Baltic Dry Index. 1552 -59 Brent Crude 91.35
Spot Gold 1675 U S 2 Year Yield 3.85 -0.02
Stocks close lower on Friday, extending sell off for
worst week since June for S&P 500 and Nasdaq
UPDATED FRI, SEP 16 2022 5:17 PM EDT
Stocks fell
Friday as Wall Street wrapped up one of its worst weeks in months and traders
reacted to an ugly earnings warning from FedEx about the global economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
dropped 139.40 points, or 0.45%, to close at 30,822.42. The S&P 500 shed
0.72% to end the week at 3,873.33. The Nasdaq Composite slid 0.90% to finish at
11,448.40. It was the worst week for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq since June.
Shares of FedEx plunged 21.4%,
their worst daily drop ever, after the shipments company withdrew
its full-year guidance and said it will implement cost-cutting
initiatives to contend with soft global shipment volumes as the global economy
“significantly worsened.”
Transport stocks are typically
seen as a leading
indicator for the stock market as well as the economy, and FedEx
pointed to weakness in Asia as one of the main reasons for its negative
outlook. Shares of shipping rivals UPS and XPO Logistics dropped about 4.5% and
4.7%, respectively, and Amazon’s stock fell 2.1%.
FedEx’s announcement comes soon after a
hotter-than-expected inflation report in the U.S. on Tuesday, which raised
concerns that the Federal Reserve will be forced to cause a recession to cool
prices. That data sparked a decline of more than 1,200 points for the Dow.
“There is a lot of nervousness about how the global
economy can affect the U.S. economy now, while the U.S. economy is dealing with
its own set of very serious issues. I think that dynamic is what people have
woken up to,” said Callie Cox, U.S. investment analyst at eToro.
The three major averages suffered their fourth
losing week in five, and the summer comeback rally looks increasingly like a
bear market bounce. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 4.1% this week.
The S&P 500 lost 4.8%, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped about 5.5%.
PUBLISHED FRI, SEP 16 2022 4:43 PM EDT
Facebook hasn’t been this cheap since the
beginning of the pandemic.
After plunging 14% for the week to
close at $146.29, shares of Facebook parent Meta are
at their lowest point since March 2020, and for a period on Friday, they had
sunk even lower. Meta has lost 61% of its value over the past 12 months, by far
the biggest slide among Big Tech stocks and more than double the drop in the
Nasdaq Composite.
In sliding for five straight days, Meta is now trading just 28 cents above
its closing price on March 16, 2020, when the early days of Covid-19 sent U.S.
stocks reeling.
If Meta falls below $146.01, it
will be the lowest since January 2019. That’s when Facebook was dealing with
the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal that tested consumer
confidence in the social media company and led to a series of heated
congressional hearings.
Still, Facebook managed to expand
its active users in the U.S. that quarter, though by just under 1 percent.
Since officially changing
its name to Meta last October, the news for CEO Mark Zuckerberg
and company has been almost all bad. Apple’s iOS
privacy update made it more difficult for the company to target ads and the
increased popularity of social media rival TikTok has drawn users and
advertisers away from the app. Meanwhile, an economic slowdown has caused many
companies to pull back on their online marketing spend.
In July, Meta said it was expecting
a second straight period of declining sales as it reported second-quarter earnings that
missed on the top and bottom lines.
Meta shares plunged 14% this week, falling close to their pandemic low (cnbc.com)
Finally in other news, the west is fighting a proxy war with Russia. Russia is fighting an economic war with the west. Yet another reason to be out of stocks.
Putin tells Europe: if you want
gas then open Nord Stream 2
September 16, 20225:52 PM GMT+1
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Sept 16 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on
Friday denied Russia had anything to do with Europe's energy crisis, saying
that if the European Union wanted more gas it should lift sanctions preventing
the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Speaking to reporters after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit
in Uzbekistan, Putin blamed what he called "the green agenda" for the
energy crisis, and insisted that Russia would fulfil its energy obligations.
"The bottom line is, if you have an urge, if it's so hard for you,
just lift the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, which is 55 billion cubic metres of
gas per year, just push the button and everything will get going," Putin
said.
Nord Stream 2, which lays on the bed of the Baltic Sea almost in
parallel to Nord Stream 1, was built a year ago, but Germany decided not to
proceed with it just days before Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb.
24.
European gas prices more than doubled from the start of the year amid a
decline in Russian supplies.
This year's price surge has squeezed struggling already consumers and
forced some industries to halt production.
Europe has accused Russia of weaponising energy supplies in retaliation
for Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Russia
says the West has launched an economic war and sanctions have hampered Nord
Stream 1 pipeline operations.
More
Putin
tells Europe: if you want gas then open Nord Stream 2 | 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.
Retail sales continue year-long downward
spiral amid cost of living crisis
FRIDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2022
7:25 AM
Retail
sales fell last month, according to official figures, as the cost of living
crisis prompts Brits to dial back spending.
Sale
volumes fell by 1.6 per cent in August, continuing a downward trend since
summer 2021.
Both
food and non-food stores, as well as non-store retailing and fuel forecourts
all saw lower sales over the past month, the Office for National Statistics
found last month.
More
Retail sales continue year-long downward spiral amid cost of living crisis (cityam.com)
Inflation is
turning hyper
Sep 15, 2022·Alasdair Macleod
Money supply took off during covid lockdowns. It is now about to
take off again to pay everyone’s energy bills. But that is not all.
Demands for currency and credit to be conjured out of thin air to
pay for everything will be coming thick and fast. Expectations that energy
prices, including European electricity, have peaked are naïve. Putin has yet to
put the winter and spring screws on Europe and the world fully. It will be
surprising if global oil and natural gas prices in Europe are not significantly
higher on a twelve-month view. And Europe has messed up its electricity
supplies — that is where the energy costs will rise most.
Bankers are trying to reduce their loan exposure to rising
interest rates, undermining GDP. Besides paying for everyone’s energy bills,
rescuing troubled banks, collapsing tax revenues, and difficulties in selling
government debt on rising yields, governments are expected to apply economic
stimulus to support both their economies and financial markets.
Furthermore, this article points to evidence as to why the
expansion of central bank credit has a far greater impact on prices than
contracting bank credit. The replacement of commercial bank credit by central
bank credit will have a far greater inflationary impact than the deflation from
bank credit alone.
Attempts to rescue the American, European, and Japanese economies
by replacing commercial bank credit with central bank credit will probably be
the coup de grace for fiat.
We can begin to anticipate the path to the destruction of purchasing
power for all fiat currencies, not just those of Zimbabwe, Turkey, and
Venezuela et al. A global hyperinflation is proving impossible to avoid.
First it was covid, now it is energy…
More
Inflation
is turning hyper - Research - Goldmoney
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.
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 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.
World's first direct air
electrolyzer makes hydrogen from humidity
Loz Blain September 14, 2022
Australian researchers have developed and tested a way to
electrolyze hydrogen straight out of the air, anywhere on Earth, without
requiring any other fresh water source. The Direct Air Electrolyzer (DAE)
absorbs and converts atmospheric moisture – even down to a "bone-dry"
4% humidity.
Such a machine could be particularly relevant to a country
like Australia, which has ambitions as a clean energy exporter, along with
enormous solar energy potential – but also widespread drought conditions and
limited access to clean water. Decoupling hydrogen production from the need for
a water supply could allow green hydrogen to be produced more or less anywhere
you can ship it out from – and since water scarcity and solar potential often
go hand in hand, this could prove a boon for much of Africa, Asia, India and
the Middle East, too.
Chemical engineers at
Melbourne University came up with what they describe as a simple design: an
electrolyzer with two flat plates acting as anode and cathode. Sandwiched
between the two plates is a porous material – melamine sponge, for example, or
sintered glass foam. This medium is soaked in a hygroscopic ionic solution – a
chemical that can absorb moisture from the air spontaneously.
Hook it up to an energy
source, expose it to the air, and hydrogen starts being released at the
cathode, and oxygen at the anode, simple as that. The researchers believe this
is the first time hydrogen has been pulled directly from the air, and note that
it works down to 4% humidity, where even dry areas in Australia's Red Centre,
such as Alice Springs, tend to have around 20% humidity.
The researchers tested
various different hygroscopic liquids, porous media, thicknesses and other
parameters, eventually achieving a faradaic efficiency around 95%. Hooked up to
a paperback-sized solar panel, the team found the DAE was able to generate 3.7
cubic meters(131 cu ft) of high-purity hydrogen per day, per square meter (10.7
sq ft) of cathode.
The team describes the
technology as technically and structurally viable, and low-maintenance, and
says the next steps are to test it in a range of harsh conditions and
temperatures, and to scale way up.
"We
are in the process to scale up the DAE, from a five-layer stack to one meter
square, then 10 meters and so on," says Dr. Kevin Gang Li, lead researcher
on the paper. "And we can simulate a dry climate in lab, but that's not a
real desert. So, we want to take it to Alice Springs and spend a couple of
weeks, see how it goes."
The research is open access
in the journal Nature
Communications.
Source: University of Melbourne
World's
first direct air electrolyzer makes hydrogen from humidity (newatlas.com)
This
weekend’s music diversion. Approx. 9 minutes.
Antonio
Lucio VİVALDİ: Concerto (Il Proteo ò il Mondo al Rovescio) İn F Major RV.572,
Freiburger BO
Blunders
Love Company
Blunders
Love Company - YouTube
Gauss's
magic shoelace area formula and its calculus companion
Gauss's
magic shoelace area formula and its calculus companion - YouTube
At each step of the transition from commodity to paper to credit, money became more unreal, and detached from the real goods and services that money can be exchanged for. Money transformed itself from a mechanism for trade into an object in its own right. Modern technology—digital money—further stripped money of corporeality. Money exists as pure information, with no intrinsic value. It is nothing and everything. Making money, lending it, borrowing money, and making money from money is central to human existence and activity.
Satyajit Das. Extreme Money. Masters of the
Universe and the Cult of Risk
http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780132790079/samplepages/0132790076.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment