Baltic Dry Index. 1355 +12 Brent Crude 76.57
Spot Gold 1796 US 2 Year Yield 4.31 +0.06
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,1030
Coronavirus Cases 09/12/22 World 652,289,997
Deaths 6,654,457
“The
world is a place that’s gone from being flat to round to crooked.”
Mad Magazine.
In the stock casinos, recession fears dominate. Sell the rallies has well and truly replaced buy the dips.
Global inflation is getting curbed by stagflation and probably by a Great Recession in 2023.
While a recession next year will bring down or end energy inflation, ending food price inflation is much harder.
It depends on the weather in the great grain producing nations of the southern and northern hemisphere. Access to Russian and Ukrainian wheat, barley, and sunflower oil and fertiliser is needed as well.
An end to bird flu sweeping across much of Europe and large parts of America is needed too.
But first we have to get through our northern hemisphere winter, where there will be no relief from high energy bills for most.
“sell
in May, go away,” has worked pretty well in 2022. Unfortunately the part about “don’t
return until Labor Day” seems to mean Labor Day 2023 this time round.
Hong Kong stocks
lead gains in Asia-Pacific; China reports inflation data in line with
expectations
UPDATED FRI, DEC 9 2022 12:44 AM
EST
Shares in the Asia-Pacific rose as China
inflation data came in roughly in line with expectations.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced
1.78%. Mainland China’s Shenzhen
Component was 0.235% higher while the Shanghai Composite inched
up fractionally.
China’s consumer price index rose
1.6% in November on an annualized basis, while its producer price index fell
1.3%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose
1.30%, while the Topix added 1.13%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 inched
up 0.53%.
The Kospi in South
Korea gained 0.46% while the Kosdaq climbed 0.81%. MSCI’s broadest index of
Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1.19%.
Computer chip manufacturer Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is
expected to report November sales later in the day.
Overnight in the U.S., stocks rose
with the S&P 500 bucking its longest stretch of losses
since October as Wall Street evaluated the odds of a recession ahead.
Stock futures are
slightly higher as traders look ahead to November wholesale inflation report
UPDATED THU, DEC 8 2022 9:28 PM EST
Stock
futures were slightly higher Thursday evening as investors look ahead to new
inflation data due Friday.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average rose 15 points, or 0.04%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100
futures were up 0.13% and 0.18%, respectively. Shares of Lululemon fell
more than 7% after the company gave a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter
outlook, even though it beat
Wall Street expectations with its third-quarter results.
Earlier in the day, the S&P
500 rallied to break a five-day run of losses — its longest streak since
October. The broad-market index gained 0.75%, and the Dow gained 183.56 points,
or 0.55%. The Nasdaq had the strongest performance of the day, rallying 1.13%.
Even with Thursday’s gains, all
three major averages are on track to post losses for the week. The S&P 500
is off by 2.6% for the week, while the Nasdaq is down more than 3%. The Dow
shed 1.8%.
Next, investors are
awaiting the Friday release of the November producer price index report, which
will give further information about how the Federal Reserve’s interest rate
hikes are working to tame high inflation.
″[The stock market]
really has been so dependent on inflation this year and it’s likely to continue
to depend on inflation,” said Courtney Garcia, senior wealth advisor at Payne
Capital Management, on CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Thursday.
Next week, more
inflation data and a Federal Reserve meeting are top of mind for traders. The
November consumer price index report due Dec. 13 will further show if inflation
is subsiding.
The central bank is
widely expected to deliver a smaller interest rate hike of 0.5 percentage point
on Dec. 14, the last day of its December meeting.
Wall
Street chorus grows louder warning that 2023 will be ugly
Last Updated: Dec 07, 2022, 04:15 PM IST
In the Federal Reserve’s quiet
period before its officials meet to decide their final actions this year, Wall
Street watchers are filling the void, loudly warning that next year’s outlook
for the US economy and stocks is grim.
From Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Solomon
caution that the economy faces “bumpy times ahead,” to JPMorgan Chase &
Co.’s Jamie Dimon grimmer view that this would be a “mild to hard recession,”
and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s Lisa Shalett, who told Bloomberg
Television that corporations are facing a “rude awakening” on earnings, the
messages have become increasingly dire.
“We do not
think the economic conditions for a sustained upturn are yet in place,” Mark
Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a
note. “Growth is slowing and central banks are still raising rates.”
Investors
appear to be heeding the warnings. Following a two-month rally, the S&P 500
Index has fallen in all but one of the last eight sessions and dropped 1.4% on
Tuesday. Equity strategists, historically the market’s biggest cheerleaders,
are now predicting a down year in 2023. And the red flags are being waved in
the wake of wage and services data that suggested inflationary forces still
grip the economy.
The charts
aren’t helping, either. Whenever the benchmark S&P 500 is lower by 15% or
worse in a year through November, December is usually much weaker, according to
BTIG’s Jonathan Krinsky. From January to November, the benchmark index had seen
a 19% drawdown, with the gauge giving up its ground to close back below its
200-day moving average Monday.
One of Wall
Street’s biggest bears, Morgan Stanley strategist Michael Wilson, backed away
from a recent call that the markets recovery could last into December to say
that “we are now sellers again” as he and his colleagues expect the S&P 500
to resume declines.
More
Finally, it looks like 8% of Americans haven’t been following the news or are just incredible optimists.
In
other big fraud news, Germany’s Wirecard fraud trial begins.
Just
8% of Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrencies now, CNBC survey finds
PUBLISHED WED,
DEC 7 2022 2:51 PM EST
After a series of crypto-collapses, scandals and
bankruptcies, Americans’ views on cryptocurrency have soured sharply, with
the CNBC All-America Economic Survey finding a majority favoring strong regulation.
The survey shows 43% of the public with a negative
view of cryptocurrencies, up from 25% in March. The percentage with a positive
view plummeted to just 8% from 19%, and those who are neutral fell almost in
half to 18% from 31%.
It’s a dramatic fall for an
investment that was touted as its own asset class and had a celebrated
coming-out party on the global stage with multiple Super Bowl ads and celebrity
endorsements. That popularity attracted many ordinary Americans to crypto and
the survey shows 24% of the public invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency
in the past, up from 16% in March.
The survey of 800
Americans nationwide was conducted Nov. 26-30 and has a margin of error of +/-
3.5%. (March results for crypto are from an NBC News survey.)
According to the
survey, 42% of crypto investors now have a somewhat or very negative view of
the asset, in line with the 43% result for all adults in the survey. The main
difference: 17% of crypto investors are “very negative” compared with 47% for
non-crypto investors.
But it could still be
a problem for crypto recovering its credibility since reputation looks to be
central to its valuation.
“It’s a 90% retail market, which means the
sentiment of mom-and-pop investors really matters,″ Brian Brook, the CEO of
Bitfury, and the former comptroller of the currency, said at this week’s CNBC Financial Advisor Summit. “And so when you read FTX stories on the front page of
the Wall Street Journal, literally every day for the last 30 days…what it does
is for relative new entrants, they get scared. And so as a result, liquidity is
thinner than it would have been and people’s willingness to invest is lower.”
Whether a respondent is invested in crypto or not,
they are likely to favor regulating it as stringently as stocks or bonds. The
survey found 53% of the public saying crypto should have the same or greater
regulation and oversight as stocks and bonds, that includes 21% of all adults
and 16% of crypto investors who want more regulation.
Negative views on crypto come at the same time as
the public has soured on stocks. Just 26% say now is a good time to invest in
equities, down two points from last quarter’s survey and the most pessimistic
level registered in the 15-year history of the survey. 51% say it’s a bad time
to invest, the third highest in the survey’s history, bested only by the
downbeat results of the prior two surveys.
Just 8% of
Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrencies now, CNBC survey finds
FTX bankruptcy team meets
federal prosecutors in New York - Bloomberg News
Dec 8 (Reuters) - FTX's new chief executive officer and bankruptcy lawyers
met Manhattan federal prosecutors investigating the collapse of the
cryptocurrency exchange, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people
familiar with the matter.
Lawyers for FTX from Sullivan
& Cromwell, including former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement
director Steve Peikin and former Manhattan federal prosecutor Nicole
Friedlander, were also present, according to the report.
Last month, FTX filed for U.S. bankruptcy
protection and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive, after
rival exchange Binance walked away from a proposed acquisition.
The implosion of FTX has rippled
across the industry, hobbling liquidity at firms with exposure to what was once
one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges, and prompting investigations by
regulators in several countries.
FTX did not immediately respond to a Reuters
request for comment.
FTX
bankruptcy team meets federal prosecutors in New York - Bloomberg News | Nasdaq
Huge Wirecard fraud trial opens
in Germany
Issued on: 08/12/2022 - 05:10
Munich (Germany) (AFP) – Germany's mammoth Wirecard fraud
trial opens on Thursday, with ex-CEO Markus Braun and two former executives in
the dock over their roles in the country's biggest-ever accounting scandal.
The trial in Munich comes two and a
half years after digital payments firm Wirecard collapsed in spectacular
fashion after admitting that 1.9 billion euros ($2 billion) missing from its
accounts didn't actually exist.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was finance
minister at the time, described the scandal as "unparalleled" in
Germany's post-war history.
Notably absent from the courtroom will
be Wirecard's former chief operating officer Jan Marsalek, a shadowy figure
with ties to foreign intelligence agencies.
Marsalek evaded arrest in 2020 by
staging a daring escape from Austria by private jet. He was reported earlier
this year to be hiding out in Russia.
Wirecard's veteran CEO Braun, in
custody since July 2020, faces charges of commercial gang fraud, breach of
trust, accounting fraud and market manipulation.
The 53-year-old denies the allegations
and claims to be a victim of the fraud, painting Marsalek as the mastermind.
His co-accused are ex-accounting boss Stephan
von Erffa and Oliver Bellenhaus, the former head of Wirecard's Dubai
subsidiary.
Bellenhaus has admitted wrongdoing and
will act as a key witness for the prosecution.
If found guilty, the trio risk lengthy
prison sentences.
More
Huge Wirecard
fraud trial opens in Germany (france24.com)
George Orwell.
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.
Freight rates
from China to West Coast down 90% as global trade falls off fast
Logistics managers
are sending the message to clients that the ocean freight market is correcting
itself at a faster pace than anticipated.
Shipping firm HLS
recently wrote to clients, “We initially expected the market was about to
correct itself and normalize some time in 2023, but it comes much earlier than
we expected.”
The peak in the
market, according to Alan Baer, CEO of OL USA, was the second quarter. “From
there a steady decline,” Baer said. The market may have reached the low point
in November, he said, but added, “it is still too early to tell if this is a
trend.”
Despite the spot market collapse, the major
shipping lines reported nearly $122 billion in profits over the first three
quarters, according to Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy.
Trade data shows a decline in Asia
imports to the U.S. by 11% year-over-year in October, which built on a
September decline. “We don’t find any grounds for optimism in November,” HLS
told clients.
The ocean freight contract market
tracked by Xeneta’s global XSI recorded a drop of 5.7% in November, the third
month in a row rates have dropped, and the largest month-over-month decline
recorded since the launch of the XSI in 2019, according to Peter Sand, chief
analyst at Xeneta. “For many carriers, the fall in the XSI will trigger the
fall in their average rates and will bring an end to record-breaking quarters,”
he said.
Sand expects the challenging
environment to continue given the 40
percent drop in Chinese manufacturing orders and logistics
managers expecting demand normalization to not occur until next summer.
More
Global
shipping nears 'all-out price war' as China trade falls fast (cnbc.com)
Economists: A US housing recession has already arrived
BY DANIEL DE VISÉ - 12/07/22 6:00 AM ET
This has been a year of watershed moments in real estate,
and not the good kind.
The Housing
Market Index, a closely watched industry metric that gauges the outlook
for home sales, declined to 33 in November on a hundred-point scale, its lowest
level in a decade, save for the first dystopian month of the pandemic. Anything
under 50 spells trouble.
A month
earlier, interest rates on a standard 30-year mortgage passed 7
percent, capping the largest single-year increase in at least 50 years.
“Just to
give you a sense of how far we’ve come, we started the year around 3 percent,”
said Michael Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers
Association. “It has just been a wild ride.”
The
difference between a 3 percent interest rate and a 7 percent rate
amounts to $1,000 more in a monthly mortgage payment on a mid-priced
American home, according to Nadia Evangelou, senior economist at the National
Association of Realtors.
Interest
rates have retreated to 6.3 percent this month, seeding fresh hope for the
few remaining buyers on a diminished housing market.
After an
unprecedented campaign of rate hikes, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome
Powell has signaled that the central bank will ease up.
That’s one
reason mortgage rates are ticking down. The other is more sobering.
“We, others,
many market participants are forecasting a recession in the United States and
many other places around the world,” Fratantoni said. “That puts downward
pressure on the rates.”
The housing
market is already in recession and has been since midsummer, according to
the National Association of Home Builders, which publishes the Housing Market
Index with
Wells Fargo.
“The index
has declined for 11 straight months,” said Robert Dietz, chief economist for
the homebuilders group. “This is going to be the first calendar year in 11
years where single-family starts,” a measure of new home construction, “will
total a smaller volume than the prior year.” He predicts a double-digit
decline.
Where the housing
market goes, the broader economy follows. Dietz,
Fratantoni and others in the industry expect the nation to tip into
recession, a state of economic malaise generally defined as two successive
quarters of decline.
“The housing market
leads the U.S. into recession, and it’s likely to pull it out,”
Fratantoni said, with recovery arriving around the middle of next
year.
More
Economists: A US housing recession has already arrived | The Hill
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.
With Covid-19 starting to become only endemic,
this section is close to coming to its end.
FDA Says Ivermectin Doesn’t Work Against COVID-19 but
Points to Studies That Show It Does
December 8, 2022
The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) says a drug called ivermectin does not work against COVID-19 but links to studies that show it does, an Epoch Times
review has found.
The FDA’s website states,
“Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against
COVID-19.”
But half
of the studies to which the FDA points support using ivermectin against COVID-19,
according to the review.
The papers
cut against the drug agency’s repeated exhortations for people not to take
ivermectin for COVID-19. In Twitter posts, public statements, and emails, FDA
officials have repeatedly warned against ivermectin. Some of those statements triggered a lawsuit from doctors who say the agency’s
role is to approve drugs, not to issue recommendations. The suit was dismissed this week.
Dr. Pierre
Kory, who frequently prescribes ivermectin for COVID-19 and co-authored a meta-analysis that concluded the drug is effective
against the illness, told The Epoch Times that the government’s position on
ivermectin “is one of the most glaring examples of the corruption of modern
evidence based medicine.”
----The FDA’s website points to a
U.S. National Library of Medicine database of studies analyzing ivermectin
against COVID-19. There are 88 studies listed in the database.
Out of studies that are listed, have been completed, and have
results reported, half show or indicate ivermectin effectively combats or
prevents COVID-19, according to the review by The Epoch Times.
More
Covid-19 vaccines
could cost billions more if federal government stops picking up the tab
December
7, 2022
The cost of Covid-19 vaccines could quadruple if the federal government stops
buying them in bulk, according to an analysis released Wednesday.
The federal government has
spent more than $30 billion so far on Covid-19 vaccines to promote their
development and ensure that people can access them without charge, according to
the Kaiser Family Foundation report. But the Biden administration has said it cannot afford
to continue doing so unless Congress provides it with more funds. It has
started to prepare for the transition of the vaccines to the commercial market.
That shift would be costly
for health insurers and other payers, according to the analysis. Most people
with health coverage likely won’t have to pay for the shots, but those with
private insurance might see their premiums rise somewhat to cover the tab. And
the uninsured would no longer have guaranteed access to free Covid-19 vaccines,
which could prevent some from getting them.
Pfizer and Moderna have
already announced that the commercial prices of their Covid-19 vaccines will
likely be between $82 and $130 per dose – about three to four times what the federal
government has paid, according to Kaiser.
Pfizer has
said the transition of vaccines from government contracts to the traditional
health care system could take place as early as the first quarter of 2023.
The booster shots could run between
$6.2 billion and $29.7 billion annually on the commercial market, depending on
the price and how many people get the vaccine or booster shot, said Kaiser,
which compared the average price paid by the federal government for the
Covid-19 bivalent booster with the manufacturers’ estimated average commercial
prices.
Insurers and other payers may be able
to negotiate discounts from the vaccine manufacturers. But they may have
trouble bargaining since they are generally required to cover all recommended
vaccines and boosters.
More
Covid-19 vaccines
could cost billions more if federal government stops picking up the tab
(msn.com)
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.
Texas will get more
electricity from solar and wind power than natural gas next year, EIA projects
Texas will get the largest
share of its electricity next year from solar and wind power, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected it
a short-term energy outlook report released Tuesday. Yes, Texas.
Overall, the U.S. is forecast
to generate 16 percent of its electricity from wind and solar power in 2023, up
from 14 percent in 2022, while natural gas generation will fall to 37 percent,
from 39 percent this year, the EIA said.
Texas, meanwhile, "is
likely to experience the largest shift in generation mix in 2023," the EIA said,
with natural gas falling to 36 percent, from 42 percent this year — and solar
and wind power rising to 37 percent, from 30 percent in 2022. EIA
administrator Joe DeCarolis shared the chart.
Texas, in
fact, led the U.S. in renewable energy projects in 2021, the American Clean
Power Association reported earlier this year, bringing 7,325 megawatts of new wind,
solar, and energy storage projects online — versus 2,697 megawatt in the next
highest state, California. "But what got my attention wasn't Texas'
dominance in 2021," Dan Gearino wrote
in Inside Climate News. "It was that Texas also is the
leader when ranking the states on how much wind, solar, and storage they have
under construction or in advanced development."
"Texas
can claim, with ample evidence, to be the renewable energy capital of the
United States," Gearino wrote.
"This is despite also being the fossil fuel capital of the United States,
and having political leaders who go out of their way to defer to oil and
gas."
Texas leaders, lawmakers, and
regulators are "putting their thumbs on the scale to reward fossil fuels
at the expense of renewable energy," which "is hardly surprising
given the chummy relationship state officials have with oil and
gas," the Houston
Chronicle says in an editorial. But it's "bad news for residential consumers,
particularly since wind and solar are often the most reliable energy sources
during times of peak demand" — and much cheaper, too.
More
Another weekend and more interest rate
hikes loom next week. Across most of Europe including the UK, a winter of
strikes, food and energy price inflation reality bites. Who knew starting a proxy war with Russia in
Ukraine rather than giving Russia the security guarantees it asked for, could
turn out so badly for most of Europe? Worse, the social unrest and political disillusionment can still get
far worse if winter turns severe and blackouts occur.
Have a great pre-Christmas weekend
everyone.
Why did I take up stealing? To
live better, to own things I couldn't afford, to acquire this good taste that
you now enjoy and which I should be very reluctant to give up.
Ebenezer Crypto, with apologies
to Cary Grant. To Catch A Thief.
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