Saturday, 10 September 2022

Special Update 10/9/22 A Week To Remember!

 Baltic Dry Index. 1213 +35   Brent Crude 94.84

Spot Gold 1717        U S 2 Year Yield 3.56 +0.08

Covid-19 cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,100

Covid-19 cases 09/08/22 World 613,134,045

Deaths 6,514,790

MOSCOW, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The Russian people had "great respect" for Queen Elizabeth II, her "wisdom and authority," the Kremlin said on Friday.

"Such qualities are in very short supply on the international stage at the moment," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a conference call.

It was a week to remember. 

Ukraine took back a small part of the Donbas.

GB got a new Prime Minister appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who would die a few days later.

Some Americans took to social media platforms to express extreme hatred of the late Queen Elizabeth II, in reprehensible terms.

The ECB raised its interest rate back into positive numbers, albeit hopelessly behind near double digit inflation.

Russia cut off Germany and most of Europe from natural gas as winter approaches.

The UK and Europe came up with money printing plans to subsidise the cost of electricity.

India, the world’s leading rice exporter all but ended rice exports.

The Democrats in America branded the Republicans as racist Nazis.

The US Treasury yield curve continued inverting and how.

It is the 21st anniversary of the horror of 9/11 (see this weekend’s music section.)

Not to worry though, the stock casinos loved it all and thought it a good reason to rally. Buy more!!!

What could possibly go wrong?

Dow closes more than 300 points higher, stocks snap 3-week Fed-induced slide

UPDATED FRI, SEP 9 2022 4:58 PM EDT

U.S. stocks rallied Friday as Wall Street caps off a strong weekly performance, recovering from a Federal Reserve-induced slump.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 377.19 points, or about 1.19% to 32,151.71. The S&P 500 jumped 1.53% to 4,067.36, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.11% to 12,112.31.

Shares of DocuSign surged more than 10% after the electronic agreements company reported an earnings beat. The company also issued a third-quarter revenue forecast that was above expectations.

All three major averages snapped a three-week losing streak. The Dow added 2.66% on the week, while the S&P 500 gained 3.65%. The Nasdaq Composite is 4.14% higher.

Stocks have been volatile recently as expectations of a 0.75 percentage point rate hike this month grew on Wall Street, after the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said again that he is “strongly committed” to bringing down inflation.

“The case for the ongoing bear market is that the Fed will continue to tighten monetary policy, withdraw liquidity from the market and cause a tailspin for equities,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth U.S. “But this week’s market recovery has shown there is continued resilience in the economy bolstered by favorable economic reports.”

Still, Donabedian added that he does not think stocks have reached the bottom of the bear market yet.

“Indeed, the journey to the next bull market will take time, and will be marked by a series of set-backs and recoveries,” he said.

All three major averages closed higher Friday, notching gains in the holiday-shortened week and snapping a three-week slump. The Dow rose 2.8% on the week, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gained 3.8% and 4.2%, respectively.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 377.19 points, or about 1.19% to 32,151.71. The S&P 500 jumped 1.53% to 4.067.36 and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.11% to 12,112.31.

Dow closes more than 300 points higher, stocks snap 3-week Fed-induced slide (cnbc.com)

European markets close higher after record ECB rate hike; Bank of England postpones meeting

UPDATED FRI, SEP 9 2022 11:33 AM EDT

European markets closed higher Friday, as investors reacted to a record rate hike by the European Central Bank and further comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 provisionally ended up 1.6%, with all sectors and major bourses in positive territory. Mining stocks were 3.2% higher to lead gains, while tech stocks were up 2.7%.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank announced a 75 basis point interest rate rise, taking its benchmark deposit rate to 0.75%. The bank also revised up its inflation expectations — to an average of 8.1% in 2022 — and said it expects to hike rates further as “inflation remains far too high and is likely to stay above target for an extended period.”

Meanwhile, the Fed’s Powell said Thursday that the U.S. central bank will raise rates to tackle inflation “until the job is done.”

“History cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy,” Powell said at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C. “I can assure you that my colleagues and I are strongly committed to this project and we will keep at it until the job is done.”

Markets in Asia-Pacific were higher as investors digested the slew of central bank news, and U.S. stock futures were also in positive territory.

Meanwhile, world leaders offered tributes to Queen Elizabeth II, after Britain’s longest-serving monarch died Thursday at age 96.

The Bank of England on Friday said it would postpone its September Monetary Policy Committee meeting by a week as the country enters a period of national mourning.

---- Sterling moved higher against the dollar Friday, regaining steam amid a tumultuous week during which the pound hit a 37-year low, Britain appointed a new prime minister and Queen Elizabeth II passed away.

The pound rose more than 1% to trade at $1.1646, its highest level this month, while the greenback slipped following comments from the U.S. Federal Reserve. It was last seen trading at $1.606.

Sterling’s moves against the euro were more muted, with the single currency just slightly lower at 86.77 pence.

more

European markets close higher after record ECB rate hike (cnbc.com)

In the US stock casinos, yet another red flag. The technical indicators are increasingly looking bearish.

Slumping U.S. stock market technical indicators flash warning sign

NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Indicators that investors use to gauge the health of the U.S. stock market have taken a turn for the worse, fueling worries that the benchmark index may revisit its mid-June bear market low.

The S&P 500 (.SPX) is down 7% since mid-August following a sharp summer rally, battered by expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise rates higher than previously anticipated in its fight to bring down consumer prices from their 40-year highs. read more

The retreat in stocks has given more reason for caution to those who track market phenomena such as breadth, momentum and trading patterns to inform their investment decisions. While many of these indicators were painting an optimistic picture just a few weeks ago, they tell a less bullish story now, raising worries that this year’s selloff in markets may not be over. read more

"I had to downgrade the market technically, given how severe the decline has been over the last three weeks," said John Kolovos, chief technical strategist at Macro Risk Advisors.

"The odds of a market bottom being struck back in June have diminished to that of just slightly better than a flip of a coin at this juncture."

Among the factors investors study is market breadth, which shows whether a significant amount of stocks are rising or falling in unison. Positive market breadth, when more stocks are advancing than declining, points to a high degree of confidence among stock bulls.

Recently, market breadth has started to send worrying signals. The percentage of stocks trading above their 50-day moving average in the Russell 3000 (.RUA) has fallen to about 30%, from around 86% in mid-August.

"We want to see this indicator stabilize where it is right around now," Kolovos said. "We really don't want to see it get much lower than 25%."

Meanwhile, the 15-day moving average of the percentage of S&P 500 stocks hitting fresh three-month lows - another measure of stock market breadth - has climbed to about 10% from just above zero in mid-August, according to data from Thrasher Analytics. It stood at around 60% during the market low in June.

More

Slumping U.S. stock market technical indicators flash warning sign | Reuters

Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.     

Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,  inflation now needs an entire section of its own.

"Without Energy, No Economy Can Run": German Companies Warn Of Disaster As Electricity, Gas Taps Are Turned Off

BY TYLER DURDEN  FRIDAY, SEP 09, 2022 - 07:00 AM

By John Cody of Remix News,

German companies are increasingly unable to access energy supplies on the market, and as energy dries up, the German economy will simply stop running, according to the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK).

“More and more companies are telling us that they no longer have a supply contract for electricity or gas at all. The tap is turned off in the truest sense of the word,” DIHK President Peter Adrian told the RND newsroom.

“But without energy, no economy can run.”

In addition, energy prices have reached a level that threatens the existence of many companies. Just this week, German toilet paper company Hakle filed for bankruptcy, with the owners citing unsustainable energy and material costs as the primary factor. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that Europe’s steel industry, which requires massive amounts of cheap natural gas to run, is slashing production and facing severe financial headwinds. Other sectors, such as chemical production, agriculture, and automating are all facing unprecedented hurdles as the energy crisis continues to grip Europe.

Cries for help from the once booming German economy are now coming from business leaders, associations, and consumers, with the Federation of German Industries (BDI) also warning of a wave of bankruptcies due to energy cost inflation. A new analysis by the BDI states that this is a major challenge for 58 percent of companies, and 34 percent believe the current crisis represents a matter of survival. Germany is no exception either, with warning from the United Kingdom showing that six in ten manufacturing companies face the risk of closure due to the energy crisis.

Some German companies, attempting to survive in an increasingly challenging environment, are claiming they are looking to move production overseas.

Almost every tenth company has already reduced or even interrupted production, while every fourth company is considering or is already relocating company shares or parts of production and jobs abroad where costs are often cheaper than Germany.

The situation is also coming to a head in the skilled trades.

“In the trades, a wave of insolvencies is rolling towards us because of the energy crisis,” said president of the Central Association of German Crafts, Hans Peter Wollseifer, to the Rheinische Post.

“Every day, we receive emergency calls from companies that are about to stop production because they can no longer pay the enormously increased energy bills.”

Even though the coronavirus pandemic represented a severe threat to many German businesses, the downturn due to the energy crisis is expected to be much worse. Governments and central bankers are also constrained with their policy choices. Unlike the coronavirus crisis, they can no longer throw hundreds of billions in stimulus at the problem, as it would likely greatly exacerbate already high inflation.

More

"Without Energy, No Economy Can Run": German Companies Warn Of Disaster As Electricity, Gas Taps Are Turned Off | ZeroHedge

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

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/environmental-disaster-ev-battery-metals-crunch-horizon-industry-races-recycle

Covid-19 Corner

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

No covid update today. Today this interesting development in fighting cancer.

Self-assembling molecules suffocate cancer cells within hours

Nick Lavars  September 08, 2022

By deploying a newly-developed drug against a key energy source of cancer cells, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have developed a new way of eliminating them in mere hours. The technique relies on self-assembling molecules that take on a potent form in the cellular environment, and in doing so effectively starve the cancerous cells of the oxygen they need to thrive.

The technology at the heart of this research takes aim at one of the key metabolic functions of cells in all living things called ATP, or adenosine triphosphate. This molecule is the primary energy carrier in cells, capturing chemical energy from the breakdown of food molecules and distributing it to power other cellular processes.

Among those cellular processes is the proliferation of cancerous cells, and because of this we have seen ATP implicated in previous anti-cancer breakthroughs. The authors of the new study sought to cut off the supply of ATP, which is generated as mitochondria soak up oxygen and convert it into the molecule.

The team was able to achieve this through a newly-developed drug described as a platinum(II)-containing tripeptide. When this enters the cellular environment it responds to endogenous hydrogen peroxide by banding its molecules together to form tiny hairs, thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

“These hairs are fluorescent, so you can look at them directly with a microscope as they form,” said study author Zhixuan Zhou.

Watching this play out, the team found that the hairs blocked the conversion of oxygen into ATP. Testing it in untreatable metastatic lung and breast cancer cells in the lab resulted in those cells dying within four hours. This bodes well for the development of new treatments for these types of incurable cancers, which are able to adapt to treatments and continue to evolve.

Though the team’s experiments focused on the environment within lung and breast cancer cells, the fact that ATP is at work in other cell types suggests the technology might have broader implications in drug development. The scientists note that translating this technology into a safe clinical drug for the human body will require years more work, but hope it can lead to new treatments for difficult-to-treat conditions.

The research was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society

Source: Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research

Self-assembling molecules suffocate cancer cells within hours (newatlas.com)

World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccineshttps://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Trackerhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine trackerhttps://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Some more useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.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.

Solar energy breakthrough: Perovskite cell with greater stability, efficiency

Date:  September 6, 2022

Source:  DOE/National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Summary:  Researchers have made a technological breakthrough and constructed a perovskite solar cell with the dual benefits of being both highly efficient and highly stable.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) made a technological breakthrough and constructed a perovskite solar cell with the dual benefits of being both highly efficient and highly stable.

The work was done in collaboration with scientists from the University of Toledo, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of California-San Diego.

A unique architectural structure enabled the researchers to record a certified stabilized efficiency of 24% under 1-sun illumination, making it the highest reported of its kind. The highly efficient cell also retained 87% of its original efficiency after 2,400 hours of operation at 55 degrees Celsius.

The paper, "Surface Reaction for Efficient and Stable Inverted Perovskite Solar Cells," appears in the journal Nature. The authors from NREL are Qi Jiang, Jinhui Tong, Ross Kerner, Sean Dunfield, Chuanxiao Xiao, Rebecca Scheidt, Darius Kuciauskas, Matthew Hautzinger, Robert Tirawat, Matthew Beard, Joseph Berry, Bryon Larson, and Kai Zhu.

Perovskite, which refers to a crystalline structure, has emerged in the last decade as an impressive means to efficiently capture sunlight and convert it to electricity. Research into perovskite solar cells has been focused to a large degree on how to increase their stability.

"Some people can demonstrate perovskites with high stability, but efficiency is lower," said Zhu, a senior scientist in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at NREL. "You ought to have high efficiency and high stability simultaneously. That's challenging."

The researchers used an inverted architecture, rather than the "normal" architecture that has to date yielded the highest efficiencies. The difference between the two types is defined by how the layers are deposited on the glass substrate. The inverted perovskite architecture is known for its high stability and integration into tandem solar cells. The NREL-led team also added a new molecule, 3-(Aminomethyl) pyridine (3-APy), to the surface of the perovskite. The molecule reacted to the formamidinium within the perovskite to create an electric field on the surface of the perovskite layer.

"That suddenly gave us a huge boost of not only efficiency but also stability," Zhu said.

More

Solar energy breakthrough: Perovskite cell with greater stability, efficiency -- ScienceDaily

This weekend’s music diversion, remembering 9/11, 21 years ago this weekend. After much thought about cancelling on the night of the 9/11 murderous terrorism  in 2001, this genius pianist and the Paris Orchestra decided to perform in London’s Royal Albert Hall, to honour those killed and traumatised by events in America earlier that day.  Terrorism would not win out no matter what.

Under the immense pressure of the day, Helene Grimaud gave an unmatched performance for all time. Magnificent.

Approx. 37 minutes.  The opening section got a rare, but well deserved ovation of its own.

Hélène Grimaud: Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58 (Orchestre de Paris, Christoph Eschenbach)

Hélène Grimaud: Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58 (Orchestre de Paris, Christoph Eschenbach) - YouTube

This weekend’s chess update. Approx. 14 minutes.

Niemann: "They Think That They Can Scare Me"

Niemann: "They Think That They Can Scare Me" - YouTube

This week’s maths update. Approx. 12  minutes.

Indeterminate: the hidden power of 0 divided by 0

Indeterminate: the hidden power of 0 divided by 0 - YouTube

"Her Majesty witnessed tremendous change, moving adroitly with the times but always providing stability and reassurance. She was our constant throughout this great Elizabethan era. It was the honour of my life to serve her as prime minister. ... Our thoughts and prayers now are with her family. God Save The King."

Former Prime Minister Theresa May.

 

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