Baltic Dry Index. 2939 +108 Brent Crude 104.30
Spot Gold 1839
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 11/05/22 World 518,480,076
Deaths 6,280,287
If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
John Maynard Keynes.
After a modest bounce in the stock casinos, Asian casinos are mixed.
Later today the latest US official inflation figure for April. Most “experts” who thought US inflation was “transitory,” now expect April’s figure to fall back from the March figure of 8.5 percent. Some experts are even predicting March was the top.
I have my doubts. But where inflation tops out this year will likely depend on how the war in Ukraine ends and equally importantly, how the northern hemisphere grain crops turn out.
Both unpredictable events.
Chinese stocks jump; data shows China’s inflation in April heated up above expectations
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Wednesday morning trade as investors watched for market reaction to the release of higher-than-expected Chinese inflation data for April.
Mainland Chinese stocks led gains regionally, with the Shanghai Composite rising 1.63% while the Shenzhen Component climbed 2.888%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced 1.72%.
China’s producer price index for April rose 8% year-on-year, data released by the country’s Bureau of Statistics showed Wednesday, higher than expectations for a 7.7% increase by analysts in a Reuters poll.
Consumer inflation also rose more than expected. The consumer price index climbed 2.1% year-on-year, above expectations for a 1.8% gain by analysts in a Reuters poll.
The data releases come as the mainland continues to battle its worst Covid outbreak since the initial phase of the pandemic in early 2020.
“China’s going to be struggling with a lot of economic issues including the supply chain and inflation factors but I’m a little less worried about supply chain than I perhaps was six months ago,” Andrew Collier, managing director at Orient Capital Research, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Wednesday.
“Even in Shanghai, 70% of [the] manufacturing capacity is online. The recent American Chamber of Commerce survey said only 15% of their companies are not producing although most of them, two-thirds have slowdowns,” Collier said.
Tech stocks in Asia jumped in Wednesday trade, bouncing back from recent losses.
In Hong Kong, shares of Tencent gained 4.4% and Meituan surged 8.17%. NetEase also advanced 5.48%. The Hang Seng Tech index rose 4.64% higher.
Meanwhile, shares of Nintendo in Japan gained more than 3% after the firm on Tuesday announced an unexpected 10-for-1 stock split in a bid to make its stock more appealing to retail investors.
Sony Group also saw its stock jumping 2.76%, with the company recently announcing a 200 billion Japanese yen (around $1.53 billion) share buyback as well as a forecasted 56% year-on-year rise in PlayStation 5 sales in the current financial year.
Elsewhere in the broader markets, the Nikkei 225 in Japan gained 0.32% while the Topix index shed 0.27%.
South Korea’s Kospi dipped fractionally while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia sat 0.1% lower.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan traded 0.9% higher.
The U.S. April consumer price index is also set to be released Wednesday stateside, and is expected to come in slightly below March’s 8.5% which could signal that inflation has reached a peak.
“The US CPI for April is today’s, indeed the week’s, highlight,” Joseph Capurso, head of international economics at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, wrote in a note.
“The consensus of US economists expect headline inflation to decelerate significantly from 1.2%/mth in March to only 0.2%/mth in April because retail petrol prices have stabilised. But core inflation is expected to step up slightly from 0.3%/mth in March to 0.4%/mth in April,” Capurso said.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/11/asia-markets-china-us-inflation-data-currencies-oil.html
Stock futures are higher ahead of key inflation reading
Stock futures were higher in early morning trading Wednesday ahead of a key inflation reading.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 79 points, or 0.25%. S&P 500 futures were 0.34% higher and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.71%.
The moves come after the Dow fell for a fourth consecutive day Tuesday in a volatile trading session alternating between gains and losses. The S&P 500 ticked up 0.25% and the Nasdaq Composite gained about 1%.
----Stock futures were higher in early morning trading Wednesday ahead of a key inflation reading.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 79 points, or 0.25%. S&P 500 futures were 0.34% higher and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.71%.
The moves come after the Dow fell for a fourth consecutive day Tuesday in a volatile trading session alternating between gains and losses. The S&P 500 ticked up 0.25% and the Nasdaq Composite gained about 1%.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/10/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
Up next, the weird, I suspect Ponzi scheme world of cryptocurrency. With UST weirdest of all. But what purpose dose any cryptocurrency fulfill?
Bitcoin investors are panicking as a controversial crypto experiment unravels
Investors in bitcoin are in panic mode as the controversial terraUSD stablecoin slips further from its intended $1 peg.
TerraUSD, or UST, sank below 70 cents for the first time late Monday, as holders continued to flee the token in what some have described as a “bank run.” The token fell as low as 62 cents before regaining ground to trade at 90 cents Tuesday, according to Coinbase data.
Created by Singapore-based Terraform Labs in 2018, UST is what’s known as an “algorithmic” stablecoin. Part of the Terra blockchain project, it’s meant to track the value of the dollar, like fellow stablecoins tether and USDC.
However, unlike with those cryptocurrencies, Terra doesn’t have cash and other assets held in a reserve to back its token. Instead, it uses a complex mix of code — alongside a sister token called luna — to stabilize prices.
UST is important for bitcoin investors as Luna Foundation Guard, an organization supporting the Terra project, is sitting on billions of dollars in bitcoin that could potentially be dumped onto the market at any point.
″Every professional investor in crypto has one eye on UST today, watching to see if it can maintain its peg to the dollar,” said Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management. “There’s clearly significant risk in the market.”
In simple terms, the Terra protocol destroys and creates new units of UST and luna to adjust supply. When the price of UST falls below the dollar, it can be taken out of circulation and exchanged for luna, making UST’s supply more scarce and boosting its price — at least, that’s how it should work in theory.
To further complicate things, Terra’s creator, Do Kwon, bought $3.5 billion worth of bitcoin to provide a backstop for UST in times of crisis. The theory was that UST could eventually be redeemed for bitcoin instead of luna, but this is untested and hasn’t yet been put into practice.
Deposits into Anchor, Terra’s flagship lending protocol, have declined from 10.3 billion tokens on May 6 to just 6.4 billion Tuesday, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Nansen. Anchor offered users an almost 20% annual percentage yield on their UST holdings, a rate many analysts believe was unsustainable.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/10/bitcoin-btc-investors-panic-as-terrausd-ust-sinks-below-1-peg.html
Next, bad news, bad news and more bad news. And don’t mention the war, or the poor start to the US wheat and corn crops. Nor the tech pile up, the Peloton crash or the Twitter Top. Tiger Global anyone?
More U.S. companies in China cut forecasts, scale back investments as Covid persists
Published Tue, May 10 2022 1:08 AM EDT
BEIJING — More U.S. businesses in China are cutting revenue expectations and plans for future investment as Covid controls drag on, a new survey found.
Between late March and late April, the share of respondents reporting an impact from Covid restrictions rose by 4 percentage points to 58%, according to an American Chamber of Commerce in China survey released Monday.
While that’s not a large increase, 4 or 5 percentage points every month could be “very significant” if Covid controls persist for another five months, Michael Hart, AmCham president, told CNBC in a phone interview.
Asked what impact Covid restrictions will have if they last for the next year, more than 70% of respondents said their revenue or profit would be cut.
The latest study, conducted from April 29 to May 5, covered 121 companies with operations in China. That time period included the latest Covid restrictions in the capital city of Beijing.
The prior survey was conducted with AmCham Shanghai in late March, just as Shanghai’s original plan for a two-part lockdown were starting. Those measures have lasted for far longer than the initial week.
In the last few days, Beijing city postponed the reopening of schools until further notice, and ordered all non-essential businesses in a major business district to close temporarily or have their staff work from home.
“There are very few aspects of the economy which seem to be functioning,” a survey respondent said in the report, which withheld the respondent’s name and location. ”[While] COVID-19 restrictions can be managed, what [will be increasingly difficult to] manage is lack in overall growth of the economy and what appear to be growing economic headwinds.”
Companies cut China investment plans
The prolonged Covid controls — as mainland China tackles its worst virus outbreak since early 2020 — have further discouraged U.S. businesses from investing in the country, the AmCham survey found.
The percentage of respondents reporting decreased investments as a result of the latest outbreak and restrictions rose to 26% versus 17% a month earlier.
More
Tiger Global hit by $17 bln losses in tech rout- FT
May 10, 2022 8:54 AM GMT+1
May 10 (Reuters) - New York-based Tiger Global has been hit by losses of around $17 billion during this year's technology stock selloff, marking one of the biggest dollar declines for a hedge fund in history, the Financial times reported on Tuesday.
The firm, one of the world's biggest hedge funds, has erased around two-thirds of its gains in four months, the newspaper said, citing calculations by LCH Investments.
Market-leading technology and growth stocks have suffered this year as investors worry that rising interest rates will dent their future earnings.
Tiger Global did not respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/tiger-global-hit-by-17-bln-losses-tech-rout-ft-2022-05-10/
Up next, the rump-EU flip-flops unusually fast even for the unreformed/unreformable(?) EU.
EU scraps plans to ban Russian crude oil imports amid backlash
Tuesday 10 May 2022 7:30 am
The European Union has been forced to abandon plans to bar the shipping of Russian crude oil amid pushback from member states.
Talks between member states broke up without a deal on Sunday and commission president Ursula von der Leyen was unable to bring Hungary on board with the proposals despite visiting Budapest for discussions yesterday.
The policy has now been dropped from the EU’s sixth package of sanctions measures aimed at weakening the Russian economy amid the invasion of Ukraine.
The EU commission first proposed the controversial policy last week. In a speech Von der Leyen acknowledged the difficulty that the import ban would entail for certain EU member states.
“Let us be clear: it will not be easy,” she said. “Some Member States are strongly dependent on Russian oil. But we simply have to work on it.”
It is understood that lobbying from Malta and Greece, as well as opposition from Hungary scuppered the policy. Member states argued that if equivalent measures to ban Russian crude oil imports were not implemented by G7 members such as the US and UK they would likely be ineffective, according to the FT.
It is understood that a ban on European companies providing services to Russian clients, such as insurance, which are necessary to facilitate imports will remain in the sixth package of sanctions
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Today, for a change, we open with slightly better food chain inflation news if it actually happens.
But in US wheat news, only worrying heat weather news and we’re not even into summer yet.
US corn [maize] is off to a poor start too.
EXCLUSIVE Malaysia may cut palm oil export tax by half amid global supply crisis
May 10, 2022 10:07 AM GMT+
KUALA LUMPUR, May 10 (Reuters) - Malaysia's commodities ministry has proposed cutting an export tax on palm oil by as much as half to help fill a global edible oil shortage and grow the market share of the world's second-largest palm oil producer.
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin said in an interview on Tuesday her ministry has proposed the cut to the finance ministry, which has set up a committee to look into the details, she said.
Malaysia could cut the tax, likely a temporary measure, to 4%-6% from the current 8%, Zuraida said.
A decision could be made as early as June, she said.
Malaysia is looking to boost its share of the edible oil market after Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted sunflower oil shipments and Indonesia's move to ban palm oil exports further tightened global supplies.
"During these times of crisis, probably we can relax a little bit so that more palm oil can be exported," Zuraida said.
The proposal also asked the Finance Ministry to expedite the tax cut for state-linked palm oil producer FGV Holdings (FGVH.KL) - Malaysia's largest - and companies with overseas oleochemical production, she said.
Malaysia will as well slow the implementation of its B30 biodiesel mandate, which requires a portion of the nation's biodiesel to be mixed with 30% of palm oil, to prioritise supply to global and domestic food industries, she said.
"We have to prioritise to give food to the world first," Zuraida said.
Palm oil - used in everything from cakes to detergent - accounts for nearly 60% of global vegetable oil shipments and the absence of top producer Indonesia has roiled the market.
The benchmark palm oil contract fell as much as 2.3% in the morning session on Tuesday, paring some losses after the Reuters report on a possible cut to the export tax.
Zuraida told Reuters importing countries have asked Malaysia to reduce its export taxes.
"They feel it is too high because of the high costs across the supply chain, because of the price of edible oil," she said.
Crude palm oil futures have surged about 35% so far this year to all-time highs, further worsening global food inflation.
More
22% OF U.S. CORN,
12% OF SOYBEANS PLANTED
May 10, 2022
BrownfieldAgNews
reports:
U.S. corn and soybean planting lagged again last
week. That was due to more wet, cooler than normal weather in some key growing
areas, but forecasts for most of the Midwest this week have warmer, drier
conditions, which should help planting pick up steam.
The USDA says 22% of U.S. corn had been planted as
of Sunday, compared to the five-year average of 50%, with 5% emerged, compared
to 15% on average.
12% of soybeans are planted, compared to 24%
normally in early May, with 3% emerged, compared to 4% on average.
29% of U.S. winter wheat is in good to excellent
shape, 2% above a week ago, with 33% of the crop headed, compared to the usual
rate of 40%.
27% of spring wheat has been planted due to wet,
cold conditions in the northern U.S. Plains, compared to 47% typically this
time of year, with 9% emerged, compared to the five-year average of 15%.
24% of this year's cotton crop is planted, matching
the normal pace.
66% of rice is planted, compared to 67% usually this
time of year, with 37% emerged, compared to 49% on average.
The USDA's next round of production estimates is out
Thursday at Noon Eastern/11 Central.
https://www.agrimarketing.com/s/140827
Record-challenging heat to expand across 2,000-mile stretch from Texas to Maine
By AccuWeather senior meteorologist
Published May 9, 2022 6:36 PM BST | Updated May 10, 2022 10:54 AM BST
April and the first few days of May brought a seemingly endless barrage of storms and waves of cold air that had many residents of the central and eastern United States wondering when Old Man Winter would finally depart. According to AccuWeather meteorologists, a change in the weather pattern has finally arrived, but it will feel more like summer than spring.
Scorching heat that has already been in place for several days in Texas is coming to the Midwest and northern tier of the northeastern United States and part of southeastern Canada this week. Highs near 100 in the South Central states, the 90s in parts of the Midwest and the 80s in portions of the Northeast will challenge record highs set as far back as the late 1800s in some cases.
Temperatures soared well past 100 degrees in central and northwestern Texas this past weekend, bringing a dose of triple-digit heat that is more typical of late July for those parts of the Lone Star State.
Del Rio, San Angelo and Abilene, Texas, all set record highs and peaked at 107 on Saturday. Amarillo, Texas, hit 101 on Saturday, good enough for the city to record its earliest 100 F or greater temperature of the season and to beat the old record by about a week, according to the National Weather Service. The prior record for the earliest date of 100 degrees or higher was May 15, 1996, when the temperature hit 101.
Blazing sunshine pushed temperatures even higher on Sunday with Abeline hitting 108 F. Frederick, Oklahoma, also hit 108. Meanwhile, just south of the Rio Grande River, Bibi, Mexico, hit 111 F.
On Monday, several daily high records fell, as Abilene continued in the 100s by reaching 103 F, breaking a record that has stood since May 9, 1886. In Borger, Texas, Monday's 99 F day broke the daily high of 97 F set in both 1963 and 1996, while Lubbock, Texas' 98 F Monday broke a record high of 97 F set in 1996 and 2011. The records weren't just reserved for the Lone Star State, as Naples, Florida set a daily record with a 94 F Monday.
A massive northward buckle in the jet stream has developed in response to stalled storm off the East Coast," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.
"As the jet stream buckle builds, heat will expand northeastward through the Mississippi Valley to parts of the Great Lakes region by midweek and then on to the St. Lawrence Valley in the Northeast later in the week," Anderson explained.
Record high temperatures will be challenged across a 2,000-mile-long stretch of the U.S. this week. The heat will sizzle in major Texas cities such as Dallas and Houston, while the midwestern hubs of Chicago and St. Louis will also roast. The unseasonable warmth will make its way to New England and as far north as Caribou, Maine, as the week progresses.
Even the major Canadian metropolitan areas of Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City will experience record-challenging heat later this week.
More
Column: Slow U.S. corn planting threatens already-light acreage plans
May 10, 2022 9:18 AM GMT+1
NAPERVILLE, Ill., May 9 (Reuters) - The first week of May should be the busiest of the spring for U.S. corn planting, but cooler, wet weather curbed farmers’ progress yet again last week. As of Sunday, the planting pace was the second-slowest for the date since 1993.
Warm and dry weather this week should facilitate much more corn planting over the next few days, but there may still be negative implications for acreage in a year where farmers’ intentions were much thinner than market predictions.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statistics service on Monday said that 22% of U.S. corn had been planted as of Sunday, below the trade expectation for 25% and well off the date’s average of 50%.
That is the slowest May 8 pace since 2013 and it represents an 8 percentage-point increase from the previous Sunday, tied with 2019 and 1993 for the lightest-ever gains for the week. The long-term average gain for the week ended May 8, usually the spring's most active planting week, is 21 points.
More
Below, why a “green energy” economy may not be possible, 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
"An Environmental Disaster": An EV Battery Metals Crunch Is On The Horizon As The Industry Races To Recycle
by Tyler Durden Monday, Aug 02, 2021 - 08:40 PM
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
FDA: Americans Should Treat COVID-19 Like the Flu
By May 8, 2022 Updated: May 9, 2022
Several top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, including Commissioner Robert Califf, admitted that Americans will now have to accept COVID-19 as another respiratory virus, comparing it to influenza.
Califf, Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and top vaccine official Dr. Peter Marks wrote for the Journal of the American Medical Association that COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future while suggesting that it will require yearly vaccines targeting the most threatening variations of the virus.
“Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks,” the officials said, referring to another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. “Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal.”
The virus “will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza. And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates in consultation with the [FDA],” they continued.
It’s a departure from the rhetoric that was expressed by public health officials in 2020 and 2021. In late October 2020, for example, current White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said that President Donald Trump’s comparisons to the flu were false, telling NBC at the time “it is not correct to say it’s the same as flu.”
About a year later, Fauci told CBS News that Americans will “likely” have to deal with COVID-19 in a similar manner as influenza. “That’s entirely conceivable and likely, as a matter of fact, we are not going to be in a situation of this degree of intensity indefinitely,” he said when asked about the Omicron variant.
Data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that while cases have trended slightly upward in the United States, the numbers are a fraction of the cases that were reported in mid-January when the seven-day average stood at around 800,000 per day. As of May 6, the seven-day average was about 68,000 per day.
More
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-americans-should-treat-covid-19-like-the-flu_4453370.html
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
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, among other things, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
Faulty battery cells, modules likely caused e-scooter fire in India, initial probe finds
May 8, 2022 7:57 AM GMT+1
NEW DELHI, May 6 (Reuters) - Faulty battery cells and modules have been identified as the leading cause of electric scooters catching fire in India in recent weeks, according to the findings of an initial federal investigation, two government sources told Reuters.
The probe looked into fire incidents involving three companies, including Ola Electric, which is backed by Japan's SoftBank Group (9984.T), and was the country's top-selling e-scooter maker in April.
"In Ola's case, the battery cells were found to be an issue as well as the battery management system," said one of the sources, who has direct knowledge of the report.
In March, India launched an investigation over safety concerns after a spate of e-scooter fires, including one where a man and his daughter died when their e-bike "went up in flames". read more
India wants e-scooters and e-bikes to make up 80% of total two-wheeler sales by 2030, from about 2% today. But concerns over safety jeopardise consumer confidence and could derail growth of a sector that is key to the country's carbon reduction goals. read more
"The government has taken samples of cells from the three companies to make further checks," the person said, adding that the final investigation report is expected in about two weeks.
Ola, which sources its cells from South Korea's LG Energy Solution (LGES) (373220.KS), says it is working with the government on the issue and has appointed an external expert agency, in addition to conducting its own probe.
"As per the preliminary assessment of these experts, there was no fault of the Ola battery management system at all and it was likely an isolated thermal incident," a company spokesperson said in a statement.
"The Indian government's report has not yet been released or shared with us. We cannot comment on the report as we have not yet identified the root cause of the Ola scooter incident in March," LGES in Seoul said in a statement to Reuters.
---- The government probe also looked into fire incidents involving scooters built by Indian startups Okinawa and PureEV. In Okinawa's case there was an issue with the cells and battery modules and for PureEV it was the battery casing, said the first source.
PureEV and Okinawa did not respond to an email seeking comment but have previously said they are investigating the fires and have issued a recall of some scooters. read more
The initial findings of the investigation have prompted the government to consider testing battery cells of e-scooters before they are allowed to launch, said the second source.
More
"Indeed the temporary breaks in the market which preceded the crash were a serious trial for those who had declined fantasy. Early in 1928, in June, in December, and in February and March of 1929 it seemed that the end had come. On various of these occasions the [New York] Times happily reported the return to reality. And then the market took flight again. Only a durable sense of doom could survive such discouragement. The time was coming when the optimists would reap a rich harvest of discredit. But it has long since been forgotten that for many months those who resisted reassurance were similarly, if less permanently discredited.”
J. K. Galbraith. The Great Crash: 1929.
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