Baltic Dry Index. 740 -23 Brent Crude 87.92
Spot Gold 1935 US 2 Year Yield 4.21 +0.07
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 24/01/23 World 673,507,907
Deaths 6,748,120
Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a
citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state.
William F. Rickenbacker
While the cat’s
away the mice will play and so with many of the Asian stock casinos closed for
the Lunar New Year celebrations, what better time to mount a short squeeze in a
bear market.
Asia-Pacific
markets rise as most of the region observes Lunar New Year holidays
UPDATED MON, JAN 23 2023 11:28 PM
EST
Markets in the Asia-Pacific traded higher as
Lunar New Year holidays were observed in most of the region.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
0.17% in Asia’s morning trade, following Wall Street’s tech-fueled rally ahead
of major earnings reports. New Zealand’s S&P/NZX 50 traded
slightly above the flatline.
The Nikkei 225 rose
1.61% and the Topix gained 1.08%. The Japanese yen continued
to trade above 130 against the US dollar for the second consecutive day and
last stood at 130.53.
The yield on the 10-year Japanese
Government Bonds continued
to trade below the central bank’s upper ceiling of its tolerance range and last
stood at 0.39%.
The au Jibun Bank Flash Japan Manufacturing
Purchasing Managers’ Index will be released later in the day. Markets in China,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore are closed for a
holiday.
The Nasdaq Composite rose
more than 2% in the U.S. on optimism the Federal Reserve may
slow down its interest rate hikes. Last week, economic data showed a decline in
wholesale prices and retail sales.
Asia
markets: Australia PMI, Japan Jibun Flash PMI, Lunar New Year holidays
(cnbc.com)
Stock futures are
little changed as Wall Street looks to build on back-to-back gains
UPDATED MON, JAN 23 2023 7:04 PM
EST
Stock futures were
largely flat on Monday evening as investors looked to continue a strong start
to the week during a busy stretch of corporate earnings.
Futures tied to the
Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 4 points, or less than 0.1%. S&P 500
futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were each lower by less than 0.1%.
The muted move in
futures comes after a solid start to the week on Wall Street. On Monday, the
Nasdaq Composite led with a gain of 2.01%. The S&P 500 and Dow gained 1.19%
and 0.76%, respectively. It was the second straight positive day for the major
averages, and all three are up in 2023.
The gains have come
despite an underwhelming start to earnings season and more signs that the U.S.
economy is slowing.
“It is possible
that for this quarter, for Q4, we could see some upside surprises because the
economy was holding up well,” said Angelo Kourkafas, investment strategist at
Edward Jones.
“However, the focus
will be on any kind of guidance and the outlook, and the leading economic
indicators and market indicators that we look at are all pointing toward the
same thing — that a slowdown and a weakening of the economy is coming.”
On Tuesday, General
Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Verizon are among the key companies
reporting earnings before the bell. Software giant Microsoft is scheduled to
report on Tuesday afternoon.
Stock
futures are little changed as Wall Street looks to build on back-to-back gains
(cnbc.com)
Back
in the real world, things don’t look quite so rosy. Will China’s reopening from
ludicrous Covid-19 lockdowns be enough to save the global economy from a 2023
recession?
If
yes, how high will crude oil prices rise even if President Biden opts for never
refilling the US strategic petroleum reserve.
Japan's
factory activity extends declines for third straight month - PMI
January 24, 2023 12:36
AM GMT
TOKYO, Jan 24
(Reuters) - Japan's manufacturing activity contracted for a third straight
month in January as export weakness persisted amid a worsening global outlook,
a corporate survey showed on Tuesday.
The
au Jibun Bank flash Japan manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) was at
a seasonally adjusted 48.9 in January, unchanged from the final reading in the
previous month.
The
soft factory activity clouds policymakers' hopes that key wage talks in the months ahead will
offset the squeeze to consumers from 41-year-high inflation and help sustain
the fragile post-pandemic recovery.
The index stayed
below the 50-line that separates contraction from expansion for a third
straight month, after December's final figure marked the fastest fall in 26 months.
Factory
output and new orders decreased for a seventh consecutive month, although at
slower paces than last month, the sub-index data showed.
The
Reuters Tankan survey last week showed the first negative reading for
business confidence at big Japanese firms in two years amid worsening overseas
conditions and rising living costs.
By contrast,
service-sector activity extended growth for a fifth month, thanks to a tourism
boom and relaxation of COVID-19 curbs.
The
au Jibun Bank flash services PMI rose to a seasonally adjusted 52.4 in January
from the previous month's 51.1 final, hitting a three-month high.
"Similar
to trends recorded over much of the past six months, a divergence between the
manufacturing and services sectors has remained," said Laura Denman,
economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, which compiles the survey.
On the outlook,
however, service operators were less optimistic, with a business sentiment
sub-index hitting the lowest in 24 months. While input prices rose at a faster
pace than the previous two months, output price inflation was the slowest in
five months, squeezing profitability.
Overall,
the au Jibun Bank Flash Japan composite PMI rose to 50.8 in January, up from
last month's final 49.7 and emerging above the break-even 50 line for the first
time in three months.
Japan's
factory activity extends declines for third straight month - PMI | Reuters
Finally, in
crypto news, would the last one out please turn out the lights. How long before
Gemini follows Genesis into bankruptcy?
In other crypto
news, did/is Uncle Scam buying bitcoin to pay-off an aviation hack that
grounded all US flights recently? Of course not, officially, the “hack” was
just a programing error during an “upgrade” gone wrong, but the rumour still
has legs.
Crypto exchange
Gemini lays off 10% of workforce in its latest round of cuts
Crypto exchange Gemini will reduce its headcount
by 10%, a spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.
It’s at least the third round of
cuts in less than a year for Gemini, which was co-founded by twins Cameron and
Tyler Winklevoss, and unlike many of its peers, is subject to New York banking regulation.
Gemini had 1,000 employees as of
November 2022, according to PitchBook data, suggesting around 100 people lost
their positions. TechCrunch reported that Gemini had previously trimmed its
headcount by 7% in July 2022, following
a 10% staff a month earlier.
Other crypto firms like Crypto.com, Coinbase, Kraken,
and Genesis have
eliminated positions since Nov. 11, the day that Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto
exchange FTX filed
for bankruptcy. In
early January, Coinbase slashed 20% of its workforce in a second
major round of job cuts in an effort to preserve cash during the crypto market
downturn.
“It was our hope to avoid further
reductions after this summer, however, persistent negative macroeconomic
conditions and unprecedented fraud perpetuated by bad actors in our industry
have left us with no other choice but to revise our outlook and further reduce
headcount,” wrote Cameron Winklevoss in an internal message obtained by The Information.
Gemini has endured a battle
over customer funds in recent weeks. The exchange also faces a legal
fight with the Securities and Exchange Commission over an
alleged unregistered offering and sale of securities in connection with its
partnership with Barry Silbert’s bankrupt
company, Genesis.
Gemini has been embroiled in an
intense spat with Silbert’s Genesis Trading, a crypto lending firm that
generated rich returns for Gemini clients through Gemini’s high-yield lending
product, which is known as Gemini Earn.
The relationship soured when FTX
filed for bankruptcy. Genesis subsequently froze lending and redemptions
shortly thereafter, leaving Gemini customers short an estimated $900 million.
The chain of failures also forced the Gemini Earn product to quickly follow
suit with its own temporary suspension.
In the months since the Earn
product was halted, Gemini’s 340,000 customers have grown increasingly
frustrated. Some have banded together in a class action lawsuit against the
exchange.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy
protection on Jan. 19. The filing lists the 50 largest unsecured creditors,
with Gemini topping the list at $765.9 million — more than $300 million higher
than the next creditor.
Crypto
exchange Gemini lays off 10% of workforce (cnbc.com)
Bitcoin’s 2023
rally gathers steam as cryptocurrency briefly tops $23,000
Bitcoin has kicked
off 2023 on a positive note, with investors hoping for a reversal in the
monetary tightening that spooked market players last year.
The Fed and other
central banks began cutting interest rates in 2022, shocking holders of risky
asset classes, like stocks and digital tokens. Publicly-listed tech stocks and
private venture capital-backed start-ups particularly took a beating, as
investors sought protection in assets perceived as safer, such as cash and
bonds.
With inflation now showing signs of cooling in the
U.S., some market players are hopeful that central banks will start easing the
pace of rate rises, or even slash rates. Economists previously
told CNBC they predict a Fed
rate cut could happen as soon as this year.
“Fed tightening
seems to be lighter and inflation less of a risk,” Charles Hayter, CEO of
crypto data site CryptoCompare, said in emailed comments to CNBC. “There is
hope there will be more caution to rate rises globally.”
The Fed is likely to keep interest rates
high for the time being. However, some officials at the bank have recently
called for a reduction in the size of quarterly rate hikes, wary of a slowdown
in economic activity.
The world’s top
digital currency, bitcoin, is “increasingly looking like it has put in its
bottom,” according to Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and
international at crypto exchange Luno.
Bitcoin short
sellers have been squeezed by sudden upward moves in prices, according to
Ayyar. Short selling is an investment strategy whereby traders borrow an asset
and then sell it in the hope that it will depreciate in value.
A wipe-out of those
short positions sparked by the rising price of bitcoin has added “fuel to the
fire,” Ayyar said, as short sellers are forced to cover their bets by buying
back the borrowed bitcoin to close them out.
Investors don’t seem to have been greatly
perturbed by the collapses of top crypto companies, stemming from the fallout
of digital currency exchange FTX’s insolvency in November.
More
Bitcoin
2023 rally gathers steam as cryptocurrency tops $23,000 (cnbc.com)
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.
Where investors might
want to look if interest rates and inflation persist
Mon,
January 23, 2023 at 11:00 AM GMT
Given just how sensitive the
market is to interest rates these
days, it isn’t a surprise that all eyes remain focused on central bankers
trying to figure out when they will not only slow the pace of their hikes, but
cut them and return to the good old days of quantitative easing and easy money.
For example, we’ve read that the
bond market is currently factoring in a 70-per-cent chance of a 25-basis-point
rate hike this week by the Bank of Canada, with its first rate cut coming in September, after last
week’s Canadian consumer price index print of 6.3 per cent.
The probability of a recession in
the United States stands at 65 per cent among analysts, according to Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. Not surprisingly, 20 per cent believe the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut
rates this year while 52 per cent are expecting a rate cut the first half of
2024.
----What happens if the global economy does not enter a deep
recession or even a recession at all, and inflation moderates but not below the
targeted two per cent and stays in the four-to-five-per-cent range? Why would
central bankers reduce interest rates should this play out? Why is their target
two per cent? Isn’t it about having positive real rates?
We think with China’s economy
reopening, continuing wage hikes due to demographic trends and persistent large
fiscal-deficit spending by left-leaning governments in the developed world will
all provide a floor to just how low inflation will fall and, with it, interest
rates without sending the world into a recession.
We are already seeing hints of this
taking shape.
The stock price of Caterpillar
Inc., which is a go-to bellwether of the health of the global economy, is now
back to all-time highs. During its third-quarter conference call, management
indicated it is witnessing increased sales across all regions and business
lines. Shares of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, the Paris-based
conglomerate specializing in luxury goods, are also setting new all-time highs.
While in the early stages, global
commodities are showing some strength, with copper now up more than 25 per cent
from its July 2022 lows, SGX TSI Iron Ore up nearly 60 per cent from November,
and RBOB Gasoline Futures up over 23 per cent from December.
More
Where investors might want to look if interest rates
and inflation persist (yahoo.com)
Recession to be more
than twice as bad as first feared, forecasters warn
January 23 2023
The much touted coming recession in Britain will be twice as
bad as first feared, new forecasts out today reveal.
Soaring prices coupled with the Bank
of England’s efforts to tame them are set to deal a heavier blow to GDP than
projected just a few months ago.
According to the EY Item Club, the
economy will shrink 0.7 per cent this year, worse than the 0.3 per cent the
organisation forecast in October.
The cumulative lost GDP will
be about the same amount shed during the recession in the early 1990s that saw
house prices collapse and the UK crash out of the European Exchange Rate
Mechanism.
The recession will be a lot
shallower than the ones sparked by the financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic.
But, the government reining
in energy bill support and raising taxes has put the economy on a weaker long
term path.
The EY Item Club slashed its forecasts
for each of the next three years, down to 1.9 per cent from 2.4 per cent
in 2023 and to 2.2 per cent from 2.3 per cent in 2025.
Inflation is on track to decline
quickly this year, pushed lower by international energy prices falling back to
their pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine levels, to under four per cent, still
nearly double the Bank of England’s two per cent target.
Living costs have climbed more than
10 per cent over the last year, the quickest acceleration in 40 years, leaving
wages in their wake. This means households have less capacity to buy goods and
services.
More
Recession to be more than twice as bad as first
feared, forecasters warn (msn.com)
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.
Will Covid reinfections pose increased health risks?
Experts aren’t sure
A
study found that repeat infections increases the possibility of hospitalization
or death, but some experts refute those findings
Mon 23 Jan 2023 08.30
GMT
A recent study states that Covid-19 reinfections could
pose additional risks to people’s long-term health – as compared to only
getting Covid once – however some infectious disease experts in the US disagree
that there is evidence showing repeat infections are more dangerous.
The issue of the impact of repeated infections is
becoming a crucial one in the United States as the Covid-19 pandemic is now
tailing off amid a widespread relaxation of any social distancing or
restrictions, which has seen many people catch the virus two or more times.
A
second or more Covid infection increases a person’s risk of death,
hospitalization and various adverse health outcomes, including diabetes and
neurological disorders, according
to the study published in the Nature Medicine journal that looked at
the healthcare database from the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
“Reinfection is consequential in the sense that if you
get Covid again, even if you have had it before and even if you have been
vaccinated, that still could put you in the hospital, that still in some cases,
can result in death,” said Dr Ziyad Al-Aly, an author of the study who works as
a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University and as chief of research at
the Veteran Affairs St Louis Healthcare system.
But Dr Celine Gounder, an infectious disease
epidemiologist and editor-at-large at Kaiser Health News, is among those who
said that immunity from a first infection means that a subsequent infection
poses a lower risk of
such outcomes.
“There is nothing about a reinfection that is more
dangerous than an original infection, and if anything, a reinfection is going
to be lower risk because you have some immunity baseline at the time of
reinfection,” said Gounder.
The debate over the risks of reinfections – which experts
say are likely to continue –
could determine what precautions people take against Covid and whether people
worry unnecessarily at a time when the pandemic has already taken a toll on
mental health.
The VA researchers decided to conduct the study because
patients who had already been infected were coming to local clinics with this
“air of invincibility about them”, Al-Aly said. “Some media actually started
referring to these patients as ‘super immune’. ”
To determine if that was valid, the researchers compared
health outcomes among more than 440,000 participants with no Covid reinfection
with about 40,000 participants who had at least one reinfection. They found
that the reinfection posed increased risk of mortality and adverse health
outcomes during the acute phase and six months after infection.
As such, when people consider whether it’s worth taking
precautions to protect themselves from reinfections, “the answer to that is a
yes”, Al-Aly said.
But other infectious disease experts see potential
problems with the study. For example, the VA patient population is mostly older
and male.
“What might pop up in a database with a lot of sicker,
older people won’t necessarily apply to younger, healthier people,” said John
Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical
College.
More
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.
Magnetic
solution removes toxic "forever chemicals" from water in seconds
Michael Irving January 22, 2023
Scientists
in Australia have developed an intriguing new technique for removing toxic
“forever chemicals” from water. Adding a solution to contaminated water coats
the pollutants and makes them magnetic, so they can easily be attracted and
isolated.
Per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of chemicals that have been in
wide use around the world since the 1950s, thanks to their water- and
oil-repelling properties. However, more recently PFAS chemicals have been
linked to a concerning number of health problems, including increased
risks of diabetes and liver
cancer. Worse still, a recent study has found that
their levels
in rainwater almost everywhere on Earth exceed the
EPA’s guidelines, and to cap it all off, these stable molecules are very hard
to break down, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals.”
Now, researchers at
the University of Queensland have developed a technique that could help remove
PFAS chemicals from water. The team designed a solution called a magnetic fluorinated
polymer sorbent which, when added to contaminated water, coats the PFAS
molecules. This makes them magnetic, so then it’s a relatively simple process
to use a magnet to attract the pollutants and separate them from the water.
In tests with small
samples of PFAS-laden water, the team found that the technique could remove
over 95% of most PFAS molecules, including over 99% of GenX – a particularly
problematic chemical – within 30 seconds.
Plenty of teams have
investigated ways to break
down PFAS, usually involving catalysts
triggered by UV
light or heat. Others have made use
of hydrogen or supercritical
water.
But the researchers on the
new study say their magnetic solution has a few advantages over existing PFAS
removal techniques. The solution itself can be reused up to 10 times, it can
work much faster than others, and doesn’t require any extra energy to trigger
the reaction.
----The research was
published in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The team describes the work in the
video below.
Magnetic solution
removes toxic "forever chemicals" from water in seconds
(newatlas.com)
The inflated imitations of gold and silver, which after the
rapture are thrown into the fire, all is exhausted and dissipated by the debt.
All scrips and bonds are wiped out. At the fourth pillar dedicated to Saturn,
split by earthquake and flood: vexing everyone, an urn of gold is found and
then restored.
Nostradamus.
No comments:
Post a Comment