Baltic Dry Index. 935 +52 Brent Crude 82.60
Spot Gold 1814 US 2 Year Yield 4.78 unch.
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 28/02/23 World 679,863,569
Deaths 6,799,565
“The nearest
thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”
It is the last trading day of February in the stock casinos, time to dress up stocks yet again.
In truth there's almost no reason to be long most stocks at present, let alone be buying more, unless you think the central banksters will wimp out on the inflation fight, setting off entrenched inflation in the global economy.
But that way lies near hyper-inflation, social disorder and collapse of currencies and countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
With a US presidential election coming up in 2024, that would be gifting the presidency back to one Donald J. Trump. Something the US deep state loathes.
Below, the latest from the gambling casinos.
Asia markets
mixed as Hong Kong announces to lift mask mandate, Japan’s factory output falls
UPDATED MON, FEB 27 2023 10:56 PM
EST
Asia-Pacific markets were mostly higher on
Tuesday as investors digested key economic data across the region.
The Hang Seng index rose
0.45% as Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee announced to
drop its mask mandate starting March 1. The Hang Seng Tech index meanwhile fell
0.5%
In mainland China, the Shenzhen Component inched
up 0.2%, and the Shanghai
Composite was fractionally higher.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.94%,
leading gains in the region while the Kosdaq rose 1.26% as battery material
maker L&F stocks jumped after winning a contract with Tesla.
The Nikkei 225 and
the Topix both rose 0.2% as the country saw its worst decline in factory output
in eight months, recording a 4.6% drop in January compared to December.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
0.47% as retail sales for January came in higher than expected at 1.9% compared
to December, higher than expectations of a 1.5% rise.
India will release its gross
domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2022 later today, forecasted to show
a 4.6% rise.
Overnight in the US, stocks rose
on Monday night as traders tried to recover some ground following the worst
week of the year on Wall Street. All three major US indexes closed higher, with
the Nasdaq Composite leading
gains.
Asia
markets, Australia retail sales, Hong Kong mask mandate, Bank of Japan
(cnbc.com)
Stock futures
inch higher as Wall Street braces for final trading day of February: Live
updates
UPDATED MON, FEB 27 2023 11:30 PM
EST
Stocks futures rose slightly in overnight
trading as investors braced for the final
trading day of February.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average gained
30 points, or 0.10%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures
added 0.12% each.
Zoom
Video surged
nearly 8% in overnight trading on strong
earnings, while Occidental
Petroleum’s
stock fell 1% after posting a top-and-bottom line miss.
The overnight moves followed an
up session for all the major averages as Treasury yields eased. The Dow Jones Industrial average
rose 72.17 points or 0.22%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite gained
0.31% and 0.63%, respectively.
Tuesday marks the final
trading day of February. Despite a solid start to the year, all the
major indexes are on pace for their second negative month in three. As of
Monday’s close, the Dow is down 3.5% for the month and the only major index
negative for the year. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are positive in 2023,
but down 2.3% and 1%, respectively, in February.
February “will go down in history
as the month where the market pulled back to digest a very strong rally you saw
at the end of December into most of January,” said Adam Sarhan, CEO of 50 Park
Investments. “This is a pullback month, it’s a rest month, and that’s good as
long as support is defended and support holds, which is last week’s low.”
More retail earnings reports
offering clues into the health of the consumer are slated for Tuesday,
including results from Target, AutoZone, Rivian Automotive, Norwegian Cruise
Line Holdings and AMC Entertainment.
On the economic front, investors
also await consumer confidence data, wholesale inventories, Chicago PMI and the
S&P Case-Shiller home prices index.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
In other news, is the US oil boom slowly
turning into bust? Tomorrow Russia’s new oil sales sanctions come into effect,
but no one takes them seriously.
Column:
US oil drilling falls in response to lower prices
February
28, 2023 12:59 AM GMT
LONDON, Feb 27
(Reuters) - U.S. oil drilling activity has begun to decline in response to the
downturn in prices since the middle of 2022 - which will translate into slower
production growth throughout the rest of 2023 and into 2024.
The
number of rigs drilling for oil fell to 600 in the week ending on Feb. 24, down
from a recent peak of 627 in the week ending on Dec. 2, oilfield services
company Baker Hughes found.
The
rig count has declined in five of the eight most recent weeks and is at the
lowest level since the start of July 2022 (“North America rig count”, Baker Hughes, Feb.
24, 2023).
The acceleration
of drilling activity that started in August 2020 after the first wave of the
pandemic appears to have paused or possibly ended.
Over
the last three decades, changes in the rig count have generally followed
changes in front-month WTI futures prices with an average lag of about 4-5
months (roughly 19 weeks).
When
prices rise, delays reflect the time needed to confirm a change in price level
is persistent rather than temporary, contract extra rigs, move them to the
drill site, erect the equipment, and begin boring.
When prices fall,
the lag reflects time needed to confirm the trend, finish part-drilled wells,
drill wells already under contract, and idle unneeded rigs.
In
this instance, WTI futures peaked at the start of June 2022, when they were
more than 70% higher than at the same time a year before.
The
number of rigs drilling for oil peaked in late November, roughly 25 weeks after
prices peaked, slightly longer than average.
Since June 2022,
however, prices have generally retreated, which has been reflected in a gradual
turnover in drilling activity rates.
Prices
are roughly 15% below year-ago levels and still trending lower, implying
drilling is likely to continue falling through end of June 2023.
More
Column:
US oil drilling falls in response to lower prices | Reuters
Finally, more on so you really, really,
really want to drive an EV.
Ford Suspends Production of
F-150 Lightning EV for Additional Week After Battery Fire
February 26, 2023Updated: February 26, 2023
Ford Motor Co. will halt on F-150 Lightning
production until the end of next week following a battery problem that caused
an EV truck to catch fire during a pre-delivery check, the company said on
Friday.
“The teams worked quickly to
identify the root cause of the issue,” Ford spokesperson Emma Bergg said
in a statement Friday.
“We agree with SK On’s
recommended changes in their equipment and processes for SK’s cell production
lines.”
SK On, a South Korean EV battery
maker and supplier, has started building battery cells again at a plant in
Georgia.
However, it will take time “to
ensure they are back to building high-quality cells and to deliver them to the
Lightning production line.”
Ford will continue to hold completed trucks until
engineering and production changes are made.
The company said it does not believe vehicles
already in use by customers are affected by the fire issue.
Ford previously said that production at its Rouge
Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan would be postponed until at least
the end of this week as engineers identified the root cause of the battery
problem.
The Feb. 4 fire happened at an outdoor lot near
Dearborn, Michigan where vehicles are held for quality checks.
One Lightning caught fire and spread to two nearby
vehicles, causing the company to halt production the next day. No injuries
were reported.
The production halt comes at an inopportune time
for Ford, which has struggled with quality issues, recalls, and high warranty
costs for several years. The problem also stops the production of a popular
product.
Bergg previously said the company is still working
through a backlog of nearly 200,000 reservations for the F-150 Lightning since
it stopped taking them in December 2021. Reservation holders put down $100
deposits, which Ford was converting to orders.
Last year, Ford sold more than 15,000 of the trucks
in its first full year of production.
There have been previous problems with the
lithium-ion batteries used in most electric vehicles. Fires in the batteries
can burn very hot and take thousands of gallons of water to extinguish, which
has caused difficulty for firefighters attempting to put out battery fires in
several Teslas after crashes. General Motors, Hyundai, BMW, and others have
issued recalls of the batteries.
Well,
what do you know, another Segway?
Free
Drive "bike-by-wire" system will soon be hitting the road
Ben Coxworth February 24, 2023
Two years ago we first heard about
Schaeffler's Free
Drive system, which uses a generator instead of
a chain or belt to propel an ebike. The technology is now entering its first
commercial use, in fleets of ebikes made for commuting and cargo-hauling.
Developed
in partnership with two-wheel electric drive specialist Heinzmann, the Free
Drive system incorporates a bottom-bracket-integrated generator, a rear hub
motor, a lithium battery pack, and a handlebar-mounted control module.
As the rider
pedals, they spin up the generator. Doing so converts their mechanical energy
into electrical energy, which is fed into the motor. That motor converts the
electrical energy back into mechanical energy, which is used to turn the wheel.
The generator
regulates the amount of resistance that the rider experiences while pedaling,
based on the level of pedaling effort they have selected in order to maintain
cruising speed. Should they pedal harder than is necessary, the excess energy
is stored in the battery. A regenerative braking system helps keep the battery
topped up.
Although Schaeffler
admits that Free Drive is about 5% less efficient than a chain drive at
converting pedaling power into forward motion, the system also allows for much
greater freedom when it comes to the design of pedal-powered vehicles – after
all, the crankset only needs to be connected to the rear wheel via electrical
wiring.
Additionally, Free
Drive reportedly requires much less maintenance than a chain drive
Schaeffler has now announced that the system
will be making its first commercial appearance in the mocci Smart Pedal Vehicle
made by fellow German company CIP Mobility. The latter firm will be selling
fleets of the mocci ebikes to corporate clients, who will in turn use them in
bike-sharing projects, urban deliveries or other applications.
Along with its Free Drive
drivetrain, some of the mocci's other features include sturdy one-piece
monocoque wheels; a recyclable polyamide frame made using a unique injection
molding process; a built-in telemetry system; plus multiple rack-mounting
points and an optional cargo trailer.
Sources: Schaeffler, CIP Group via Electrek
Free Drive
"bike-by-wire" system will soon be hitting the road (newatlas.com)
Segway
---- The Segway PT, referred to during development and
initial marketing as the Segway HT, was developed from the self-balancing iBOT wheelchair
which was initially developed at University of
Plymouth, in conjunction
with BAE Systems and Sumitomo
Precision Products.[3] Segway's
first patent was filed in 1994 and granted in 1997,[4] followed
by others,[5] including
one submitted in June 1999 and granted in October 2001.[6]
Prior to its introduction, a
news report[7] about
a proposal for a book about the invention, development, and financing of the
Segway[8] led
to speculation about the device and its importance. John Doerr speculated
that it would be more important than the Internet.[9] South Park devoted
an episode to making fun of the hype before the product was
released. Steve Jobs was
quoted as saying that it was "as big a deal as the PC",[9] (he
later expressed a negative opinion, saying that it "sucked",
presumably referring to "the design" - but also referred to the
(presumably high) price point, asking, "You're sure your
market is upscale consumers for transportation?")[10] The
device was unveiled on 3 December 2001, following months of public speculation,[11] in Bryant Park, New York City,
on the ABC News morning
program Good Morning
America,[12][13] with
the first units delivered to customers in early 2002.[14]
More
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.
Will eurozone
core inflation remain stubbornly high?
February
26, 2023
Economists expect headline eurozone inflation to drop to close to a year low in
February, but the core reading, which excludes volatile items like fuel, food
and tobacco, is set to remain stickier.
The preliminary data released on Thursday will, according to a Reuters poll, show eurozone annual consumer price growth slowing to 8.1 per cent this month, down from 8.6 per cent in January. This would be well below the October peak of 10.6 per cent and the lowest since April 2022.
However, the decline is likely to be driven by lower energy price rises. Core inflation is set to remain at 5.3 per cent, the highest on record. Economists forecast the trend to continue throughout 2023.
Iaroslav Shelepko, economist at Barclays, said eurozone headline inflation this year would show a “sharp deceleration driven by further energy disinflation and its spillovers into food and non-energy goods inflation, as well as very negative base effects”.
But he warned that the easing in core inflation “is likely to be even more gradual as underlying strong momentum takes time to unwind”.
Stubborn underlying price pressures will continue to support the case for the European Central Bank to raise rates. Markets have priced in a half percentage point increase at the ECB meeting on March 16. That would take the deposit rate to 3 per cent. It was minus 0.5 per cent only last July.
On Thursday, the ECB will also publish its account of the February monetary policy
meeting, which concluded with a half percentage point increase. Investors will
monitor it to gauge more details on the planned path for rates beyond March.
Ellie
Henderson, economist at Investec, noted that the minutes come just hours after
the February flash inflation print for the eurozone: “an off-consensus print
could steal the limelight in markets from the backward-looking account”, she
said. Valentina Romei
More
Will eurozone core inflation remain stubbornly high? | Financial Times (ft.com)
Suppliers for
retailers increase prices by more than double inflation
February
26, 2023
Suppliers for
retailers have increased prices by more than double the rate of inflation.
Some have
requested up to 30 per cent more despite their own costs having risen by just
15 per cent, according to business management consultant Inverto.
Boss Sushank
Agarwal said some had been 'using inflation to grow their profit margins'.
Last month,
household titans behind some of Britain's favourite brands – including Heinz
baked beans and Head & Shoulders shampoo – were accused of 'greedflation'
after cashing in monster profits while whacking customers with heftier prices.
Suppliers for retailers increase prices by more than double inflation | This is Money
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Below, what has been pretty obvious to most
scientists and LIR readers since at least March 2020. The Chinese “gain of function” coronavirus
research was being funded in China with US funds “laundered” through the NYC EcoHealth
Alliance NGO, to get around US laws prohibiting highly dangerous gain of
function research in the USA.
With almost 7 million dead globally, the USA and
China both owe the rest of the world a massive apology. Don’t hold your breath.
Covid-19 likely came from lab leak, says news report
citing US energy department
Updated
finding comes with ‘low confidence’ and is a departure from previous studies on
how virus emerged, Wall Street Journal reports
Sun 26 Feb 2023 17.46
GMT
The virus that drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely
emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according
to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the
White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The department’s finding – a departure from previous
studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the
office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines, the WSJ reported. It
follows a finding reportedly issued with “moderate confidence” by the FBI that
the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.
The conclusion from the energy department – which
oversees a network of 17 US laboratories, including areas of advanced biology –
would be significant despite the fact that, as the report said, the agency made
its updated judgment with “low confidence”.
Conflicting hypotheses on the origins of Covid-19 have
centered either on an unidentified animal transmitting the virus to humans or
its accidental leak from a Chinese research laboratory in Wuhan.
The spread of Covid-19, just one in a line of infectious
coronoviruses to emerge, caught global health bodies unawares in early 2020. It
has since caused close to 7 million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health
Organization, and disrupted trade as well as travel.
Former US president Donald Trump politicized the issue,
calling it the “China virus”, triggering a racialization of a pandemic that his
Democratic successor Joe Biden has sought to avoid. But political polarization
remains under the surface of efforts to establish its origins.
The energy department’s updated findings run counter to
reports by four other US intelligence agencies that concluded the epidemic
started as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal. Two
agencies remain undecided.
US officials, the Journal said, also declined to expand
on new intelligence or analysis that led the energy department to change its
position. They also noted that the energy department and FBI arrived at the
same conclusion for different reasons.
More
Hong Kong to
scrap Covid mask mandate from March 1
Hong Kong will drop
its Covid-19 mask mandate, chief executive John Lee said on Tuesday, in a move
to lure back visitors and business and restore normal life more than three
years after stringent rules were first imposed in the financial hub.
The measure will take
effect from Wednesday, Lee told a press briefing. The special administrative
region of Hong Kong is one of the last places globally that still imposes a
mask mandate.
Hong Kong and Macao
both followed China’s zero-Covid policy for much of the past three years. Hong
Kong started unwinding its stringent Covid rules last year but mask-wearing has
remained constant since 2020.
More
Hong
Kong to scrap Covid mask mandate from March 1 (cnbc.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.
Solar set to
overtake other energy sources by 2027
Cheaper
installation costs and energy security concerns are driving expansion
February 27, 2023
A
little more than a decade ago, solar power was an also-ran in the global energy
race. At less than 1 per cent, it had the smallest share of generation capacity
of any major power source.
But
all that has changed. Next year, solar photovoltaic capacity will leapfrog that
of hydropower, according to the International Energy Agency. In three years, it
will overtake gas-fired generation. And, in four years, it will push past coal
— to boast the largest share of generation capacity of any power source.
A
buildout of solar installations — from Arizona in the US to Anhui, China — has
been at the forefront of a renewable energy charge that has muscled-in on the
old energy order.
Now,
as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushes energy security concerns centre stage,
the development of solar is set to pick up speed — with record breaking numbers
of installations forecast in each of the next five years.
“There
is a boom, there is exponential growth, there is acceleration,” says Heymi
Bahar, senior analyst for renewable energy markets and policy at the IEA.
“Solar accounts for almost 60 per cent of every power installation that will be
built in the coming five years.”
While
its intermittent nature means solar will not immediately produce more
electricity than coal or gas — which can be turned on and off as required and
will churn out electrons whatever the weather — the scale of the installation
boom underlines the seismic shift in electricity generation.
Fast falling costs have been the primary driver of the solar buildout in recent
years. The average unsubsidised lifetime cost to build and operate
utility-scale solar was just $36 per megawatt hour in 2021, according to
financial advisers Lazard — down about 90 per cent since 2009. That compares
with $108/MWh for coal, $60/MWh for combined cycle gas, and $38/MWh for wind.
Costs
picked up last year as the price of component parts, most notably polysilicon,
soared. But utility-scale solar was still the cheapest option for new
electricity generation in most parts of the world. The rate of installations
grew by more than half last year, says the consultancy S&P Global Commodity
Insights.
Aggressive
climate targets and accompanying policies, with generous subsidies in
jurisdictions across the world, have helped.
Vladimir
Putin’s weaponisation of gas exports, to hit allies of Ukraine, has further
encouraged the setting of tough targets in the EU, as the bloc tries to wean
itself off its reliance on Russian fossil fuels by 2027. Russia supplied the
continent with 155bn cubic metres of gas in 2021, or 40 per cent of its
consumption, primarily in power and heating.
Under
its RePower EU plan, released last May, the bloc now wants to generate 45 per
cent of its power from renewables by 2030, with a focus on more than doubling
solar installations to 320GW by 2025 and 600GW by 2030. That alone will cut gas
consumption by 9 bcm by 2027, Brussels estimates.
More
Solar set to
overtake other energy sources by 2027 | Financial Times (ft.com)
“I have wondered at times about what the Ten
Commandment’s would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S.
Congress.”
