Baltic Dry Index. 4233 +12 Brent Crude 75.67
Spot Gold 1791
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 16/09/21 World 227,268,310
Deaths 4,673,652
Transitory
adjective
not permanent.
Either the stock casinos are right and the gold casino is wrong, or the gold punters are right about higher interest rates starting sooner and faster and the stock gamblers are wrong and heading for a comeuppance.
Either way, it all seems to be coming to a head before we enter the dreaded month of October, the cruelest month for stocks.
My take, the Fedster’s and the District of Crooks care far more about protecting Wall Street and the stock casinos than they do about tackling the new bout of inflation, which is now going permanent, so I think it’s the gold punters likely headed for a comeuppance.
Asia shares slip; most casino stocks in Hong Kong continue to slide amid regulatory fears
SINGAPORE — Shares in major Asia-Pacific markets mostly slipped in Thursday trade, with casino shares in Hong Kong mostly seeing another day of sharp losses.
Shares of Wynn Macau in Hong Kong dropped 5%, Sands China fell 6.65% and Melco International Development shed 4.47%. Meanwhile, Galaxy Entertainment Group gained 1.4%. Those moves followed a Wednesday plunge for casino stocks as Macao kicked off a public gaming consultation.
The broader Hang Seng index in Hong Kong shed 1.97%. In mainland China, the Shanghai composite fell 0.68% while the Shenzhen component declined 1.258%.
Elsewhere, the Nikkei 225 in Japan slipped about 0.8% while the Topix index fell 0.51%. South Korea’s Kospi edged 0.74% lower.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.53%.
Australia’s unemployment rate decreased to 4.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis in August, data released Thursday showed, lower than the 4.9% forecast in a Reuters poll. Still, the Australian Bureau of Statistics attributed the decline to a “large fall in participation during the recent lockdowns” rather than strengthening labor market conditions.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.84%.
Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 236.82 points to 34,814.39 while the S&P 500 gained 0.85% to 4,480.70. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.82% to 15,161.53.
Looking ahead, U.S. jobless claims data is set to be released on Thursday, with economists polled by Dow Jones expecting a total of 320,000 Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the week ended Sept. 11.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/16/asia-markets-australia-jobs-data-oil-currencies.html
PRECIOUS-Gold eases as investors await clues on U.S. cenbank move
Vietnam’s Covid-19 lockdown has constrained the global supply of coffee — and coffee prices could remain “relatively high” through 2022, said Fitch Solutions.
The Southeast Asian country is the world’s second-largest coffee exporter. The country is battling its worst Covid outbreak since the start of the pandemic, and a lockdown in its exporting hub Ho Chi Minh City has affected overseas shipments of coffee and other goods.
In August, Vietnamese coffee exports fell 8.7% from July to 111,697 tonnes, Reuters reported, citing customs data. Between January and August, Vietnam exported 1.1 million tonnes of coffee — 6.4% lower than a year ago, but coffee export revenue rose 2% to around $2 billion, said the news agency.
The fall in Vietnam’s exports and production slumps in other top producers have boosted global coffee prices. Benchmark arabica coffee futures have jumped by around 45.8% this year, while robusta futures have surged 52.2%, according to Refinitiv data.
Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, experienced waves of frost and drought that damaged its crops. Bad weather also affected Colombia’s harvest, and the emergence of the “mu” coronavirus variant in the country could lead to prolonged restrictions and labor shortages that worsen production, Fitch Solutions said in a report last week.
“At the same time, we think that demand, at least in Europe and the US, will pick up in the coming months as the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions should enable coffee shops to re-open,” it added.
More
Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe.
Ludwig von Mises.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Moderna says COVID-19 vaccine protection wanes, makes case for booster
September 15, 202111:57 PM BST By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO, Sept 15 (Reuters) - New data from Moderna Inc's (MRNA.O) large COVID-19 vaccine trial shows that the protection it offers wanes over time, supporting the case for booster doses, the company said in a news release on Wednesday.
"This is only one estimate, but we do believe this means as you look toward the fall and winter, at minimum we expect the estimated impact of waning immunity would be 600,000 additional cases of COVID-19," Moderna President Stephen Hoge said on a conference call with investors.
Hoge did not project how many of the cases would be severe, but said some would require hospitalization.
The data stands in stark contrast with data from several recent studies that suggested Moderna's vaccine protection lasts longer than a similar shot from Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and German partner BioNTech SE .
Experts said the difference is likely due to Moderna's higher dose of messenger RNA (mRNA) and the slightly longer interval between the first and second shots.
---- Wednesday's analysis, however, showed higher rates of infection among people vaccinated roughly 13 months ago compared with those vaccinated roughly eight months ago. The study period was from July-August, when Delta was the predominant strain. It has yet to undergo peer review.
Moderna on Sept. 1 submitted its application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking authorization for a booster shot.
---- In its analysis, Moderna compared the vaccine's performance in more than 14,000 volunteers vaccinated between July and October of 2020 with some 11,000 volunteers originally in the placebo group who were offered the shot between December 2020 and March 2022 following its U.S. emergency use authorization.
More
This Calculator Estimates Your Risk of Getting Covid-19
The online tool draws on recent data to approximate your chances of contracting the virus in different scenarios
smithsonianmag.com September 14, 2021 10:32AM
As the Covid-19 Delta variant shifts what we consider to be “safe” and “unsafe” activities, a new online tool called the microCOVID Project is attempting to quantify those evolving risks. The model assesses a given scenario—say, a vaccinated person eating at an indoor restaurant with friends—in a specified county of the United States and produces an estimated risk of contracting Covid-19.
“It gives you a kind of common playing ground for understanding all sorts of activities,” says Ben Shaya, a contributor to the microCOVID project. “It separates some of the emotional load out of it.”
----The group of friends created a mathematical model that draws on the latest research on masks, vaccine efficacy, current cases in each county and more, before translating that into a numerical value. They started the project in May of 2020 for their own use, and within a few months, created a version for the public. The site includes two tools: a calculator, and a risk tracker. The calculator is designed to give users an idea about the risk of a single event or scenario, while the risk tracker tallies a person’s activities to create an overall risk score that can be shared with others. The team that started as a handful of friends incorporated dozens of volunteer collaborators over the next few months including mathematicians, data scientists and a primary care clinician.
More.
Indian study finds big drop in COVID antibodies within four months of vaccination
By Jatindra Dash and Krishna N. Das September 14, 202111:24 AM BST
BHUBANESWAR, India, Sept 14 (Reuters) - A study of 614 fully vaccinated health workers in India found a "significant" drop in their COVID-fighting antibodies within four months of the first shot.
The findings could help the Indian government decide whether to provide booster doses as some Western countries have done.
Waning antibodies do not necessarily mean that immunised people lose their ability to counter the disease, as the body's memory cells may still kick in to offer substantial protection, said the director of a state-run institute that did the study.
"After six months, we should be able to tell you more clearly whether and when a booster would be needed," Sanghamitra Pati of the Regional Medical Research Centre, based in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar, told Reuters on Tuesday.
"And we would urge similar studies in different areas for pan-India data."
British researchers said last month that protection offered by two doses of the Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) and the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccines begins to fade within six months.
The Indian study, published in the Research Square pre-print platform but yet to be peer reviewed, is one of the first such done in the country involving its main two vaccines - Covishield, a licensed version of the AstraZeneca shot, and domestically developed Covaxin.
Health officials say though they are studying the evolving science on booster doses, the priority is to fully immunise India's 944 million adults. More than 60% of them have received at least one dose and 19% the required two doses.
COVID cases and deaths in India have come down sharply since a peak of more than 400,000 infections in early May. India has reported 33.29 million cases in total and 443,213 deaths.
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
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.
Sugar-doped lithium sulfur battery promises up to 5 times the capacity
Nick Lavars September 12, 2021
Among the many exciting chemistries being pursued for next-generation batteries, lithium-sulfur is one with significant potential, owing to its ability to store up to five times as much energy as today's lithium-ion solutions. Scientists in Australia have come up with a new design for this promising architecture that involves adding sugar to address inherent stability issues, a move that keeps the experimental cells ticking across more than 1,000 cycles.
The high capacity promised by lithium sulfur batteries is one scientists have been working hard to tap into for mainstream applications, but they've been held back by issues around their stability. As the battery's positive sulfur electrode expands and contracts during charging, it is subject to significant stress and quickly deteriorates. The negative electrode, meanwhile, becomes contaminated by sulfur compounds.
Last year, a team of battery researchers at Monash University in Melbourne came up with a solution to one half of this problem. The scientists developed a special binding agent that creates extra space around the sulfur particles, which means that they have more room to safely expand during charging. The upshot of this was a high-capacity lithium-sulfur battery capable of surviving more than 200 cycles.
Now the scientists have taken aim at the other side of the equation, in which the negative lithium electrode is effectively suffocated by sulfur. The breakthrough stems from a 1988 study showing how some sugar-based substances can stave off degradation in geological sediments by facilitating strong bonds between sulfides.
The goal was to apply this to a lithium-sulfur battery to prevent the release of the sulfur chains, called polysulfides, from the positive electrode, which tend to travel and form a mossy growth on the negative electrode. The team introduced a sugar-based additive into the web-like architecture of the electrode, which acts as a binder and forms web-like microstructures that help regulate the behavior of the pesky polysulfides. An experimental cell carrying the sugar additive demonstrated capacity of around 700 mAh per gram, which was maintained across 1,000 cycles.
“So each charge lasts longer, extending the battery’s life,” says first author and PhD student Yingyi Huang. “And manufacturing the batteries doesn’t require exotic, toxic, and expensive materials.”
There are still some kinks to iron out before lithium sulfur batteries are put to work in smartphones and electric vehicles, but the hope is that when they do they'll enable them to be used for far longer periods, or across far greater distances, in between charges. The researchers say their technology has the potential to store two to five times the energy of today's lithium batteries, and with this new study, believe they've taken a key step toward its real-world use.
“While many of the challenges on the cathode side of the battery has been solved by our team, there is still need for further innovation into the protection of the lithium metal anode to enable large-scale uptake of this promising technology – innovations that may be right around the corner," says author Dr Mahdokht Shaibani.
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Source: Monash University
Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.
James A. Garfield.
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