
emerge and disappear. Other times, new variants emerge and persist," said
Dr. Caitlin Pedati, state medical director and epidemiologist.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental
Control announced on Saturday that an adult from the state's
Lowcountry region who had traveled internationally was its first known case.
The state had previously reported a case of the B.1.351
variant, first reported in South Africa.
"The arrival of the second SARS-CoV-2 variant in our
state is yet another important reminder to all South Carolinians that the fight
against this deadly virus is far from over," said DHEC Interim Public
Health Director Dr. Brannon Traxler.
The B.1.1.7 has been discovered in 33 states and Dr. Anthony
Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, told CNN Monday that those who have already tested positive
for COVID-19 have a high rate of reinfection from the variants.
"If it becomes dominant, the experience of our
colleagues in South Africa indicate that even if you've been infected with the
original virus that there is a very high rate of reinfection to the point where
previous infection does not seem to protect you against infection," he
said.
This
subscription grants access to the locked content of Spectator.sk and SME.sk for
only one person through a maximum of three different devices or browsers.
To
continue reading the article on this device, please update the list of devices
in the profile settings.
Immediate access to all
locked articles (premium content) on Spectator.sk
Special weekly news summary +
an audio recording with a weekly news summary to listen to at your
convenience (received on a weekly basis directly to your e-mail)
PDF version of the latest
issue of our newspaper, The Slovak Spectator, emailed directly to you
Access to all premium content
on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk
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.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported.
Today, something a
little different. More practical. How to rescue your wet cell phone.
Here’s the Right Way to Rescue a
Soaking Wet Smartphone
Given the hundreds of ways your phone could
come into life-threatening contact with liquid, you should know what to do when
it happens (because it will).
02.01.2021 07:00 AM
----So when your phone decides to take a dive, as soon as
you're done freaking out, you'll probably begin frantically tapping all the
buttons, blowing on it, or blasting it with a hair dryer to quickly get rid of
all that water. While those are all well-meaning actions, guess what? Totally
the wrong approach. Here's the right way to rescue your water-damaged
smartphone.
First, retrieve it as quickly as possible. If your phone is
still in the bottom of the jacuzzi or the toilet, get it out ASAP. The longer
it's in the liquid, the greater the likelihood of damage will be.
Once the device is no longer submerged, power it off right
away. Don’t try to press any of the other buttons or load any apps, just switch
it off. Remove the case if you have one. If you have a phone with a removable
battery, pop the battery out. You want to cut off power in the device as
quickly as possible to prevent the possibility of a short circuit. Most of
today’s smartphones don’t have removable batteries, but some older models, or
new models built with repairability in mind like the Nokia
1.3, let you pop the battery out.
Do not blow-dry your wet phone or stick it in the oven!
Heat can damage the delicate electronics inside. What you should do is give the
naked, case-free phone a quick wipe with a clean towel, making sure no water
accidentally ends up draining into its charging port, SIM or MicroSD slots, or
headphone jack (if your phone still
has one). If there are traces of water trapped inside cracks or
indentations in the case, try carefully and conservatively using compressed air
to blow it out. If you don’t have a can of air lying around, you can use your
mouth to gently blow it out. Just be careful not to blow the water further
inside the phone, or add any of your own spit to the mix.
Next we have a few different options. If you search the
internet or ask a friend, a common piece of advice you’ll hear is to stuff your
device in a bag of rice. It might work in a pinch, but that method can cause
some problems. While rice is absorbent, it’s incapable of collecting all the
moisture hidden deep within your phone, so it only serves as a partial fix.
Also, the rice gets mushy and sticky as it absorbs the water, and then you
could wind up with gummy bits of rice stuck in your phone’s seams and ports, or
dust deep in your device's crevices. You can wrap the phone loosely in a paper
towel before dropping it into the rice, but this is still not your best option.
Following the markets on both sides of the Atlantic since 1968. A dinosaur, who evolved with the financial system as it was perverted from capitalism to banksterism after the great Nixonian error of abandoning the dollar's link to gold instead of simply revaluing gold. Our money is too important to be left to probity challenged central banksters and crooked politicians.
No comments:
Post a Comment