Baltic Dry Index. 2591 -98 Brent Crude 99.85
Spot Gold 1935
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 17/03/22 World 464,462,115
Deaths 6,081,408
“There is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.”
Jesse Livermore.
The Fed finally responded to soaring inflation by raising its key interest rate by a quarter of one percent.
There, that showed them!
“Stocks stayed strong despite the Fed's more hawkish tilt because Chair Jerome Powell "emphasised that the economy was strong enough to withstand hikes, saying he wasn't concerned by the possibility of a recession," National Australia Bank economist Taylor Nugent wrote in a client note.”
They did promise a few more rate hikes to come, maybe. I’ll take the other side of Chairman Powell’s optimism over a recession. Has the Fed ever warned of a recession ahead of a recession occurring?
The Bank of England’s up today but will they follow the Fed with a third rate hike today?
In other news, the LME reopened Nickel trading in a most chaotic, inept way.
All sides in the Iran v USA nuke deal, say a new deal is almost at hand. Just in time too, according to the International Energy Agency.
As day 22 of the war from the failure of diplomacy continues in the Ukraine, the peace talks are progressing or not progressing, according to which spin you want to believe.
Meanwhile our western politicians seem determined to fight to the last Ukrainian! Is President Putin prepping for nuclear war?
Asian stocks rally strongly as Fed hike, Ukraine talks boost sentiment
March 17, 2022 3:45 AM GMT
TOKYO, March 17 (Reuters) - Japan and Hong Kong led a jump in regional stocks on Thursday, joining a rally on Wall Street overnight as potential risks from Federal Reserve monetary tightening to the Ukraine war and a slowdown in China became less murky.
Treasury yields eased a little after spiking to nearly three-year highs overnight - with shorter-end yields rising more to flatten the curve - after the Fed raised the policy rate for the first time since 2018. The Fed increased rates by an as-expected quarter point and telegraphed equivalent hikes at every meeting for the remainder of this year to aggressively stamp out inflation. read more
The safe-haven dollar, though, remained on the back foot and oil also stabilized well south of recent multi-year highs amid signs of material progress in talks between Russia and Ukraine to end a three-week-old invasion that Moscow says is a "special military operation" to demilitarize its neighbor. read more
Meawhile, investor concerns about a sharp slowdown for China, which is battling a spreading COVID-19 outbreak with ultra-restrictive measures, were assuaged on Wednesday after Vice Premier Liu He signalled more stimulus to support markets.
Japan's Nikkei (.N225) soared 3.0% and touched a two-week high in Thursday's session, while South Korea's Kospi (.KS11) jumped 1.6% and Australia's benchmark (.AXJO) added 1.4%.
Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) gained 2.1%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng surged 5.2%.
An MSCI index of regional shares (.MIAP00000PUS) rallied 2.5%.
U.S. stock futures pointed to a 0.3% decline at the restart, but following a 2.2% surge for the S&P 500 (.SPX) overnight.
Stocks stayed strong despite the Fed's more hawkish tilt because Chair Jerome Powell "emphasised that the economy was strong enough to withstand hikes, saying he wasn't concerned by the possibility of a recession," National Australia Bank economist Taylor Nugent wrote in a client note.
"Glimmers of progress" in ongoing Russia-Ukraine peace talks had already lifted market sentiment, along with comments from Chinese officials that the response to the current COVID surge will be coordinated with efforts to support economic growth and capital markets, Nugent said.
More
https://www.reuters.com/business/global-markets-wrapup-1-2022-03-17/
European markets head for flat open as investors react to Fed hike
LONDON — European stocks are expected to open around the flatline on Thursday as investors react to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate hike in years.
The U.K.’s FTSE index is seen opening 6 points lower at 7,286, Germany’s DAX 1 point lower at 14,449 and France’s CAC 40 down 3 points at 6,594, according to data from IG.
Global markets are muted in the wake of the Federal Reserve hiking its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2018 and signaling six more hikes this year.
U.S. stock futures were little changed overnight as investors also digested the latest projections from the Fed which significantly raised its projections for inflation in 2022.
The war in Ukraine is also dominating headlines. Reports of progress on ceasefire negotiations helped boost stocks on Wednesday and after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an emotive address to the U.S. Congress. President Joe Biden also approved additional weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
Earnings come from Audi, Veolia, Ocado and Deliveroo on Thursday and the Bank of England announces its latest monetary policy decision.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/17/european-markets-investors-react-to-fed-hike.html
In oil news, it looks like a highly volatile market ahead for crude oil prices, according to the International Energy Agency. The bulls and bears will likely read into this report what supports their books.
Three million barrels of Russian oil, products could be shut in next month: IEA
March 16, 2022 10:20 AM GMT
LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - Three million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian oil and products may not find their way to market beginning in April in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday, as sanctions bite and buyers hold off.
Rising commodity prices and sanctions on Russia "are expected to appreciably depress global economic growth" and impact inflation, said the Paris-based IEA, offering a bleak picture of undersupply and uncertainty for the oil market.
It was the first monthly report on oil from the IEA, which represents 31 mostly industrialised nations but not Russia, since Russia's invasion of its neighbour briefly sent Brent crude to nearly $140 a barrel.
"We see a reduction in total (Russian) exports of 2.5 million bpd, of which crude accounts for 1.5 million bpd and products 1 million bpd," the IEA said in its monthly oil report.
Additionally, it projected lower Russian domestic demand for oil products.
"These losses could deepen should bans or public censure accelerate," the Paris-based IEA said.
Russia exports 7 million to 8 million barrels of crude and products daily.
The IEA lowered its forecast for world oil demand for the second to fourth quarters of 2022 by 1.3 million bpd. For the full year it cut its growth forecast by 950,000 bpd to 2.1 million bpd for an average of 99.7 million bpd.
That would mean a third year of demand below pre-pandemic levels which the agency had previously seen recovering in 2022.
The Ukraine crisis has exacerbated stretched output capacity and with top OPEC+ producers Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates not fully opening their taps, the IEA does not expect output rises from the United States, Canada and others to erase global undersupply.
The world is set for a supply deficit of 700,000 bpd in the second quarter, the IEA said.
Storage levels in OECD countries in January stood at their lowest levels since April 2014, it said.
Oil rises after IEA supply shortfall warning
March 17, 2022 4:48 AM GMT
March 17 - Oil prices climbed on Thursday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said markets could lose three million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude and refined products from April.
The supply loss would be far greater than an expected one million bpd per day drop in demand triggered by higher fuel prices, the IEA said in a report on Wednesday. read more
Benchmark Brent crude futures gained $1.8, or 1.9%, to $99.86 a barrel by 0408 GMT, after falling for three consecutive trading sessions.
More
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-futures-open-higher-iea-supply-warning-2022-03-17/
Finally, more on that war that could have and should have been avoided. Not to worry, Biden, Blinken, Trudeau and Johnson are on the case. What could possibly go wrong?
As Russia Digs In, What's the Risk of Nuclear War? 'It's Not Zero.'
Wed, March 16, 2022, 6:08 PM
A major war raging on Russia’s and NATO’s borders. Increasingly bold Western military support. Russian threats of direct retaliation. A mood of siege and desperation in the Kremlin. Growing uncertainty around each side’s redlines.
As Russia and NATO escalate their standoff over Ukraine, nuclear strategists and former U.S. officials warn that there is a remote but growing risk of an unintended slide into direct conflict — even, in some scenarios, a nuclear exchange.
“The prospect of nuclear war,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, warned this week, “is now back within the realm of possibility.”
Leaders on both sides emphasize that they consider such a war unthinkable, even as they make preparations and issue declarations for how they might carry it out. But the fear, experts stress, is not a deliberate escalation to war, but a misunderstanding or a provocation gone too far that, as each side scrambles to respond, spirals out of control.
The war in Ukraine heightens these risks to a level not seen since the Cuban missile crisis and in some ways is potentially more dangerous than that, some experts say.
NATO forces, intended as defensive, are massing near Russian borders that, with much of Russia’s military bogged down in Ukraine, are unusually vulnerable. Increasingly paranoid Kremlin leaders, faced with economic devastation and domestic unrest, may believe that a Western plot to remove them is already underway.
Russia has said that it considers the weapons and other increased military aid that Western governments are sending to Ukraine tantamount to war and has implied that it might strike NATO convoys. Over the weekend, Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian base mere miles from Polish territory.
“Those are the things that make me really concerned about escalation here,” said Ulrich Kühn, a nuclear strategist at the University of Hamburg in Germany.
“The chance for nuclear weapons employment is extremely low. But it’s not zero. It’s real, and it might even increase,” he said. “Those things could happen.”
The Kremlin has turned to nuclear saber-rattling that may not be entirely empty of threat. Russian war planners, obsessed with fears of NATO invasion, have implied in recent policy documents and war games that they may believe that Russia could turn back such a force through a single nuclear strike — a gambit that Soviet-era leaders rejected as unthinkable.
The outcome of such a strike would be impossible to predict. A recent Princeton University simulation, projecting out each side’s war plans and other indicators, estimated that it would be likely to trigger a tit-for-tat exchange that, in escalating to strategic weapons like intercontinental missiles, could kill 34 million people within a few hours.
Alexander Vershbow, NATO’s deputy secretary-general from 2012 to 2016, said that Western leaders had concluded that Russian plans to use nuclear weapons in a major crisis were sincere, raising the risk from any accident or misstep that the Kremlin mistook for war.
With Russian forces struggling in a Ukraine conflict that Moscow’s leaders have portrayed as existential, Vershbow added, “that risk has definitely grown in the last 2 1/2 weeks.”
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-digs-whats-risk-nuclear-180842637.html
“Markets are never wrong – opinions often are.”
Jesse Livermore.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
As costs spike in Japan, even businesses tailored to deflation lift prices
March 17, 2022 12:55 AM GMT
TOKYO, March 17 (Reuters) - As war in Ukraine drives up already high input costs, even firms with business models fine-tuned to Japan's deflationary economy are toying with higher prices, testing acceptance by consumers hardened by repeated affirmations of an elusive inflation goal.
High street price rises have broadened as wholesale inflation accelerates at record rates, with increases in the prices of commodities such as oil, for instance, reaching shop shelves in the form of more expensive plastic packaging.
In Japan, the knock-on effect has pushed companies used to nearly two decades of deflation to pass on costs more directly than ever before. On top of changing ingredients or reducing portion sizes, firms have given unusual price boosts to goods such as cooking oil, snacks and popular instant noodle brands.
Such is the inflationary pressure that some firms are moving away business models that assume persistent deflation, such as sticking to particular price points or favouring low-margin domestic fare over higher-quality imports.
"Companies that can add value to their products and services are able to raise prices more sustainably," said analyst Shota Sugihara at market researcher Teikoku Databank.
"It makes sense for companies to shift away from deflationary price-setting behaviour to boost profit and wages."
More
Analysis: Strong Asian rice demand for animal feed sparks food supply worries
March 16, 2022 5:47 AM GMT
SINGAPORE, March 16 (Reuters) - A surge in wheat and corn prices is boosting demand for low-grade rice in animal rations across Asia, pushing up prices of the world's most important staple at a time when global food inflation is already hovering near record highs.
Global crop importers are scrambling for supplies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine severed grain shipments from the two countries, which together account for around 25% of world wheat and 16% of world corn exports. read more
Chicago wheat futures hit a record high last week while corn climbed to its highest in a decade after war-torn Ukraine shut its ports and Western sanctions hit Russian exports.
The price spikes in wheat and corn in turn pushed buyers to seek alternatives, including in China, by far the world's largest feed market. Importers there are in talks to buy extra volumes of broken rice - inferior rice where the grains have been fractured during the milling process - to fatten hogs and other animals, traders and analysts said.
Rice typically trades at a steep premium to wheat, but wheat's blistering 50% price surge from a month ago has sharply cut the difference between the two grains, and even made wheat more expensive than some lower grades of rice.
Benchmark food-grade rice from Thai exporters made its biggest weekly gain since October 2020 last week on the back of firmer food and feed demand, climbing 5% to around $421.50 a tonne.
That's the highest since last June, and sources say prices may keep rising if the disruption to Black Sea flows persists. Export prices from Vietnam and India have also climbed.
----CORN CUT
China had booked up to two million tonnes of Ukrainian corn imports for this year, but most of those shipments are now in jeopardy given the disruption to Ukraine's logistics chains.
To replace those lost volumes, China is expected to import around three million tonnes of broken rice, up from about two million tonnes annually in the past two years, said a Beijing-based rice trader.
More
EXCLUSIVE India boosts fertiliser imports from Canada, Israel as Russian supply disrupted
March 16, 2022 4:01 AM GMT
NEW DELHI, March 14 (Reuters) - India is boosting fertiliser imports from nations including Canada and Israel to ensure sufficient supplies for the coming summer sowing season after the disruption of shipments caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
India is a leading importer of fertilisers for its huge agriculture sector, which employs about 60% of the country's workforce and accounts for 15% of the $2.7 trillion economy.
"This time we have made advance preparations for kharif (summer sown crop) season. We need about 30 million tonnes of fertilisers and arrangements are in place," fertiliser minister Mansukh Mandaviya told Reuters, without elaborating.
He said India will have a comfortable opening stock, about a quarter of the overall amount of fertilisers needed for the summer season.
Indian farmers usually start planting crops including rice, cotton and soybean with the arrival of monsoon rains in June.
To fertilise the crops, India depends on imports for its entire annual consumption of 4 million to 5 million tonnes of potash and ships in a third of this from Belarus and Russia.
Landlocked Belarus uses ports in Russia and Lithuania for its exports.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, shipping routes have been closed off and western sanctions on Moscow, which has described its actions in Ukraine as a "special military operation", have made it difficult to trade with Russian and Belarusian companies. read more
More
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
WHO says global rise in COVID cases is 'tip of the iceberg'
March 17, 2022 3:34 AM GMT
(Reuters) - Figures showing a global rise in COVID-19 cases could herald a much bigger problem as some countries also report a drop in testing rates, the WHO said on Tuesday, warning nations to remain vigilant against the virus.
After more than a month of decline, COVID cases started to increase around the world last week, the WHO said, with lockdowns in Asia and China's Jilin province battling to contain an outbreak.
A combination of factors was causing the increases, including the highly transmissible Omicron variant and its BA.2 sublineage, and the lifting of public health and social measures, the WHO said.
"These increase are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries, which means the cases we're seeing are just the tip of the iceberg," WHO's head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
Low vaccination rates in some countries, driven partly by a "huge amount of misinformation" also explained the rise, WHO officials said.
New infections jumped by 8% globally compared to the previous week, with 11 million new cases and just over 43,000 new deaths reported from March 7-13. It is the first rise since the end of January.
The biggest jump was in the WHO's Western Pacific region, which includes South Korea and China, where cases rose by 25% and deaths by 27%.
Africa also saw a 12% rise in new cases and 14% rise in deaths, and Europe a 2% rise in cases but no jump in deaths. Other regions reported declining cases, including the eastern Mediterranean region, although this area saw a 38% rise in deaths linked to a previous spike in infections.
More
Japan set to remove all COVID restrictions as new infections ebb
Wed, March 16, 2022, 2:55 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan is set to announce on Wednesday the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions imposed on Tokyo and 17 other prefectures as a wave of infections caused by the Omicron variant continues to ebb.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. (1000 GMT), when he is expected to announce the lifting of curbs on March 21, along with a further easing of border measures, local media reported.
Tokyo logged 7,836 coronavirus cases on Tuesday, down 12% from a week earlier. An Omicron wave led to record infection rates in the capital and throughout Japan in February, the nation's deadliest https://www.datawrapper.de/_/yydPj wave of the pandemic so far.
After a slow start, the government's COVID-19 vaccine booster programme has accelerated, with about 71% of Japan's vulnerable elderly population having received a third dose.
The so-called quasi-state of emergency curbs currently applied in 18 of Japan's 47 prefectures centre on limiting hours for eateries and other businesses.
Officials in the western prefecture of Osaka had considered requesting an extension of the restrictions due to high hospitalisations, but ultimately decided to let them expire, the Kyodo news service reported.
The measures have had an impact on the economy, particularly the service sector.
"A certain amount of services demand will be unleashed if the curbs are lifted as households have quite a lot of savings now and it coincides with the spring holidays," said Daiju Aoki, chief Japan economist at UBS SuMi TRUST Wealth Management.
Health experts have said the current Omicron wave is not over, and new variants could emerge at any time. But the restrictions, used repeatedly during the two-year pandemic, have lost their effectiveness on public behaviour, said Tohoku University professor Hitoshi Oshitani.
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/japan-set-remove-most-covid-025521405.html
Germany reports another record COVID-19 incidence
Wed, March 16, 2022, 7:40 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany reported another record high seven-day incidence of the coronavirus on Wednesday even as the country prepares to ease restrictions.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) registered 262,593 new infections, a 22% jump compared to a week ago, bringing the total number of infections to nearly 17.7 million.
Infections have been rising again since the start of March after rules preventing unvaccinated people from accessing many indoor public spaces started to be eased.
The seven-day incidence rose to a new high of 1,607 infections per 100,000 people on Wednesday, up from 1,585 the day before.
Another 269 people died, bringing the total death toll to 126,142 people.
On Friday, parliament is set to adopt a slimmed-down law that will significantly reduce restrictions around Germany. The existing law expires on Saturday.
The government argues that even though cases are rising, there is no longer a major risk of overloading the health system due to vaccinations and the fact that the dominant Omicron variant often has milder symptoms.
Limited protective measures will still be possible in hotspots with high numbers of infections.
Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada.
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.
Record-breaking hydrogen electrolyzer claims 95% efficiency
Loz Blain March 16, 2022
A kilogram of hydrogen holds 39.4 kWh of energy, but typically costs around 52.5 kWh of energy to create via current commercial electrolyzers. Australian company Hysata says its new capillary-fed electrolyzer cell slashes that energy cost to 41.5 kWh, smashing efficiency records while also being cheaper to install and run. The company promises green hydrogen at around US$1.50 per kilogram within just a few years.
Efficiency is one of the big knocks against hydrogen as we move toward a clean energy future. It can store far more energy per weight or volume than batteries, and it supports fast refueling, making it useful in applications where batteries just don't have the energy density to compete. But where batteries are a highly efficient way to store and release energy, hydrogen seems to throw energy away at every step: electrolysis, storage and transport, conversion back into electricity through a fuel cell ... Heck, it even slowly leaks out of a metal tank.
If Hysata's new electrolyzer technology does what it says on the tin, the efficiency of the electrolysis stage will take a great leap forward, making much better use of precious clean energy. And by generating more hydrogen from a given energy supply, while reducing CAPEX and OPEX expenditures for operators, this equipment could indeed drive the price of green H2 down, perhaps to a point where it becomes competitive with dirty hydrogen, or even fossil fuels.
So how does it work? According to Hysata, it's all about bubbles. Bubbles in the electrolyte fluid are non-conducting, and they can stick to electrodes and mask them from contact with the fluids they need to touch to do their work. This is clearly a problem, since electrolyzers convert water into H2 and O2 gases.
The way Hysata tells it, early electrolyzers had both electrodes submerged in electrolyte, such that bubbles would form all around them. In the 70s, zero-gap electrolysis brought the anode and cathode directly in contact with the separator membrane, boosting efficiency by only allowing bubbles to form on one side of each electrode. More recently, polymer electrolyte membrane technology allowed the cathode side to run without electrolyte, boosting efficiency again by producing hydrogen gas without bubbling it through a liquid.
Hysata's capillary-fed electrolyzer cell takes things to the next, and possibly ultimate, level. A reservoir at the bottom of the cell keeps the electrolyte out of contact with both the anode and the cathode until it's drawn up through a porous, hydrophilic, inter-electrode separator using capillary action. The electrolyte thus has direct contact with the electrodes, but only on one side, and both the hydrogen and oxygen gases are produced directly, without any bubbling to get in the way.
Resistance is further reduced thanks to the fact that there's no water being drawn to the side of the electrode that's releasing gas, so the two don't get in each other's way, and as the water is electrolyzed out of the separator, capillary action draws more up from the reservoir to replace it.
In a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature Communications, the Hysata team claims its capillary-action electrolyzer cell has been demonstrated at a record-breaking efficiency of 98 percent, vastly better than a "state-of-the-art [presumably asymmetric polymer electrolyte membrane] commercial water electrolyzer" which displayed a cell efficiency of 83 percent. Gas crossover is extremely low – this is critical, since at the right temperatures and concentrations, a hydrogen-air mix can be explosive.
The company says this technology cuts down on extraneous expenses outside the cell as well. There's no need for liquid circulation, gas-liquid separator tanks, piping, pumps and fittings. This gear can be air-cooled, or radiatively self-cooled, cutting down further capital and operating costs, and should the gravity-limited maximum height of the capillary action prove to be a limiting factor, well, Hysata says you can just pop the reservoir tank on top and have the electrolyte run down the separator instead.
More
“The nature of the game as it is played is such that the public should realize that the truth cannot be told by the few who know.”
Jesse Livermore.
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