Baltic Dry Index. 538 +08 Brent Crude 83.00
Spot Gold 1842 U S 2 Year Yield 4.60 -0.02
Dow closes more than 100 points higher on Friday, but
notches third straight week of losses on rate fears: Live updates
UPDATED FRI, FEB 17 2023 5:28 PM EST
U.S. stocks
were mixed on Friday as stubbornly high inflation and a rebound in rates
continued to weigh on investor sentiment.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose
129.84 points, or 0.39% to end at 33,826.69. The 30-stock index rallied from
lows of the day boosted by shares of Amgen and United Health,
which gained 2.69% and 2.41% respectively.
The S&P 500 shed
0.28% to end the day at 4,079.09, and the Nasdaq Composite fell
0.58% to close at 11,787.27. Energy was the biggest laggard. Devon Energy dropped
4.29%, dragging down the S&P 500.
Yields on the 10-year and 2-year U.S. Treasury
bonds hit levels not seen since November, weighing on equities early in the
session.
Stocks are mixed on the week. The
Dow ended down 0.13% for the week, its third negative week in a row — a first
since September. The S&P 500 has shed 0.28% for the week, its second negative week in a
row. The Nasdaq rose 0.59% on the week.
Investors continue to worry about
how the economy and equities will hold up as the Federal Reserve hikes rates to
tame stubbornly high inflation. In a
Friday speech, Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said
there’s a long way to go before the central bank reaches its target of 2% inflation.
---- The moves came after major averages
shed more than 1% on Thursday, after the Labor Department said the producer
price index — an inflation metric that tracks wholesale prices
— rose 0.7% last month. That was more than economists expected.
Next week, investors will
continue to watch earnings season for signs of consumer strength or weakness. Home Depot, Walmart and Etsy are
scheduled to report results next week.
The Conference Board expects a U.S.
recession in 2023
By Daniel J. Graeber FEB. 17,
2023 / 1:14 PM
Feb. 17 (UPI) -- A leading index on the trajectory of the U.S.
economy is pointing toward a recession, with expectations of lackluster
consumer spending going forward, The Conference Board said Friday.
The board's Leading
Economic Index declined by 0.3% in January, following an 0.8%
contraction in December. Between July and January, the index is down 3.6%,
compared with a 2.4% decline from January 2022 to July.
Ataman Ozyildirim, a senior
director of economics at The Conference Board, said there was a decline in new
orders from the manufacturing sector, consumer sentiment was souring and
business conditions were deteriorating.
"While the LEI continues
to signal recession in the near term, indicators related to the labor market --
including employment and personal income -- remain robust so far," he
said. "Nonetheless, The Conference Board still expects high inflation,
rising interest rates and contracting consumer spending to tip the U.S. economy
into recession in 2023."
Consumer-level inflation is
showing little sign of slowing down. Prices between December and January
increased by 0.5% and annual inflation is at 6.4%, a downtick of just 0.1% from
the previous month-on-month reading.
U.S. wholesale
prices increased by 0.7% in January, the largest gain since
early last year. The increase in the Producer Price Index, a measure of
inflation at the wholesale level, followed a 0.3% rise in November and a 0.2%
contraction in December.
Loretta
Mester, the president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said
Thursday that aggressive rate hikes last year have managed to
lower consumer-level inflation, but there's more work to do.
At this point, she said, there's a
"compelling case" to increase the Fed's benchmark rate by another 50
basis points, twice as high as its first rate hike of the year, but less
aggressive than the 75 basis point increases that dominated 2022.
More
The
Conference Board expects a U.S. recession in 2023 - UPI.com
Former NBA player to pay $1.4
million to settle SEC crypto fraud charge
FEB. 17, 2023 / 1:46 PM / UPDATED
FEB. 17, 2023 AT 2:32 PM
Feb. 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Friday
charged former NBA player Paul Pierce for touting EMAX
cryptocurrency tokens without disclosing he was paid to do it. The SEC also
said he made false and misleading statements about cryptocurrency.
According to
the SEC, Pierce failed to disclose he was paid $244,000 in EMAX tokens to
promote them on Twitter. Pierce agreed to settle the charges and pay $1.409
million in penalties, disgorgement and interest.
Sam Bankman-Fried's $250 million bail bond is a 'joke' and
prosecutors have been too 'lenient' with the FTX founder, securities lawyer
says
Fri, 17 February 2023 at 5:18 pm GMT
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's
bail conditions and the $250 million bond for his release are
"ludicrous," according to a long-time securities lawyer.
Bankman-Fried was released on a
$250 million bail bond in late December, which was cosigned by his parents, who
pledged their home in Palo Alto as collateral. This week, it was learned that
there were two other guarantors as well, Stanford University's Andreas Paepcke
and Larry Kramer, a former dean at the university's law school.
"The original bond is a
joke," James Murphy, a cofounder of law firm Murphy & McGonigle PC,
told CoinDesk TV. "Prosecutors
wanted to look tough and wanted to be able to say, 'This is the largest bond
anybody's ever seen.'"
Murphy says there was no real
money used for Bankman-Fried's bond, but a promise not to flee the country.
Kramer and Paepcke would only have to "write a check" if
Bankman-Fried decides to skip town.
"Normally you've got to put
up property assets to back the bond or go to a bail bondsman and give them 10%
to 15% of the face amount of the bond...None of that happened," Murphy
said.
Bankman-Fried's bail conditions
tightened earlier this month after he sent a text to
a former top FTX executive, which an overseeing judge described as a
"material threat of inappropriate contact with prospective
witnesses."
After this, Bankman-Fried was
also using a virtual private network (VPN) to access the internet. Prosecutors
expressed concern that he was using it to trade crypto, which is in violation
of his bail terms. Attorneys for Bankman-Fried say their client was only using
a VPN to watching football.
"I cannot explain it, based on
my 30 years of doing this. I've never seen anything this lenient in a situation
where someone has millions of victims," Murphy said. "I don't know
why [prosecutors] continue to be lenient, as he's kind of pushing the envelope
in terms of what he can do."
Federal prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried helped
orchestrate "one of the biggest financial frauds in American
history." He is facing eight criminal charges,
including conspiracy to misappropriate FTX customer funds.
Third high-level FTX executive nears
plea deal with US prosecutors
Nishad Singh was a close associate of Sam Bankman-Fried, who
founded the now-bankrupt crypto exchange
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.
Goldman Sachs now expects three
more Fed rate hikes in 2023
February
17, 2023 10:27 AM GMT
Feb 17 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs said
it was expecting the U.S. Federal Reserve to raise interest rates three more
times this year by a quarter of a percentage point each, after data this week
pointed to persistent inflation and resilience in the labor market.
Producer prices
accelerated in January by the biggest margin in seven months, according
to data on
Thursday, while a Labor Department report showed the number of Americans filing
new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week.
"In light of the stronger growth and firmer inflation news, we are
adding a 25bp (basis points) rate hike in June to our Fed forecast, for a peak
funds rate of 5.25-5.5%," economists led by Jan Hatzius said in a note
dated Thursday.
Meanwhile, money markets are currently pricing in a terminal rate of
5.3% by July.
After the recent U.S. data, European investment bank UBS said it was
expecting the central bank to raise rates by 25 bps at its March and May
meetings, which may leave the fed funds rate at the 5-5.25% range.
"After that, we expect the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) to
turn around and begin to cut interest rates at the September FOMC
meeting," UBS wrote in a client note.
J.P.Morgan had, before the recent U.S. data, forecast the terminal rate
at 5.1% by the end of June, while BofA Global Research had forecast it in the
range of 5-5.25% by the end of the year.
BofA had also pencilled in two rate hikes of 25 bps each earlier.
A majority of
economists polled by Reuters before the latest data said they expected the Fed
to raise rates at least twice more in coming months, with the risk they go
higher still, although none of them are expecting a rate cut this year.
Goldman Sachs now expects three more Fed rate hikes in 2023 | Reuters
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.
Vaccine data from Florida. Approx. 15 minutes.
Data
from Florida
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.
Smooth sailing for electrons in graphene: Measuring fluid-like flow
at nanometer resolution
FEBRUARY 16, 2023
Physicists at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison have directly measured the fluid-like flow of
electrons in graphene at nanometer resolution for the first time. The results
appear in the journal Science today.
Graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon arranged in a honeycomb pattern, is an
especially pure electrical conductor, making it an ideal material to
study electron flow with
very low resistance. Here, researchers intentionally add impurities at known
distances, and find that electron flow changes from gas-like to fluid-like as
the temperature rises.
"All conductive materials contain impurities and imperfections
that block electron flow, which causes resistance. Historically, people have
taken a low-resolution approach to identifying where resistance comes
from," says Zach Krebs, a physics graduate student at UW-Madison and
co-lead author of the study. "In this study, we image how charge flows
around an impurity and actually see how that impurity blocks current and causes
resistance, which is something that hasn't been done before to distinguish
gas-like and fluid-like electron flow."
The results have
applications in developing new, low-resistance materials, where electrical
transport would be more efficient.
More
This weekend’s music diversion. Time
for another Heinichen. Approx. 3 minutes.
Heinichen:
III. Un poco Allegro
Heinichen:
III. Un poco Allegro - YouTube
This
weekend’s chess update. Approx. 15 minutes.
Magnus
Escapes the Impossible!
Magnus
Escapes the Impossible! - YouTube
No
Math’s update this weekend. Today an
obscure part of British history. Approx.
19 minutes.
The
Ashanti War 1873 & Wolseley's Ashanti Ring
The Ashanti War 1873 & Wolseley's Ashanti Ring - YouTube
“And least of all may they do unusual actions
'for fun'. People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is
no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament. If anything is said in this Court
to encourage a belief that Englishmen are entitled to jump off bridges for
their own amusement the next thing to go will be the Constitution. For these
reasons, therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this appeal must fail.
It is not for me to say what offence the appellant has committed, but I am
satisfied that he has committed SOME offence, for which he has been most
properly punished.
" Is It a Free Country?”
Uncommon
Law: Being 66 Misleading Cases Revised and Collected in One Volume
No comments:
Post a Comment