Baltic Dry Index. 3058 +05 Brent Crude 71.88
Spot Gold 1799
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 22/07/21 World 192,840,803
Deaths 4,142,679
"A company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is"
The 1720 South Sea Bubble.
In the casinos, all’s well! Buy more stocks.
But will it all end well? What happens if inflation forces the central banksters to start to raise interest rates?
What happens if Covid-19 mutates badly again? What happens if flu and Covid-19 emerge together in the northern hemisphere winter of 2021-2022?
All's well! Don’t ask silly questions, buy more stocks!
Hong Kong jumps nearly 2% as Asia-Pacific stocks rise; bitcoin bounces back
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were higher in Thursday trade, with markets in Japan closed for a holiday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was among the biggest gainers regionally, rising 1.77% by the afternoon. Shares of China Evergrande Group surged 9.25%. Those gains came after the indebted developer announced it has solved legal disputes with China Guangfa Bank, according to Reuters.
Mainland Chinese stocks edged higher, with the Shanghai composite climbing 0.33% while the Shenzhen component rose fractionally.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.07% in afternoon trade.
Elsewhere, the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia advanced 1%. Shares of major miner BHP soared nearly 3% after the firm announced Thursday the signing of a nickel supply agreement with Tesla.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1.17%.
Still, concerns over the coronavirus situation in Asia-Pacific may continue to weigh on regional sentiment on Thursday. Australia’s two largest states on Wednesday reported sharp increases in new Covid infections, while Indonesia saw record high deaths from the virus, according to Reuters.
Markets in Japan are closed on Thursday for a holiday.
Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin rebounded after recently falling below the $30,000 mark. It traded at $32,142.97 as of 12:19 a.m. ET Thursday, according to Coin Metrics.
Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 286.01 points to 34,798 while the S&P 500 rose 0.82% to 4,358.69. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.92% to 14,631.95.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/22/asia-markets-covid-bitcoin-currencies-oil.html
Next, more on that Covid-19 drag on Southeast Asian economies,
Covid appears to be the ‘Achilles’ heel’ for Southeast Asian economies, says Jefferies
Published Wed, Jul 21 2021 1:43 AM EDT
SINGAPORE — The failure to contain Covid infections is impeding the recovery of many Southeast Asian economies, says Sean Darby from Jefferies.
“Indonesia, like many of the ASEAN economies, has yet to really get to grips with the Covid-19 virus,” Darby, global head of equity strategy at the U.S. investment bank, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday.
“That seems to be the Achilles heel for the ASEAN economies at the moment,” he said referring to Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional grouping.
Goldman Sachs recently slashed its 2021 growth forecasts for major economies in Southeast Asia as a surge in the more infectious delta variant triggered daily record highs in infections in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand these past weeks.
Indonesia’s credit rating under pressure
The surge in infections regionally has also called into question the credit ratings of South East Asia’s economies.
Moody’s Investors Service warned Monday that resurgent Covid infections in Indonesia could undermine the country’s credit rating.
“A resurgence in more infectious mutations of the virus poses significant risks to Indonesia’s economic recovery,” Moody’s said in the report. It will also “challenge government plans to reduce the fiscal deficit to pre-pandemic levels, a credit negative.”
More
In other news, did office life and big city centres just change for good? And if it did, what does this mean for city centre real estate values?
NatWest Chairman Says London Office Life Will Never Return
The changes wrought by the pandemic on U.K. office life are here to stay, according to the chairman of one of the country’s biggest banks.
NatWest Group Plc’s Howard Davies said in a Bloomberg TV interview Wednesday that he doesn’t expect central London’s footfall to revert to pre-pandemic levels as office workers resist a return to five days a week in the office and the daily commute.
“The days when 2,500 people walked in through our office door at Bishopsgate at 8:30 a.m. and then walked out again at 6 p.m., I think that is gone,” Davies said.
While some workers -- particularly traders -- may remain desk-bound, the majority of NatWest’s staff are expected to come in only intermittently, he said.
“We are looking at having a minimum expectation of a few days a month where people will definitely have to be in the office, and then it will vary by teams, but I suspect there won’t be many people doing five long days in the office,” he said.
Others in the industry have made similar predictions, with UBS Group AG Chief Executive Officer Ralph Hamers saying yesterday that his investment bankers will be able to work part of their time from home under a new, permanent hybrid model that the bank is rolling out.
NatWest’s experience suggests the slow return of commuters to the City of London is set to continue, even after the government lifted its guidance on remote work this week. That’s bad news for districts like the Square Mile, whose lifeblood is the ebb and flow of hundreds of thousands of commuters and that have largely lain empty since the onset of the pandemic.
Read more about London’s return to the office
Davies welcomed the decision by the Bank of England this month to lift its restrictions on bank dividends and said he expected payouts at lenders to return to a “sustainable level.” Last year, Davies criticized the central bank’s de facto ban on payouts, saying the sector isn’t investible otherwise.
He also warned Wednesday that the U.K. may have “an incipient inflation problem,” citing the presence of bottlenecks in the economy such as increasing wages.
Finally, more on the perils of fantasy Unicorn ranching. Making easy money gets harder and harder. Perhaps Fed Chairman Powell could help out by adding Bitcoin to the list of dodgy assets the Fed keeps buying.
Bitcoin’s 50% Drop From Peak Hammers Crypto Loans, Derivatives
Justina Lee Wed, July 21, 2021, 4:13 PM
(Bloomberg) --
The 2021 Bitcoin bubble is deflating and hitting a $1.3 trillion industry built on to-the-moon speculation and rampant leverage.
The damage from the latest selloff is spreading across the world of crypto loans, options and futures -- wiping out money-spinning strategies from the famous basis trade to yield farming.
Even with Wednesday’s rebound, Bitcoin at around $31,700 is still trading near the lower end of its range over the past two months, and down about 50% from the April peak.
This means bulls are getting schooled on the need for restraint, with hedging costs rising and trading activity across the much-hyped decentralized finance community on the wane.
“The hype has toned down,” said George Zarya, chief executive officer at crypto prime brokerage Bequant. “It’s a 24/7 market, so for the entire industry it’s an exhausting process. When summer comes, it’s very timely. You need a little bit of rest.”
Here are all the signs crypto speculators have yet to regain their gumption after the May rout.
Spot and derivatives turnover totals $2.6 trillion this month, on track to reach the lowest since December, CryptoCompare data show. The number of active and new Bitcoin addresses has also fallen. On Deribit, the largest options exchange, Bitcoin’s implied volatility is rising again this week to 88% from a recent low.
Another window into how bullish sentiment is vanishing is the reversal of the basis trade, the once-lucrative quant strategy that arbitrages the spread between the futures market and the spot price.
When a $100,000 Bitcoin price target was in vogue in April, a roughly 50% annualized premium in futures was par for the course. That effectively meant some traders were so gung-ho on the underlying asset, they were willing to pay big time for their bet.
But since the May crash, the interest rate bulls pay to roll over their futures has collapsed to zero or even become negative.
More
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
Hilaire Belloc.
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
UK worker shortages mount as applicants tumble 24 per cent
Wednesday 21 July 2021 6:00 am
Worker shortages in the UK continues to intensify despite firms stepping up efforts to hire talent, according to new figures published today.
Research by Broadbean Technology, the world’s largest network of job boards, shows job application in the UK fell 24 per cent between May and June of this year.
However, vaccines were up 10 per cent over the same period, illustrating the severe mismatch between the supply of and demand for workers.
The figures raise fresh concerns that inflationary pressures could mount as a result of firms increasing wages to attract candidates.
The ONS estimates underlying pay growth is between 3.2 and 4.4 per cent, meaning wages are rising in real terms.
Applicants per vacancy fell for the third consecutive month, said Broadbean.
The biggest contributor by far to the fall in applications was the hospitality and catering sector, down 78 per cent over the last month.
The drop in applicants for pub and restaurant jobs can be attributed to workers shifting into more stable employment and seeking jobs that will limit their exposure to deadly strains of the virus
As Alex Fourlis, managing director at Broadbean Technology, said: “The UK job market is becoming increasingly competitive as a shortage of talent continues to be exacerbated by the spikes in hiring that most businesses are reporting.”
“It’s unlikely that we’ll see any improvement on this situation as we enter the mid-summer months, with many jobseekers now postponing their job search until September.”
Temporary or not, inflation is rattling restaurants and broader economy
David J. Lynch July 20,2021
Only once in six years had Mark Maguire raised prices at his North Dallas restaurant.
Then, some of his employees, no doubt noticing the banners touting $1,000 signing bonuses at other eateries, demanded higher wages. And his suppliers hiked the cost of chicken, beef and cooking oil.
Maguire’s costs rose so much so fast that he has had to rewrite his menu prices twice since March. Whether additional increases will follow depends upon a complex interaction of food supplies, labor availability and a shape-shifting virus.
“It’d be foolish for me to believe we’ve seen the worst of it,” he said. “I don’t want to let my mind think about this becoming a long-term deal.”
---- Consumer confidence readings, however, are sagging, and the unpredictable landscape confronting Maguire, 57, helps explain why some employers lack Washington’s confidence.
White House economists liken today’s fast-rising prices to a temporary bout of inflation following the end of World War II. But Fed officials concede they already have been surprised by the recovery’s initial chapters and more surprises may loom.
“It’s a once-in-a-century experience with a different economy than it was a century ago,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist with the firm Grant Thornton. “There’s just no road map.”
More
Below, why a “green energy” economy may not be possible anyway, and if it is, it won’t be quick and it will be very inflationary, setting off a new long-term commodity Supercycle. Probably the largest seen so far.
The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Mines, Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
California coronavirus hospitalizations hit highest point in months as Delta spreads
Luke Money
A spate of new coronavirus infections is striking California's healthcare system, pushing COVID-19 hospitalizations to levels not seen since early spring — lending new urgency to efforts to tamp down transmission as a growing number of counties urge residents to wear masks indoors.
Statewide, the number of coronavirus patients in the hospital more than doubled in the last month, and the numbers have accelerated further in the last two weeks.
Even with the recent increase, though, the state's healthcare system is nowhere near as swamped as it was during the fall-and-winter surge. And many health experts are confident that California will never see numbers on that scale again, given how many residents are vaccinated.
But with the continued spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, which officials fear could mushroom in communities with lower inoculation rates, the next few weeks are key in determining how potent the pandemic's latest punch may be.
The recent increases confirm that nearly everyone falling seriously ill from COVID-19 at this point is unvaccinated.
"This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And so, if you care about getting back to normalcy once and for all, please get vaccinated," Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters Tuesday.
The fact that about 52% of all Californians are already fully vaccinated sets a ceiling on how many people remain exposed to potential infection.
More
Study suggests Johnson & Johnson vaccine less effective against Delta variant
By Samuel Chamberlain July 21, 2021 | 1:23am
The one-shot coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson is much less effective against the Delta variant than it is against the original version of COVID-19, according to a new study posted online Tuesday.
The study, which examined blood samples in a laboratory setting and has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggests that anyone who received the J&J vaccine may need to receive a second shot as the variant continues to spread across the US.
“The message that we wanted to give was not that people shouldn’t get the J&J vaccine, but we hope that in the future, it will be boosted with either another dose of J&J or a boost with Pfizer or Moderna,” study leader Nathaniel Landau, a virologist at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, told The New York Times.
Earlier this month, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson published preliminary data indicating its vaccine was effective against the Delta variant, first located in India, at least eight months after inoculation.
However, in May, the British government released a study indicating that a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is similar in structure to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, was just 33 percent effective against “symptomatic disease” caused by the Delta variant, while two doses were 60 percent effective against symptomatic disease.
J&J spokesperson Seema Kumar told the Times that the data from the latest study “do not speak to the full nature of immune protection.”
Last month, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told NBC’s “Today” show that “we have every reason to believe … that the J&J will perform well against the Delta variant, as it has so far against other variants circulating in the United States.”
More
Dr. Vin Gupta encourages J&J vaccine recipients to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster
Published Tue, Jul 20 2021 8:39 PM EDT
Intensive-care unit and lung doctor Dr. Vin Gupta told CNBC that he’s already encouraging patients who received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster shot amid the dramatic increase in delta variant cases across the U.S.
Gupta, a professor at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told “The News with Shepard Smith” that “AstraZeneca, when combined with a Pfizer or Moderna booster, is showing tremendous levels of protection against delta, in terms of the antibody levels that are generated in patients.”
“I do think that those one-shot J&Jer’s should be given the opportunity, while we complete our clinical trial ... I’m already telling my patients to do it, if they can get access to it.”
Gupta’s comments come on the heels of a new study from a lab at New York University Tuesday that raises serious questions about the effectiveness of J&J’s single-dose vaccine against the highly contagious delta variant. The NYU study is not yet peer reviewed, but found that the antibody levels in those who received the J&J shot may be low enough to be less protective.
---- Gupta furthered the case for administering a booster shot when he told host Shepard Smith that his “definition of fully vaccinated is two doses of a vaccine.”
Smith asked for clarification on whether Gupta considers the nearly 13 million Americans who received the J&J dose were actually fully vaccinated.
“I think you’re protected, likely from the hospital and severe outcomes from say, the delta variant, based on what data we do have,” Gupta said. “I do not think you have the same level of protection to transmit the virus than somebody who received two doses of the vaccine like Pfizer or Moderna. I think that is pretty clear at this point.”
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.
Ultrathin magnet operates at room temperature
One-atom thin 2D magnet could advance new applications in computing and electronics
Date: July 20, 2021
Source: DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Summary: Scientists have created an ultrathin magnet that operates at room temperature. The ultrathin magnet could lead to new applications in computing and electronics -- such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices -- and new tools for the study of quantum physics.
The development of an ultrathin magnet that operates at room temperature could lead to new applications in computing and electronics -- such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices -- and new tools for the study of quantum physics.
The ultrathin magnet, which was recently reported in the journal Nature Communications, could make big advances in next-gen memories, computing, spintronics, and quantum physics. It was discovered by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley.
"We're the first to make a room-temperature 2D magnet that is chemically stable under ambient conditions," said senior author Jie Yao, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and associate professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley.
"This discovery is exciting because it not only makes 2D magnetism possible at room temperature, but it also uncovers a new mechanism to realize 2D magnetic materials," added Rui Chen, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Yao Research Group and lead author on the study."
The magnetic component of today's memory devices is typically made of magnetic thin films. But at the atomic level, these magnetic films are still three-dimensional -- hundreds or thousands of atoms thick. For decades, researchers have searched for ways to make thinner and smaller 2D magnets and thus enable data to be stored at a much higher density.
Previous achievements in the field of 2D magnetic materials have brought promising results. But these early 2D magnets lose their magnetism and become chemically unstable at room temperature.
"State-of-the-art 2D magnets need very low temperatures to function. But for practical reasons, a data center needs to run at room temperature," Yao said. "Theoretically, we know that the smaller the magnet, the larger the disc's potential data density. Our 2D magnet is not only the first that operates at room temperature or higher, but it is also the first magnet to reach the true 2D limit: It's as thin as a single atom!"
The researchers say that their discovery will also enable new opportunities to study quantum physics. "Our atomically thin magnet offers an optimal platform for probing the quantum world," Yao said. "It opens up every single atom for examination, which may reveal how quantum physics governs each single magnetic atom and the interactions between them. With a conventional bulk magnet where most of the magnetic atoms are deeply buried inside the material, such studies would be quite challenging to do."
----"With our material, there are no major obstacles for industry to adopt our solution-based method," said Yao. "It's potentially scalable for mass production at lower costs."
To confirm that the resulting 2D film is just one atom thick, Yao and his team conducted scanning electron microscopy experiments at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry to identify the material's morphology, and transmission electron microscopy imaging to probe the material atom by atom.
With proof in hand that their 2D material really is just an atom thick, the researchers went on to the next challenge that had confounded researchers for years: Demonstrating a 2D magnet that successfully operates at room temperature.
----The researchers say that new material -- which can be bent into almost any shape without breaking, and is 1 millionth the thickness of a single sheet of paper -- could help advance the application of spin electronics or spintronics, a new technology that uses the orientation of an electron's spin rather than its charge to encode data. "Our 2D magnet may enable the formation of ultra-compact spintronic devices to engineer the spins of the electrons," Chen said.
"I believe that the discovery of this new, robust, truly two-dimensional magnet at room temperature is a genuine breakthrough by Jie Yao and his students," said co-author Robert Birgeneau, a faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and professor of physics at UC Berkeley who co-led the study's magnetic measurements. "In addition to its obvious significance to spintronic devices, this 2D magnet is fascinating at the atomic level, revealing for the first time how cobalt magnetic atoms interact over 'long' distances" through a complex two-dimensional network, he added.
"Our results are even better than what we expected, which is really exciting. Most of the time in science, experiments can be very challenging," he said. "But when you finally realize something new, it's always very fulfilling."
More
Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
Hilaire Belloc in "Epitaph on the politician."
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