Saturday, 26 November 2022

Special Update 26/11/22 Hopium Rules OK. FTT Pixie Dust.

Baltic Dry Index. 1324 +82   Brent Crude 83.63

Spot Gold 1755       U S 2 Year Yield 4.42 -0.04

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

Deaths 53,100

Covid-19 cases 25/11/22 World 645,634,208

Deaths 6,635,270

“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!”

 J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.

In the stock casinos, more hopium that Santa Claus will turn up early next week, to dress up stocks and indexes for the all important month-end money manager bonuses.

Hopium that the central banksters won’t spoil the year-end Christmas party by raising interest rates again in December.

Hopium that the FTX/FTT/FBS/Democrat Party scandal will quickly fade away in the media, unlikely.

Hopium that 2023 won’t bring in the worst Great Recession since the 1930s.

Hopium that China’s new round of Covid lockdowns won’t act as a new drag on the global economy.

Hopium that the coming G-7 price cap on Russian oil will somehow work without driving up the price of Crude oil and natural gas.

Hopium that food price inflation will abate in 2023. Well it might but I’ll bet the other way.

European markets flat to close out winning week; Credit Suisse shares hit fresh all-time low

UPDATED FRI, NOV 25 2022 11:50 AM EST

European markets were muted on Friday to close out an upbeat week, as the U.S. Federal Reserve’s latest meeting minutes added to expectations that monetary policy tightening may slow down.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 had slipped 0.25% in late afternoon trading, but pared losses to close flat. Sectors were a mixed bag, with mining and financial stocks shedding 0.6% and oil and gas adding 0.8%.

The blue-chip index surpassed a three-month high Tuesday and notched its sixth consecutive weekly climb.

Credit Suisse shares continued to slide despite it securing more than $4 billion in funding from investors to fund its second strategic overhaul. It closed Friday down nearly 6% at 3.35 Swiss francs ($3.54), a new record low.

Minutes from the Fed’s November meeting signaled that the central bank is seeing progress in its fight against high inflation and is looking to slow the pace of rate hikes.

“A substantial majority of participants judged that a slowing in the pace of increase would likely soon be appropriate,” the minutes stated.

European investors also reacted well to several economic data points over the course of the week that have indicated a slightly shallower recession than previously feared.

Shares in Asia-Pacific were mostly lower on Friday, while U.S. markets rose after the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.

Europe markets open to close: End of a winning week on dovish Fed bets (cnbc.com)

Dow closes more than 150 points higher. Stocks notch gains for holiday week

UPDATED FRI, NOV 25 2022 3:56 PM EST

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose Friday, notching a gain during the holiday-shortened trading week.

The Dow rose 152.97 points, or 0.45% to 34,347.03, marking the third consecutive session of gains. The S&P 500 fell 0.03% to end the day at 4,026.12. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.52% to 11,226.36, weighed down by shares of Activision Blizzard, which fell 4% on news that the FTC could block Microsoft from taking over the gaming company.

All three indexes ended the week higher. The Dow is up 1.78%, and the S&P 500 is up 1.53% during the short week. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is lagging the other two indexes but is still up 0.72% in the same timeframe.

Stocks were muted at the start of the week as traders waited for minutes from the Federal Reserve’s November meeting. The minutes showed that the central bank anticipates slowing the pace of interest rate hikes going forward, which gave stocks a boost into the end of the week even amid choppy sessions due to low trading volumes.

“A substantial majority of participants judged that a slowing in the pace of increase would likely soon be appropriate,” the minutes stated.

A slew of solid retail earnings reports signaling some consumer strength even amid worries of economic weakness also lifted stocks.

Worries about continued lockdowns in China kept markets in check. The country is ramping up Covid restrictions after seeing climbing case counts in recent days. Earlier in the week, China reported its first Covid deaths since May.

Next week, investors will be watching for more earnings reports from companies such as Kroger and Ulta Beauty on deck. On the economic front, traders will be watching further comments from Fed officials, as well as the release of the personal consumption expenditure report on Thursday — the central bank’s preferred inflation indicator. The November jobs print is due Friday.

Dow closes more than 150 points higher. Stocks notch gains for holiday week (cnbc.com)

Finally, in crypto-land is yet another scandal about to surface?

Crypto lender Genesis subject of probe by regulators - Barron's

Nov 25 (Reuters) - State securities regulators are investigating Genesis Global Capital as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the interconnectedness of crypto firms, Barron's reported on Friday citing a comment from the Alabama Securities Commission Director.

While it does not directly serve individual investors, Genesis backs products offered by crypto companies such as Circle Internet Financial, the principal operator of one of the largest stablecoins, USD Coin, and by Gemini. Those products pay yield to customers who deposit certain cryptocurrencies on the platforms.

The inquiry will look into Genesis's connection to such retail investors, and whether it or other industry participants might have violated securities laws, the report added.

Genesis and Alabama Securities Commission did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the report.

In the aftermath of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Genesis suspended customer redemptions in a spillover effect citing "abnormal withdrawal requests" that exceeded its liquidity.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported Genesis hired investment bank Moelis & Company to serve as the firm's restructuring advisor as it explored options including a potential bankruptcy.

Several crypto firms have been plagued by contagion concern from the fallout of the FTX collapse, with many counting their exposure in millions to the beleaguered exchange.

Crypto lender Genesis subject of probe by regulators - Barron's | 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.

BoE warns of future UK rate rises if inflation persists

Government’s £55bn of measures announced in Autumn Statement ‘unlikely’ to moderate increases

24 November, 2022

Tax rises and spending cuts announced in the UK government’s Autumn Statement were unlikely to persuade the Bank of England to moderate future interest rate rises, the central bank’s deputy governor said on Thursday.

Speaking to the first BoE watchers conference at King’s College London, Sir Dave Ramsden seemed to undermine the contention of chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who said in his statement that the government’s £55bn of budgetary consolidation would allow interest rates to be “significantly lower”.

Ramsden said the measures to reduce public borrowing would take effect too late to influence BoE monetary policy in the months ahead.

The vast majority of the measures unveiled by Hunt, “do not come into effect until April 2025 so will have very little effect over the Monetary Policy Committee’s three-year forecast horizon, relative to what was assumed in the November monetary policy report”, he told the conference.

The BoE had previously said it would reconsider its plans for interest rates if the government imposed measures in the statement that changed the picture for the economy immediately, deepening the economic downturn and putting downward pressure on inflation.

Ramsden said he thought the BoE still needed to tighten monetary policy. “I expect that further increases in the bank rate are going to be required to ensure a sustainable return of inflation to target,” he said.

The deputy governor made it clear he would consider another large interest rate rise at the next meeting in mid-December if he saw that companies still felt able to raise prices to defend profit margins and increase wages significantly higher than the 2 per cent inflation target.

“If the outlook suggests more persistent inflationary pressures then I will continue to vote to respond forcefully,” Ramsden told delegates. The BoE raised interest rates by 0.5 percentage points in August and September and by 0.75 percentage points this month, taking the official rate up to 3 per cent, its highest since 2008.

Ramsden noted that although his bias was “towards further tightening”, he would “consider the case for reducing the bank rate” if the economy developed differently to his expectations and persistent inflation stopped being a concern.

 At its last meeting the MPC signalled that if inflation began to shrink, which is expected as the UK enters recession, it would not need to raise rates much further to bring inflation down to its 2 per cent target. But this was criticised on Thursday evening in a speech in Italy by Lord Mervyn King, former governor of the bank. King said “intellectual errors” by central banks had led to inflation hitting double digits around the world, and that because officials had printed too much money during the pandemic it had become inflationary.

King said the most likely mistake that policymakers would now make would be not to raise interest rates high enough as inflation begins to fall in 2023.

 “A premature end to the monetary squeeze needed to bring core inflation down would result in a more prolonged recession than is necessary. But political pressures on central banks will push them in that direction,” he predicted.

More

BoE warns of future UK rate rises if inflation persists | Financial Times (ft.com)

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.

 

More on that Wuhan lab leak cover up. Approx. 27 minutes.

Lab leak conspiracy theory

Lab leak conspiracy theory - YouTube

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.

Amazon, Meta, Netflix: Why Big Tech Is Facing Massive Layoffs | WSJ

Amazon, Meta, Netflix: Why Big Tech Is Facing Massive Layoffs | WSJ - YouTube

This weekend’s music diversion. Approx. 8 minutes.

A. Vivaldi Concerto per due trombe in do magg. RV 537

A. Vivaldi Concerto per due trombe in do magg. RV 537 - YouTube

This weekend’s chess update. Approx. 12 minutes.

You Will Fall From Your Chair!

You Will Fall From Your Chair! - YouTube

Finally, more on that Great, Growing FTX/SBF/Democrat Party financial scandal. Who knew what and when in Washington, District of Crooks?  Approx. 26 minutes.

FTX Bankruptcy Explained!

FTX Bankruptcy Explained! - YouTube

 “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”

SBF with apologies to  J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan.

 


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