Special Update 20/03/2021 Higher Taxes Loom. Copper. AZ Vaccine.

 Baltic Dry Index. 2281 +66  Brent Crude 64.53

Spot Gold 1745

Covid-19 cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,100

Covid-19 cases 20/03/21 World 122,898,771

Deaths 2,713,581

Happy Spring/Autumn Equinox.

Vernal Equinox on Saturday, March 20, 2021 Vernal Equinox Time - 09:36 AM

Vernal Equinox Sunrise - 06:03 AM Vernal Equinox Sunset - 06:14 PM

Vernal Equinox Day Duration - 12 Hours 10 Mins 58 Secs

Vernal Equinox Previous Day Duration - 12 Hours 07 Mins 00 Secs

Vernal Equinox Next Day Duration - 12 Hours 14 Mins 57 Secs

In the stock casinos Friday, greed over all the stimulus money, clashing with fear over rising US bond yields, plus yet more fear over the Democrats coming tax increases.

What’s an honest stock gambler to do?

Well, they could exit stocks for a while and try their luck in commodities.  The coming shift into “green” electricity and “green or blue” hydrogen creates a decade long need for transitional, but scarce, commodities.

Add in trillions and trillions of new fiat dollars created by the new Magic Money Tree forests just found in Washington, and intrinsic value assets look to this old dinosaur market follower, an under valued asset class whose time has come around once again.

Wall Street ends mixed as Treasury yields pause

March 19, 2021 11:19 AM By Noel Randewich

(Reuters) - The Nasdaq ended higher on Friday, lifted by Facebook and energy shares, while the S&P 500 lost ground as U.S. Treasury yields took a break from a recent surge.

Reversing a recent trend, so-called growth stocks mostly outperformed value stocks viewed as likely to benefit most as the economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

The yield on U.S. 10-year notes, which has risen sharply in the past seven weeks on growth expectations, hovered near a 14-month peak at $1.742%. [US/]

“What we see today is a more stable rate environment across the curve after multiple weeks of rising interest rates, and we are seeing some degree of reversal of leadership in the equity market,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

Facebook Inc rallied 4.1% and provided the biggest boost to the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Apple Inc’s imminent privacy policy changes on ad sales would leave the social network in a “stronger position.”

The S&P 500 banks index dropped 1.6% after the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would not extend a temporary capital buffer relief put in place to ease a pandemic-driven stress in the funding market.

“Banks have had such a significant up move this year and this news has only acted as a catalyst for profit taking,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York

Optimism about a $1.9 trillion fiscal package and the Fed’s promise to maintain its ultra-loose policy stance for years has accelerated a shift into economy-linked stocks, powering the S&P 500 and the Dow to record levels this week.

However, the Nasdaq is still about 6% below its Feb. 12 all-time closing high as technology and high-growth stocks have lost favor in recent months, with their valuations looking less attractive as Treasury yields rise.

---- Several bond managers believe the recent pace of the rise in yields has been unsettling and also worry the market could be viewed as disorderly if the momentum continues.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.71% to end at 32,627.97 points, while the S&P 500 lost 0.06% to 3,913.1.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-ends-mixed-as-treasury-yields-pause-idUSKBN2BB14R

Wall Street Week Ahead: Investors got the stimulus boost, but now face tax worries

March 19, 2021 10:05 AM  By Lewis Krauskopf, Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors are turning their attention to prospects that higher taxes could threaten the rally in U.S. stocks as President Joe Biden’s administration moves forward with its agenda and seeks ways to pay for its spending plans.

In recent days, investors have focused on a rise in bond yields that has pressured share prices, though indexes remain close to their record highs.

Nevertheless, some worry that at least a partial rollback of the corporate tax cuts that fueled stock gains during the Trump era could eventually drag on equities, whose valuations have already grown rich by some measures.

“It is an issue,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “It’s going to be talked about as it becomes a reality. But the market’s focus right now is clearly on getting to the other side of this pandemic.”

The S&P 500 has gained more than 4% this year, with Biden’s newly passed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan providing the latest fuel for the economy and the stock market. The pace of the economic recovery and COVID-19 vaccinations will remain in investors’ focus next week, along with the rise in U.S. bond yields that has pressured tech and growth shares and further supported bank and other value stocks.

During his presidential campaign, Biden pledged to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, a proposal supported by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Investment strategists anticipate fierce opposition from Republican lawmakers to any such plan.

While Biden’s administration is working closely with members of Congress on how to fund an ambitious infrastructure package, plans have not been finalized, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday.

An increase in corporate taxes could bite into company profits, which are expected to soar this year as business rebounds from the pandemic.

A corporate tax rate rising from 21% to 25% could shave overall S&P 500 company earnings by between 4% to 5%, while an increase to 28% could cut them by 6% to 7%, according to Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citi.

The S&P 500 overall had a 17.54% tax rate as of the third quarter, with real estate having the lowest rate among S&P sectors at 8.06%. Technology, the biggest sector by market value, had a 14.76% rate, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

---- “We saw stocks move significantly higher, we saw earnings move significantly higher in the Trump Administration,” said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network. “Are we going to give some of those gains back if we get a new tax bill? Yeah that’s quite possible, even likely.”

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-weekahead/wall-street-week-ahead-investors-got-the-stimulus-boost-but-now-face-tax-worries-idUSKBN2BB0XR

In other news, time to go long copper? Swap magic Money Tree fiat dollars for a storable tangible asset in scarcity to long term demand.

The World Will Need 10 Million Tons More Copper to Meet Demand

By James Attwood

19 March 2021, 17:13 GMT Updated on 20 March 2021, 00:00 GMT

·        

Supply gap looms as mines become trickier and pricier to build

·         BI analysts warn of possible dearth of mine projects from 2025

Within a decade, the world may face a massive shortfall of what’s arguably the most critical metal for global economies: copper.

The copper industry needs to spend upwards of $100 billion to close what could be an annual supply deficit of 4.7 million metric tons by 2030 as the clean power and transport sectors take off, according to estimates from CRU Group. The potential shortfall could reach 10 million tons if no mines get built, according to commodities trader Trafigura Group. Closing such a gap would require building the equivalent of eight projects the size of BHP Group’s giant Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine.

BI: Copper Fundamentals Can Support a New Supercycle

Used in everything from wiring and pipes to batteries and motors, copper is both an economic bellwether and a key ingredient in the push toward renewable power and electric vehicles. If producers fail to address the deficit, prices will keep rising and present a challenge to the Biden administration and other world leaders counting on a worldwide energy transition to fight climate change.

Higher copper prices may lead to more recycling and substitution with cheaper alternatives such as aluminum, which could ease shortfalls.

To be sure, copper projects are in the pipeline. But producers are wary of repeating oversupply mistakes of past cycles by accelerating plans at a time that mines are getting a lot trickier and pricier to build -- one reason why copper prices are near decade highs at above $4 a pound.

“Increasing technical complexity and approval delays could lead to a dearth of shovel-ready projects in 2025-30,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Grant Sporre and Andrew Cosgrove wrote this week in a report.

New projects are being developed that may ease copper deficits between 2022 and 2025, according to the BI analysts. Stronger-for-longer prices should make some costlier projects more profitable, while expansions of

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-19/the-world-will-need-10-million-tons-more-copper-to-meet-demand?cmpid=BBD031921_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=210319&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Everywhere You Look, the Global Supply Chain Is a Mess

Winter storms and crammed ports in the U.S. add to disruptions of production and supplies during the pandemic

Updated March 18, 2021 7:48 am ET

Supply chain woes mounted world-wide for makers of everything from cars and clothing to home siding and medical needle containers, as the extreme Texas weather and port backlogs compounded problems for manufacturers already beset by pandemic disruptions.

Toyota Motor Corp. TM 1.01% , Honda Motor Co. HMC 0.23% and Samsung Electronics Co. were the latest multinational companies to chime in about setbacks, with the two auto makers saying Wednesday they would halt production at plants in North America. Toyota cited a shortage of petrochemicals, manufacturing of which has been hobbled by last month’s Texas freeze. Honda pointed to a combination of port issues, the semiconductor shortage, pandemic-related problems and the crippling U.S. weather.

Samsung, a smartphone and chip-making giant, said a severe global shortage in semiconductors would hurt its business into the next quarter. Koh Dong-jin, the co-chief executive officer of Samsung, told investors Wednesday that dealing with the chip supply-demand imbalance had become a priority for staff and that executives were traveling overseas, despite restrictions, to discuss the issue with business partners.

The disruptions underscore how several forces are coming together to squeeze the world’s supply chains, from the pandemic-driven rise in consumer demand for tech goods to a backlog of imports at clogged California ports to U.S. factory outages caused by weather woes. They are creating cost increases and delays for numerous industries, company executives and analysts say, affecting profit margins and the prices that companies and consumers ultimately pay for many goods.

“We’ve been scrambling to get enough raw material,” said Tom Nathanson, chief executive of Summit Plastics Inc., who predicted possible lasting damage to the plastics industry in the form of lost customers.

He said the Mississippi company, which makes plastic sheeting for everything from hospital gowns to packaging, was already contending with supply-demand issues before the Texas cold spell. “The costs have absolutely been passed on,” Mr. Nathanson said. “We, as consumers, are feeling that crunch.”

The disruptions, which come as the U.S. and some other economies are beginning to lurch toward normalcy, show how messy the reopening of business is proving to be a year after pandemic’s onset, and how vulnerable supply chains remain.

---- Last month’s freeze in Texas was the latest plank on the pile. The state is home to the world’s largest petrochemical complex, which turns oil and gas and its byproducts into plastics. The February freeze triggered mass blackouts that shuttered plants, many of which remain offline.

“What we saw with the freeze is we’re one issue, one weather event away from supply-demand tightening operating rates, and so it doesn’t take much to tilt the market,” Howard Ungerleider, the chief financial officer of Dow Inc., said at a conference Tuesday.

Several of Dow’s petrochemical plants in Texas were forced to shut down during the freeze, and Mr. Ungerleider said they would be running at 80% capacity by the end of March.

More

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everywhere-you-look-the-global-supply-chain-is-a-mess-11616019081

Shipping Logjams Spread on Crush of Imports

Bottlenecks in Southern California are easing, but U.S. West Coast ports expect a surge in container shipments to continue

March 18, 2021 1:53 pm ET

Logjams at U.S. ports are spreading beyond Southern California’s choked gateways, and shipping officials are projecting the backups will continue into the summer.

“The congestion has been significant in Long Angeles and Long Beach, but other ports are also congested,” said Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive of German container line Hapag-Lloyd AG , which diverted some ships to Oakland in recent weeks. “Bookings are up dramatically and we are trying to avoid congested ports, but it’s not easy.”

The backups that started building up late last year have grown during a normally slack period in shipping demand, tying up inventories for weeks in some cases as ships wait to reach berths while offloaded containers sit for long periods at packed freight terminals.

Delays that have stretched from docks to rail yards, truck terminals and distribution centers have rattled supply chains for companies from big auto manufacturers to mom-and-pop retailers, straining assembly lines because of parts shortages and leaving store shelves empty.

Bottlenecks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s two biggest gateways, eased with the queue of ships waiting to dock shrinking to fewer than 20 this week from an armada of around 40 vessels at one point earlier this year, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.

Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said at a Tuesday press conference that bottlenecks are gradually improving, with the average time arriving ships have to wait to reach a dock down to a week from up to two weeks in December and January.

But Mr. Seroka said another rush of ships was scheduled to arrive in the coming days and the port expects the rush to continue “into the spring and early summer.”

Los Angeles handled 799,315 containers overall in February, up 47% from a year ago, and it is projecting more than 830,000 containers to pass through its docks in total in March and April. The neighboring Port of Long Beach moved 771,135 containers in February, up 43.9%, the port’s largest-ever annual increase.

More

https://www.wsj.com/articles/shipping-logjams-spread-on-crush-of-imports-11616089979?mod=business_minor_pos22

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

John Kenneth Galbraith.

Covid-19 Corner             

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

Scientists probe new theories on whether AstraZeneca shot linked to blood clots

March 20, 2021 1:21 AM

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists are exploring several possibilities that might explain at least 18 reports of extremely rare blood clots in the brain that occurred in individuals in the days and weeks after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

European investigators have put forward one theory that the vaccine triggers an unusual antibody in some rare cases; others are trying to understand whether the cases are linked with birth control pills.

But many scientists say there is no definitive evidence and it is not clear whether or why AstraZeneca’s vaccine would cause an issue not shared by other vaccines that target a similar part of the coronavirus.

Most of the rare blood clots have been seen in women and most cases have been reported in Europe. Two cases have been reported in India.

The European Medicines Agency said a preliminary review suggests the vaccine is not associated with an increase in the overall risk of blood clots. But it did not rule out an association with rare cases of blood clots in vessels draining the blood from the brain known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

Researchers in Germany and Norway, where some of the cases have been reported, this week hypothesized that the vaccine could be triggering an immune response in which the body produces antibodies that could result in blood clots.

Professor Paal Andre Holme of Norway’s Oslo University Hospital, which treated three healthcare workers with severe blood clots after they received the AstraZeneca vaccine, told a news conference on Thursday that “we’ve made discoveries” that could “explain the clinical progression of our patients.”

Holme warned that the findings were preliminary. “This is only the beginning of all the research that is being done,” he said. He did not release any data supporting his hypothesis.

A team of German researchers at Greifswald University Clinic on Friday said they came to a similar conclusion. If proven correct, there may be a way to treat the condition, the scientists said.

EMA researchers on Thursday said they are undertaking several investigations to determine whether the rare blood clots might be linked with the vaccine, or occurring by chance. They noted that many of the events occurred in younger women.

CVST, though rare, has been associated with pregnancy and the use of oral contraceptives. “That’s one of the things that we will be further investigating in the near future,” said Sabine Straus, chair of EMA’s safety committee.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine/scientists-probe-new-theories-on-whether-astrazeneca-shot-linked-to-blood-clots-idUSKBN2BC01M

Expert: COVID-19 vaccine concerns mostly unfounded

March 19, 2021 / 3:13 AM  By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

Don't believe everything you hear: A sizable minority of Americans are still hesitant about getting the new COVID-19 vaccine, but their fears are mostly not warranted, a leading vaccine expert says.

"Not only has it been shown to be safe in tens of thousands of people before approval, it's been shown to be safe in tens of millions of people post-approval," Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said during a HealthDay Now interview.

"It doesn't even have a rare side effect. It is remarkable how effective and safe these vaccines are," Offit said.

During the interview, Offit refuted many of the rumors that lead some to avoid the vaccine, while noting others that actually have some basis in fact.

RELATED Vaccine distribution inequality reflects 'broken' U.S. healthcare system, experts say

Worries about the vaccines are understandable "because it was the fastest vaccine ever developed, and it was developed using a novel technology that we hadn't used before," Offit said.

"But you know, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is at hand," he continued. "There was reason to be skeptical initially, but that skepticism should melt away in the face of all these compelling data."

Safety data have shown that deaths occurring after vaccination have in every case been coincidental, Offit noted.

RELATED Former FDA chief: Variants could make COVID-19 persistent threat

"There's no reason to suspect it would cause harm," Offit said of the vaccine.

The one side effect that has been documented, anaphylactic shock, also occurs with other vaccines and is easily treated with an epinephrine shot, Offit added. It's about one in a million for other vaccines, while for the Pfizer vaccine it's five cases per million and for the Moderna vaccine it's 2.8 per million.

More

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/03/19/Expert-COVID-19-vaccine-concerns-mostly-unfounded/6361616106064/

Poland's total number of COVID-19 cases surpasses 2 million

March 19, 2021 9:43 AM  By Reuters Staff

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland’s total number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 2 million on Friday, according to health ministry data, as Poland grapples with a third wave of the pandemic.

Poland has had 2,010,244 coronavirus cases and 48,807 deaths in total since the start of the pandemic, the ministry data showed. Poland had 25,998 new coronavirus cases on Friday.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-poland/polands-total-number-of-covid-19-cases-surpasses-2-million-idUSKBN2BB0WF?il=0

Next, some very useful 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

FDA information. https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download

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

Some more useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

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

Rt Covid-19

https://rt.live/

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. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21^st century onwards.

BP Considers Project to Develop U.K.’s Largest Blue-Hydrogen Plant

Laura Hurst  March 18, 2021, 7:30 AM EDT

BP Plc is studying a project to build the U.K.’s largest blue-hydrogen plant, expanding further in low-carbon energy as it slims down its traditional oil business.

The H2Teesside facility in northeast England could produce 1 gigawatt of hydrogen -- a fifth of the U.K. government’s target -- by 2030, and would capture and store 2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

In the global fight against climate change, hydrogen has been heralded as a clean-energy answer to the fuel needs of industry and transport. BP has said energy companies will increasingly shift to the gas, and it’s targeting a 10% share of “core markets” for the fuel by the end of the decade.

“Blue hydrogen, integrated with carbon capture and storage, can provide the scale and reliability needed by industrial processes,” Dev Sanyal, BP’s executive vice president of gas and low-carbon energy, said Thursday. “It can also play an essential role in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify industries.”

The potential Teesside investment is the latest in a string of low-carbon ventures announced by BP over the past year. If the project goes ahead, the company expects to take a final investment decision in 2024, with a view to starting output by 2027. That would be a few years after a similar facility being developed by Essar Energy at the Stanlow refinery in northwest England.

BP didn’t disclose cost estimates or sources of financing. It was not among a group of five companies that won U.K. government funding on Wednesday for the Net Zero Teesside project, which is aimed at cleaning up a cluster of CO2-intensive businesses with the use of carbon capture, utilization and storage.

The “construction process and costs will need to be carefully monitored given past significant overruns in the U.K.,” Barclays Plc analysts Lydia Rainforth and Joshua Stone wrote in a research note. Still, the bank sees potential for “significant” growth in the hydrogen market in the industrial sector, as well as in long-haul trucking and replacing natural gas for heating.

Business Zone

Teesside is home to an oil terminal and storage facilities, and is also one of eight new freeports created by U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. These are low-tariff business zones aimed at stimulating post-Brexit trade.

BP’s project would focus on making blue hydrogen, a cleaner alternative to gray hydrogen, which is typically created from natural gas and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. With blue hydrogen, the emissions are captured and buried underground. BP is exploring technologies that could capture as much as 98% of carbon emissions from the production process.

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/bp-mulls-project-to-develop-u-k-s-largest-blue-hydrogen-plant?srnd=markets-vp

 

This weekend’s musical diversion.  An English contemporary of Handel, and for a time as successful, but who died young.  Approx. 8 minutes.

W. BABELL: Concerto in D major Op.3/1, Ensemble Odyssee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcOnmhC77Mo

William Babell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Babell

This week’s chess lesson.  Approx. 10 minutes.

Stop Horsing Around, Guys || Nakamura vs Nepo || MCI (2021)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPcVpCLhWzE

 

Finally, rounding out our recent flying updates, landing at NYC’s La Guardia airport. With good views of Manhattan about 2 minutes in. Approx. 10 minutes.

Landing in LGA with Amazing Views of NYC 4k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFV751t28Ss

From the bar of my 38^th floor walk up on Carnegie Hill between Park and Lexington, I often looked out over the East River and down on the planes making their final approach over Queens into LGA. Great views of the Triborough Bridge, (officially the RFK Bridge,) Rikers Island prison and Long Island Sound too. On a really clear day, I could see distant Kennedy Airport in the other direction.

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”

Oscar Wilde