MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares
outside Japan rose 0.4%, following a 0.9% decline the previous day. Chinese
blue chips rose 0.3%.
“Overall I think markets are still skewed to
taking on risk, and I don’t think we’ve seen the final record high by any means
in the U.S. stock market or in global equities,” said Kyle Rodda, a market
analyst at IG in Melbourne.
“At the end of the day, (the selloff earlier
this week) was just markets whipping around as the froth has blown off risk
assets.”
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe
added 0.2% on Thursday, following a 0.4% gain overnight.
On Tuesday, the index had slumped 0.8%, the
most in four weeks, as market sentiment soured amid concerns that record
coronavirus infections in India, likely restrictions in Japan and rising cases
in Latin America will hamper the global economic recovery.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.9%,
reversing two days of declines, to finish Wednesday’s session just 12 points
below its record close.
“‘Buy the dip’ mentality appears to be back
in equities,” Tapas Strickland, an analyst at National Australia Bank, wrote in
a client note.
Oil prices slipped for a third day on
concerns that surging COVID-19 cases in India will drive down fuel demand in
the world’s third-biggest oil importer, while a surprise build in U.S.
stockpiles added to the negative tone.
U.S. crude fell 10 cents on Thursday to
$61.25 per barrel and Brent was down 10 cents to $65.22.
Spot gold edged higher to $1,794.32 an
ounce.
U.S. Treasury yields stayed depressed, with
the yield on benchmark 10-year notes down 2 basis points at 1.5414% on
Thursday, languishing near the lowest since March 12.
In currency markets, the dollar remained
pinned near multi-week lows against major peers as U.S. yields stayed subdued.
The dollar stood at 108.04 yen, close to a
seven-week low, while the euro was quoted at $1.2037, not far from its
strongest since March 3.
The European Central Bank decides policy
later on Thursday, with no change expected.
April
22, 2021
5:22 AM By Leika
Kihara , Daniel Leussink
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s
government is expected to issue a third state of emergency on Tokyo and three
western prefectures that could last for about two weeks, according to media
reports, underscoring its struggle to deal with a surge in new COVID-19 case
numbers.
Some analysts say the decision,
expected to be made as early as Friday, may push Japan back into recession if
retailers are asked to close during the Golden Week holidays, which start next
week and run through early May.
A renewed state of emergency would
also cast doubt on whether Tokyo can host the Olympics in July, despite Prime
Minister Yoshihide Suga’s assurances it will proceed as planned.
“The risk of a double-dip recession
has clearly heightened,” said Hiroshi Shiraishi, senior economist at BNP
Paribas Securities. “The impact of imposing curbs on Tokyo and Osaka alone
would be quite big.”
With thousands of new cases
resulting from highly infectious strains of the virus, Suga said on Wednesday
the government will decide this week whether to declare the state of emergency
for major parts of the country.
If adopted in all four regions that
made requests, the emergency measures would cover close to a quarter of Japan’s
population of 126 million and roughly 30% of gross domestic product (GDP).
The government is considering
imposing state of emergency curbs from April 25 through May 11, Jiji news agency
reported.
Other media have raised the possibility of
stronger curbs than those issued last time in January, such as requests for
department stores and other big retailers to close.
“The timing is not good,” as it would hit
service spending during the spring leisure season, said Takumi Tsunoda, senior
economist at Shinkin Central Bank Research Institute.
Tsunoda cut his forecast for second-quarter
GDP to a 0.5% quarter-on-quarter rise, half the previously projected pace.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan/recession-risk-looms-as-japan-eyes-3rd-state-of-emergency-to-contain-pandemic-idUSKBN2C90BC
Finally, Brasil asks
Biden to put America’s cash where his good intentions are. Sounds like another
job for Fed Chairman Powell’s newly discovered Magic Money Tree forest. Will
inflation be the Biden-Powell legacy?
Brazil’s
Climate Overture to Biden: Pay Us Not to Raze Amazon President Bolsonaro’s proposition comes as Brazil seeks
support from U.S. to curtail deforestation in world’s biggest rainforest April 21, 2021 5:30 am ET
Brazil’s government, widely criticized by environmental
groups as a negligent steward of the Amazon rainforest, has made an audacious
offer to the Biden administration: Provide $1 billion and President
Jair Bolsonaro’s administration will reduce deforestation by 40%.
The proposal was made as the Brazilian president prepares
for a virtual environmental summit with roughly 40 heads of state hosted
Thursday and Friday by President Biden, who has made battling climate change a centerpiece
But supported by some influential scholars and Amazon
dwellers, Mr. Bolsonaro argues that the only way to save the jungle
is through carbon credits and by financing sustainable economic activities so
people can make a living from fish farming, cacao production and other
activities that don’t require the razing of trees. The theme has been central
to talks Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, said he has had in
recent weeks with Biden administration climate officials.
The request is likely just among the first of many similar
to follow as developing nations start to negotiate with industrialized
countries about who pays for costly programs to address climate change. This
fall, the nations of the world are to set new, more ambitious targets for
reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and developing countries want their richer
peers to make good on pledges from the original Paris climate negotiations to mobilize $100 billion a year
Top Indian officials made that among their top requests to
John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy on climate change, when he
visited earlier this month, according to the Indian Finance Ministry on
Twitter. Officials from these countries, including Brazil, say industrialized
nations must account for their historic contributions to climate change and the
need for citizens in poorer countries to rise out of poverty.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-climate-overture-to-biden-pay-us-not-to-raze-amazon-11618997400?mod=mhp
Global Inflation Watch. Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our
spendthrift politicians, inflation now
needs an entire section of its own.
How Global Inflation Will Affect
Businesses, And How They Can Prepare Apr 20, 2021,08:20am EDT
The business and overall life changes imposed by the
coronavirus have been difficult to endure. We faced unexpected events. We thought
we were in control of everything, and instead, everything that was
"normal" went away in an instant, including how we do our jobs and
perform simple gestures like buying milk or walking down the street. Now, we
must face the transformation of today's habits and create a
"new normal."
On top of all of that, the economy is experiencing
inflation, with a steady increase in goods and services pricing over time. It
devalues units of currency (like the USD and EURO), resulting in consequences
like a higher cost of living. Pandemics are friends to inflations. In a previous
article , I asked readers to imagine how we would have responded to this
pandemic decades ago. Do you want to revert back to your normal life or turn it
into something better? We can start to align the understanding of inflation
with our life routines through data analysis and facts we face every day.
The risk of inflation has returned to the radar screen of
operators and authorities. After six months in negative ratings, the annual
inflation rate took position to increase
by 0.9% , which is 0.4% higher than expected, though some would say less and
others say more. The estimates for the next few months are oriented toward an
upward trend.
In May, I believe the price level will be similar to the
worst period of the pandemic, characterized by a sudden fall in prices due to
generalized lockdowns. But there is further statistical data that shows a rise
in the inflation rate. In light of a hopefully faster-than-expected recovery,
the OECD has substantially raised its forecasts for the planet's economic
health, increasing its global growth estimate for this year to 5.6% , with an increase of
more than 1% compared to the December projections and 4%
for 2022 .
---- When labor wages
can't keep up with the rate of retail prices, inflation, the purchasing power
of those wages, decreases. Low-income families face it like nobody else; any
price increase can have serious consequences. Workers' demand for wage
increases can lead to a labor costs downturn, resulting in lower profits for
businesses. All this can create a high uncertainty ratio into the system,
leading to decreased investment from entrepreneurs.
A stable economy needs stable
inflation. While high inflation leads to enduringly high interest rates, low
inflation can lead to permanently low interest rates. Inflation is one of the
driving factors of our lives. So instead of undergoing its effects, how can we
turn around all the negative consequences and impact a valuable strategy like those
in the past have done?
More
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/04/20/how-global-inflation-will-affect-businesses-and-how-they-can-prepare/?sh=4c564b533754
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID-19: India adds 2,59,170 new
cases in single day, record 1,761 fatalities New Delhi, Apr 20 (PTI) India's total tally of
COVID-19 cases climbed to?1,53,21,089?with?2,59,170?new coronavirus infections
being reported in a day,?while active cases surpassed the 20-lakh
mark,?according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday
http://www.ptinews.com/news/12353256_COVID-19--India-adds-2-59-170-new-cases-in-single-day--record-1-761-fatalities.html
India's second Covid wave hits
like a 'tsunami' as hospitals buckle under weight By Jessie Yeung and
Vedika Sud, CNN
Updated 1055 GMT (1855 HKT) April 21, 2021
New Delhi (CNN) Healthcare and other
essential services across India are close to collapse as a second coronavirus
wave that started in mid-March tears through the country with devastating
speed.
Graveyards
are running out of space, hospitals are turning away patients, and desperate
families are pleading for help on social media for beds and medicine.
India
reported 295,041 cases of coronavirus and 2,023 deaths Wednesday, its highest
rise in cases and highest death increase recorded in a single day since the
beginning of the pandemic, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian
Ministry of Health.
"The
volume is humongous," said Jalil Parkar, a senior pulmonary consultant at
the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai, which had to convert its lobby into an
additional Covid ward. "It's just like a tsunami."
"Things
are out of control," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for
Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in New Delhi.
"There's
no oxygen. A hospital bed is hard to find. It's impossible to get a test. You
have to wait over a week. And pretty much every system that could break down in
the health care system has broken down," he said.
To
prove his point, at least 22 Covid-19 patients who were on ventilator support
died Wednesday waiting for oxygen supplies that were lost in an accident, a
senior official from the Nashik district in the Indian state of Maharashtra
said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on
Tuesday, acknowledging the country's "very big battle" against
Covid-19.
He appealed to states to "use a lockdown as their
last option," even as the capital New Delhi entered its first full day of
a week-long lockdown.
On Monday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned
that failing to halt movement in the city could lead to "tragedy."
"We don't want to take Delhi to a place where
patients are lying in hospital corridors and people are dying on roads,"
Kejriwal said.
On Tuesday, he warned that some Delhi hospitals were
"left with just a few hours of oxygen," as authorities scrambled to
convert sports complexes, banquet halls, hotels and schools into much-needed
treatment centers, with the goal to add 6,000 additional beds within days.
More
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/21/india/india-covid-hospital-shortage-intl-hnk/index.html
Roche’s Covid Pill Tests Delayed
by U.K.’s Swift Vaccine Drive By Naomi Kresge
21 April 2021, 10:26 BST
Roche Holding AG has run into a speed bump as it
seeks to rush a pill for Covid-19 to the market: The U.K.’s aggressive vaccine
drive has made it harder to find sick people to test it on.
A trial of the pill for people with mild or moderate Covid
begun in the U.K. earlier this year is delayed, Roche said. To speed things up,
the Swiss pharma giant has started recruiting patients in a range of other
places, from Texas to Bulgaria, Canada and Spain, the U.S. clinical trials registry shows.
Roche is racing to develop a pill that patients can take at
home, as are Merck & Co. and Pfizer
Inc. Other effective treatments -- such as steroids, or the antibody
cocktail Roche makes with U.S. biotech Regeneron
Pharmaceuticals Inc. -- are either for sicker patients or, because they’re
given intravenously, require a visit to a hospital or clinic.
The planning for a large late-stage trial to determine whether
the pill works -- something that can’t start until the proof of concept results
from the smaller study are in -- is underway, according to Chief Executive
Officer Severin Schwan.
“It has become more difficult to recruit Covid-19 patients,”
Schwan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. For the final-stage
trial, Schwan said “we expect results, still, by the end of this year.”
Merck , which is slightly ahead in the Covid pill
development process, said last week it would focus its late-stage
trial on people with milder disease after a smaller study indicated it
wasn’t likely to help people who were already in the hospital.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/roche-s-covid-pill-tests-delayed-by-u-k-s-swift-vaccine-drive?srnd=premium-europe
Experts Answer Eight Key
Questions About Covid-19 Vaccine Reactions Medical
professionals weigh in on why some individuals have different responses to the
shots and offer advice on what to expect By Emily Mullin smithsonianmag.com April 20, 2021 8:00AM
If you’ve gotten a Covid-19 vaccine already, you may have
found yourself comparing your side effects with vaccinated family members and
friends or turning to Google to check if the symptoms you’re experiencing are
normal.
Now that more than 131 million individuals in the United
States have received at least
one vaccine dose , and more than 84 million individuals—more than 25 percent
of the population—are fully vaccinated, researchers are getting a clearer
picture of the potential reactions that can occur after getting a Covid-19
vaccine.
Many recipients experience mild side effects, like arm
soreness, fatigue, headache or a low-grade fever, while others may have no side
effects at all. Severe side effects, like those that Gregory Poland suffered,
are less common. Poland, a physician and vaccinologist at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota, was unlucky enough to come down with uncontrollable
shaking and chills for several hours after getting the shot. He’s also one of a
small number of individuals who have reported severe ringing in their ear
following vaccination. In very rare cases, a half-dozen women have developed
severe blot clots after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Although the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson
vaccine has been paused out of an abundance of caution, it’s important to know
that the vast majority of other vaccine reactions aren’t cause for concern. In
fact, it’s perfectly normal that some recipients have stronger reactions than
others.
“Vaccine reactions are not evidence of something going
wrong, but evidence of something going right,” Poland says.
Why do vaccine
reactions happen at all? More
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/all-your-questions-about-covid-19-vaccine-reactions-answered-180977537/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210420-daily-responsive&spMailingID=44836333&spUserID=NjUwNDIzNTUzNDE0S0&spJobID=1983540878&spReportId=MTk4MzU0MDg3OAS2
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/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator
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.
2D nanomaterial MXene: The
perfect lubricant In extreme heat
or in the vacuum of space: a novel nanomaterial delivers top performance in
extreme situations, as demonstrated by TU Wien (Vienna) with international
partners Date: April 20, 2021
Source: Vienna University of Technology
Summary:
In extreme heat or in the vacuum of space: a novel nanomaterial delivers top
performance in extreme situations.
You can lubricate a bicycle chain
with oil, but what do you do with a Mars rover or a red-hot conveyor belt in
the steel industry? Very special nanomaterials have now been studied by the TU
Wien together with research groups from Saarbrücken (Germany), Purdue
University in the USA and the Universidad de Chile (Santiago, Chile).
The material class of MXenes
(pronounced "maxene") has caused quite a stir in recent years in
connection with novel battery technologies. But it now turns out that they are
also an excellent solid lubricant that is extremely durable and performs its
task even under the most difficult conditions. These remarkable properties of
MXenes have now been published in the journal ACS Nano.
Like a stack of sheets of paper
Just like the carbon material
graphene, MXenes belong to the class of so-called 2D materials: their
properties are essentially determined by the fact that they are ultra-thin
layers, single atomic layers, without strong bonds to the layer above or below.
"You first start with so-called
MAX phases, which are special layer systems consisting of titanium, aluminium
and carbon, for example," says Prof. Carsten Gachot, head of the Tribology
Group at the Institute of Engineering Design and Product Development at TU
Wien. "The crucial trick is to etch out the aluminium with hydrofluoric
acid."
What then remains is a stack of
atomically thin layers of titanium and carbon that lie loosely on top of each
other, much like sheets of paper. Each layer is relatively stable on its own,
but the layers can easily be shifted against each other.
This displaceability of the atomic
layers among each other makes the material an excellent dry lubricant: without
generating abrasion, extremely low-resistance sliding is made possible. The
friction between steel surfaces could thus be reduced to one sixth -- and with
exceptionally high wear resistance: even after 100,000 movement cycles, the
MXene lubricating layer still functions without problems.
This is perfect for use under difficult
conditions: While lubricating oil would evaporate immediately in a vacuum
during space missions, for example, MXene in the form of fine powder can also
be used there.
More
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210420121503.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
As President Biden’s
Climate Change summit looms, participants might want to first Google:
Mines, Minerals, and
"Green" Energy: A Reality Check And the media might
want to question President Biden’s commitment. His syrupy words don’t match up
to his deeds.
Railing Against the Wind Biden cancels offshore projects amid local
political opposition. April 20, 2021 8:20 pm ET
---- But his plans are
already running aground off the coast of Long Island in New York, where his
Administration last week canceled two offshore wind development zones.
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
officials said the zones off the island’s coast raised problems with maritime
traffic, marine life feeding areas, and concerns over visibility from South
Shore beaches. In short, they were a nuisance to fishermen, shippers and gentry
with homes in the tony Hamptons area full of Manhattanites during the summer.
The feds are portraying the wind
rescission as no big deal since other offshore zones between New York and New
Jersey are still under review. But these may run into similar problems.
Residents in the town of Wainscott have already sued to prevent a transmission
line connecting a wind farm off the coast of Montauk from coming ashore on
their beach.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/railing-against-the-wind-11618964420?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
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