Baltic Dry Index. 1779 +16 Brent Crude 67.42
Spot Gold 1696
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 05/03/21 World 116,222,578
Deaths 2,581,754
The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most of the people, most of the time.
Jesse Livermore.
In the stock casinos growing unease that maybe Fed Chairman Powell doesn’t have the punters backs covered after all.
Just maybe Chairman Powell is more worried about the return of inflation than he let on.
For today, guessing right on Chairman Powell is more important than the US unemployment figures due out later today.
Exit Friday ahead of Black Monday? We are all about to find out next week, but that is the prudent way to play it.
Stocks Slump as Treasury Yields Top 1.5% on Powell: Markets Wrap
By Rita Nazareth and Vildana Hajric3 March 2021, 22:01 GMT Updated on 4 March 2021, 21:30 GMT
· Fed chief said disorderly market moves would concern him
· He refrained from offering specific steps to curb volatility
Stocks and bonds sold off after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell underwhelmed markets by refraining from pushing back more forcefully against the recent spike in Treasury yields.
The S&P 500 briefly erased its 2021 gains, notching its lowest close in about five weeks. Benchmark 10-year bond rates topped 1.5% and the dollar climbed. The Nasdaq 100 extended losses from a February peak to almost 10%, and the Russell 2000 of small caps slid 2.8%. Reddit users appeared to rush back into GameStop Corp., with the video-game retailer soaring.
Powell said in an online event Thursday that he’d be “concerned” by disorderly markets, but stopped short of offering steps to curb heightened volatility. The surge in Treasury yields has triggered fears about elevated stock valuations after a torrid equity rally from the depths of the pandemic. While bulls have decided to view the jump in rates as a sign of economic strength that could lift corporate profits, there’s been mounting concern over a potential inflation pickup. For Bleakley Advisory Group’s Peter Boockvar, the Fed has put itself in a “tough situation.”
“We are again seeing a market that is taking control of monetary policy from the Fed,” said Boockvar, the firm’s chief investment officer. “Long rates are rising right now because Powell is again very dovish. The more dovish they get in the face of market expectations of higher inflation, the more financial tightening we’ll see.”
Stock-Market Momentum Comeuppance Gets No Sympathy From the Fed
Despite the lingering uncertainties about the impacts of rising bond yields, such fears are “misplaced,” according to Candice Bangsund, portfolio manager of global asset allocation at Fiera Capital.
“As long as the back-up in bond yields reflects stronger growth expectations (versus tighter monetary policy), then the long-term bull market will not be at risk,” she said. “The latest normalization in bond yields should be viewed as an encouraging sign that growth is healing, while the prospect for a hawkish turn from the Federal Reserve is clearly not in the cards today.”
The U.S. Senate voted to take up a $1.9 trillion relief bill backed by President Joe Biden, setting off a debate expected to end this weekend with approval of the nation’s sixth stimulus since the pandemic-triggered lockdowns that began a year ago.
Elsewhere, Bitcoin’s appeal as a hedge against inflation was put to the test, with the largest cryptocurrency joining a slump in other risk assets. Oil surged after the OPEC+ alliance surprised traders with its decision to keep output unchanged, signaling a tighter crude market in the months ahead.
more
Surging bond yields push Asian shares to one-month lows
March 5, 2021 12:23 AM By Koh Gui Qing, Swati Pandey
NEW YORK/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stocks skidded to one-month lows on Friday as rising U.S. Treasury yields again rattled equity investors while hoisting the dollar to a three-month high, which in turn dragged the Japanese yen.
Energy markets were not spared the volatility either, with oil prices adding to big gains overnight after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies agreed to mostly maintain their supply cuts in April as they await a more solid recovery in demand from the coronavirus pandemic. [O/R]
Australian stocks shed more than 1%, Japan’s Nikkei share average dropped 1.6% and shares in Seoul fell 1.4%. Chinese shares were in the red with the bluechip CSI300 index off 1.5%.
That sent MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan to 684.52, the lowest since Feb. 1.
E-Mini S&P futures were 0.5% lower.
U.S. stocks dropped on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell disappointed some investors by not indicating that the Fed might step up purchases of long-term bonds to hold down longer-term interest rates.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.1%, taking it down about 10% from its record close on Feb. 12 and putting it in correction territory. [.N]
---- Bond investors with a bearish view of Treasuries took heart in Powell’s remarks and sold the notes. The yield on 10-year Treasuries climbed above 1.5% to as high as 1.5727%, but still below a one-year high of 1.614% struck last week. [US/]
The yield curve, a measure of economic expectations, steepened on rising yields, with the gap between two- and 10-year yields widening by another 6.3 basis points overnight.
Rising Treasury yields bolstered demand for the dollar. The dollar index jumped to a three month high of 91.734. [USD/]
A stronger dollar hobbled the yen. By early Friday, the yen fell to as low as 107.97, the lowest since July 1 though it pared those losses and was last at 107.85.
The euro was also tripped by a firmer dollar, with the common currency sluggish at $1.1960.
Climbing yields and dollar strength pummeled gold prices, which sank to a nine-month low as investors sold the precious metal to reduce the opportunity cost of holding the non-yielding asset. [GOL/]
Spot gold slid another 0.2% early Friday to $1,692.26 per ounce, trading below $1,700 for the first time since June 2020.
More
In other USA news, it never rains but it pours. Or in this case, freezes.
Damages from Feb. winter storms could be as high as $155 billion
By AccuWeather staff writer Updated Mar. 3, 2021 6:09 PM GMT
Sweeping power outages, hundreds of thousands of insurance claims and millions of impacted residents across the nation are adding up to make the punishing coast-to-coast winter weather in February more costly than the historic 2020 hurricane season -- and likely the costliest month of weather impacts in recent history.
AccuWeather on Wednesday upgraded its early estimate of the total damage and economic loss resulting from the brutal cross-country winter weather last month, saying it now expects the damage caused by the deadly February storms -- and the cold that followed -- to be about $155 billion, with $130 billion in damage and economic losses in Texas alone. That’s up from the $50 billion to $60 billion range AccuWeather estimated previously.
“In February, we saw one of the most intensely cold and stormy patterns of winter weather not seen in decades with extreme record low temperatures and ice spread out across a very large area in multiple states,” said AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers. “Texas bore the brunt of the impact with significant damage due to citrus crop losses, power outages, water disruption, burst pipes in many of homes and businesses in addition to the loss of life."
The estimate is based on an analysis incorporating independent methods to evaluate all direct and indirect impacts of the storm and is based on a variety of sources, statistics and unique techniques AccuWeather uses to estimate the damage.
---- Texas is no stranger to catastrophic weather tragedies, as 2017's Hurricane Harvey, which AccuWeather estimated to cause about $190 billion ($203 billion adjusted for inflation), is still fresh in many memories.
But the lingering effects of the harsh February weather will likely be felt for years to come, particularly for its direct impacts on some of the state's most important economic sectors, such as citrus and vegetable crops. Texas is the third-largest citrus-producing state in the United States, behind only California and Florida.
More
Finally, yet more inward investment into Brexit UK.
Free from the EUSSR, the UK and USA suspend some tariffs.
Germany take note and dump Brussels ASAP.
Fund management giant BlackRock backs $100m injection into UK drug developer Exscientia
The world's biggest asset manager is taking a stake in a fast-growing Oxford-based AI drug develop, Sky News learns.
Mark KleinmanWednesday 3 March 2021 20:50, UK
The world's biggest asset manager is backing a British company which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to discover new drug molecules as part of a $100m fundraising that puts it firmly on course to achieve coveted "unicorn" status.
Sky News has learnt that BlackRock is injecting a substantial sum into Oxford-based Exscientia in an updated Series C funding round that will be confirmed on Thursday.
The new capital, and the identity of its new investor, will provide a significant boost to one of Britain's fastest-growing pharmatech companies.
Exscientia's $60m fundraising was originally announced last summer, but has now been augmented with funding from BlackRock, the multitrillion dollar US-based investment group, according to people close to the situation.
Sources said the additional funding would help Exscientia double in size again this year, after doing so in 2020.
The company, which employs more than 100 people, has recently expanded into the US with a presence in Boston and Miami.
It uses an end-to-end AI-first drug discovery platform called CentaurAI to discover new drugs significantly more quickly than industry benchmarks, and says it has created the first fully AI-designed drug to enter clinical trials and advance multiple drug candidates into pre-clinical testing.
Exscientia has struck partnerships with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi and Bayer, as well as a number of biotech companies.
The company already has the first-ever precision-engineered drug designed by AI - a treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - which began phase one of human clinical trials last year.
That product was developed in less than a quarter of the time that would have been taken using traditional techniques, underlining the huge appetite in AI drug development applications.
More
U.S. and UK agree to suspend tariffs and seek aircraft row resolution
March 4, 2021 11:59 AM
(Reuters) - Britain and the United States on Thursday agreed a four-month suspension of retaliatory tariffs imposed on goods like Scotch whisky over a long running aircraft subsidy row, saying they would use the time to resolve the dispute.
The Donald Trump administration had imposed tariffs on an array of EU food, wine and spirits, including on Scotch whisky, which the industry says are putting its future at risk.
“The United Kingdom and the United States are undertaking a four-month tariff suspension to ease the burden on industry and take a bold, joint step towards resolving the longest running disputes at the World Trade Organization,” a joint statement said.
“This will allow time to focus on negotiating a balanced settlement to the disputes, and begin seriously addressing the challenges posed by new entrants to the civil aviation market from non-market economies, such as China.”
In December, Britain said it would use its new-found freedom outside the European Union to diverge from the bloc’s common trade policy towards the United States, deciding to unilaterally suspend tariffs.
“I am delighted to say that our American allies – under their new President and his hard-working staff at the US Trade Representative - have embraced our move to seek a fair settlement,” British trade minister Liz Truss said.
Watch the market leaders, the stocks that have led the charge upward in a bull market. That is where the action is and where the money is to be made. As the leaders go, so goes the entire market.
Jesse Livermore.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
UK regulator says will fast-track vaccines for coronavirus variants
March 4, 2021 6:08 AM By Reuters Staff
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s medical regulator on Thursday said it would fast-track vaccines for coronavirus variants, adding that the makers of already-authorised shots would not need new lengthy clinical trials to prove their adapted vaccines will work.
There is concern that some variants, such as those first found in South Africa and Brazil, may reduce the efficacy of the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines, and manufacturers are looking to adapt their shots.
The accelerated process is based on that used for seasonal flu vaccines each year, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said, and would be based on robust evidence that the shots create an immune response, rather than full clinical trials.
“Our priority is to get effective vaccines to the public in as short a time as possible, without compromising on safety,” said Christian Schneider, chief scientific officer at the MHRA.
“Should any modifications to authorised COVID-19 vaccines be necessary, this regulatory approach should help to do just that.”
The MHRA said that researchers would be able to measure protection by looking at antibodies in the blood after vaccination.
As well as data on immune response, vaccine makers will need evidence the vaccine is safe, and data from original clinical trials and real-world evidence from vaccine rollout could also be used.
The MHRA said it had developed the advice in conjunction with regulators in Australia, Canada, Singapore and Switzerland.
More.
Europe starts formal review of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine
March 4, 2021 9:18 AM By Andrew Osborn, Pushkala Aripaka
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Europe’s medicines regulator said on Thursday it had started a rolling review of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, an important display of confidence in the shot that paves the way for its potential approval across the 27-nation bloc.
Hungary became the first EU country to grant the Russian vaccine emergency national approval in January, Slovakia has ordered shipments, and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said his country could move to use Sputnik V.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in a statement it would review data from ongoing trials of the vaccine until there was enough evidence for a formal marketing authorisation application. (bit.ly/3uQxwfL)
EMA’s ‘rolling reviews’ are aimed at speeding up the approval process by allowing researchers to submit findings in real-time before final trial data is ready.
“While EMA cannot predict the overall timelines, it should take less time than normal to evaluate an eventual application because of the work done during the rolling review,” it said.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the RDIF sovereign wealth fund that is promoting Sputnik V internationally, hailed the start of EMA’s rolling review as an important moment for Russia which he said showed its application had been a strong one.
“Sputnik V can act as a bridge between Russia and Europe, but its roll out should not get bogged down in politics,” Dmitriev told Reuters, praising Germany, France, Italy and Austria for what he called their pragmatic approach to Sputnik V.
The shot’s efficacy was initially greeted with scepticism by some Western scientists after Russia approved it in August last year without waiting for the results of full clinical trials.
However, some of those initial concerns appear to have faded after scientists said it was almost 92% effective in fighting COVID-19, based on peer-reviewed late-stage trial results published in The Lancet medical journal last month.
More
South Korea investigating deaths after AstraZeneca vaccinations
March 3, 2021 / 12:28 PM
March 3 (UPI) -- Investigations are underway after two South Korean recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine died following inoculation against COVID-19. Both recipients had been in long-term care, officials said.
South Korean health authorities said Wednesday that the two patients, both men, showed symptoms of rapidly declining health after being given doses, Yonhap and YTN reported.
A 63-year-old recipient in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, was reportedly given the vaccine on Saturday afternoon while hospitalized for cerebrovascular disease. On Sunday, he developed a fever and body aches.
A doctor at the hospital prescribed pain relievers, but after a brief recovery, the man's symptoms worsened on Tuesday. He died on Wednesday morning, according to Yonhap.
The second recipient, identified as a man in his 50s, received the vaccine while hospitalized at a clinic in Goyang city in the same province, YTN reported.
The man was given the inoculation Tuesday. He experienced breathing difficulties and died after multiple heart attacks, according to the report.
Another man undergoing care at a hospital in the city of Uijeongbu showed signs of immobility and headaches after being administered the vaccine. His condition had stabilized by Wednesday, according to YTN.
AstraZeneca's vaccine rolled out in South Korea on Feb. 26, but doses are off-limits to people age 65 or older.
South Korea's military is using supplies from the British-Swedish firm and the United States' Pfizer to vaccinate troops.
News 1 reported Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccinations had begun at 16 military hospitals, with the first doses to go to doctors, nurses and frontline health workers for a total of 2,400 people.
More
Some experience delayed rashes after Moderna Covid-19 shots, report says
4 March, 2021
BOSTON (BLOOMBERG) - Some people who get Moderna Inc's vaccine experience delayed rashes that can be four inches (10cm) wide or more and take as long as six days to resolve, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers reported details on 12 such cases of reactions in people who had received their first dose.
They were typically treated with ice and antihistamines although some patients needed steroid treatments.
About half also got skin reactions after the second dose, though they were less severe.
While there have been previous reports of the reactions that occur mainly with the Moderna shot, their appearance can be surprising.
The details should help educate doctors and reassure people who develop them, said Dr Kimberly Blumenthal, the lead author of the paper and co-director of the clinical epidemiology programme at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
"Our aim was to show how dramatic they can be while at the same time no one had it more severe with dose 2," she said in an emailed response to questions.
"So many of the patients I cared for with this were concerned about them. Is this an infection? (No!) Does this mean I cannot have dose 2? (No!) Will it happen with dose 2? (Not necessarily!)."
"This is a nuisance, but it is not dangerous," she said in an interview.
Evidence of the reactions appeared in earlier studies.
Moderna's final-stage trial of the vaccine had also noted delayed reactions at the site of the first injection in about 0.8 per cent of the 30,420 participants, and among 0.2 per cent at their second dose, the researchers noted. Those reactions typically resolved within about five days.
Reports of rashes after vaccines, colloquially called "Covid arm," started appearing in a pharmacists’ Facebook group earlier this year.
The pharmacists shared their experiences in the "Pharmacy Staff for Covid-19 Support" group, posting pictures of large red circles on their arms.
People asked what members of the 44,000-person community knew about the phenomenon and whether others saw similar effects.
The delayed reactions to the Moderna vaccine are different from the immediate injection-site reactions that commonly occur with both the Pfizer Inc. and Moderna messenger RNA vaccines, Dr Blumenthal said.
"This is a Moderna-specific reaction that pops up after the first week and can last a number of days," she said. "I have not been told about any from Pfizer," she said.
Exactly what is causing them is unknown, but it may be some sort of immune reaction to inactive components of the vaccine, she said.
More
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
Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
New skills of Graphene: Tunable lattice vibrations
Date: March 1, 2021
Source: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
Summary: Technological innovation in the last century was mainly based on the control of electrons or photons. Now, in the emerging research field of phononics, phonons or vibrations of the crystal lattice attract attention. A team showed a graphene-based phononic crystal whose resonant frequency can be tuned over a broad range and has used a helium-ion microscope to produce such a crystal. This is a real breakthrough in the field of phononics.
Without electronics and photonics, there would be no computers, smartphones, sensors, or information and communication technologies. In the coming years, the new field of phononics may further expand these options. That field is concerned with understanding and controlling lattice vibrations (phonons) in solids. In order to realize phononic devices, however, lattice vibrations have to be controlled as precisely as commonly realized in the case of electrons or photons.
Phononic cyrstals
The key building block for such a device is a phononic crystal, an artificially fabricated structure in which properties such as stiffness, mass or mechanical stress vary periodically. Phononic devices are used as acoustic waveguides, phonon lenses, and vibration shields and may realize mechanical Qubits in the future. However, until now, these systems operated at fixed vibrational frequencies. It was not possible to change their vibrational modes in a controlled manner.
Periodic hole pattern in graphene
Now, for the first time, a team at Freie Universität Berlin and HZB has demonstrated this control. They used graphene, a form of carbon in which the carbon atoms interconnect two-dimensionally to form a flat honeycomb structure. Using a focused beam of helium ions, the team was able to cut a periodic pattern of holes in the graphene. This method is available at CoreLab CCMS (Correlative Microscopy and Spectroscopy). "We had to optimize the process a lot to cut a regular pattern of holes in the graphene surface without touching neighbouring holes," Dr. Katja Höflich, group leader at Ferdinand-Braun-Institut Berlin and guest scientist at HZB, explains.
More
Another weekend and working weekend for the Senators in Washington, District of Crooks about to pass President Biden’s bailout bill. But will it be “bailout” of stocks all next week?
If inflation’s returning and the Fed does nothing a massive fiat currency crisis looms. But if the Fed lets interest rates rise to try to control arriving inflation, global stock casinos are headed for a hard fall.
Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end. To do this you must study general conditions and not tips or special factors affecting individual stocks. Then get out of all your stocks; get out for keeps! You have to use your brains and your vision to do this; otherwise my advice would be as idiotic as to tell you to buy cheap and sell dear. One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth-or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.
Jesse Livermore.
No comments:
Post a Comment