Baltic Dry Index. 530 -11 Brent Crude 84.16
Spot Gold 1824 US 2 Year Yield 4.62 unch.
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 17/02/23 World 678,287,674
Deaths 6,787,832
On February 17, 1864, Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley attacked and sank USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor, killing five Union sailors.
Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, but Hunley and its eight crew members didn't make it back from their historic mission.
In the Asian stock casinos, more pressure as Singapore’s mine canary just died.
In Europe, higher interest rates, with more to come, force companies into dangerous refinancing strategies.
In the balloon/UFO fixated USA, a long weekend holiday for President’s Day. Presumably celebrating none of the presidents since the late 80s.
Japan will issue its central bank digital currency in April, but why? Who needs a digital currency except central banksters facing the end of the road for the Great Nixonian Error of fiat currency and the great wealth disparity it generated.
Tomorrow
will not be like today, which was like yesterday. Tomorrow looks more like a
return to the dark age.
Asia markets fall
on Fed rate hike concerns; Singapore exports plunge
FRI, FEB 17 2023 12:40 AM EST
Asia Pacific markets traded lower on Friday as
investors digested more economic data out of the U.S. and more hawkish
commentary from the Federal Reserve.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 closed
0.86% lower at 7,346.8 as Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe
reiterated warnings of inflation risks and hinted at further
hikes ahead.
In South Korea, the Kospi lost 0.96%
and the Kosdaq fell 1.27%, while in Japan, the Nikkei 225 traded 0.73%
lower and the Topix shed 0.45%.
Singapore’s non-oil domestic
exports fell further by 25% in January on an annualized basis,
marking its fourth consecutive month of contraction. The Straits Times index pared
earlier losses and traded 0.32% higher. The Singapore dollar weakened
0.28% to 1.34 against the greenback.
Chinese markets also were traded
lower on Friday. The Hang
Seng index and Hang Seng Tech index traded 0.71% and 1.73%
lower respectively after the release of its 2022 census and unemployment data
on Thursday.
In mainland China, the Shenzhen Component fell 0.96%, and the Shanghai Composite also was down 0.16%.
Thailand’s gross domestic product for the whole
of 2022 grew 2.6%, higher than the 1.6% recorded in 2021. Fourth quarter GDP
growth came in at 1.4% on an annualized basis, down from 4.5% the same period a
year ago.
Overnight on Wall Street, stocks
fell after the U.S. saw its producer price index - a measure of what raw goods
fetch on the open market - rise 0.7% for the month, the biggest increase since
June. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1.26%,
the S&P 500 dipped
1.38% and the Nasdaq
Composite fell 1.78%.
Asia markets: US
wholesale prices, Hong Kong census, Reserve Bank of Australia, Singapore
(cnbc.com)
Stock futures
slip Thursday night as inflation data, Fed officials’ comments worry investors:
Live updates
UPDATED THU, FEB 16 2023 8:05 PM
EST
U.S. stock
futures slipped on Thursday night after the major averages suffered declines
amid concerns of stubbornly high inflation metrics.
Dow
Jones Industrial Average futures fell
by 46 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures dipped
by 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively.
During regular trading, the Dow shed
431.20 points, or 1.26%. The S&P 500 slid
1.38%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dipped
1.78%.
These losses came after January’s
producer price index, an inflation metric that tracks wholesale
prices, rose 0.7% according to Thursday’s report. Economists surveyed by Dow
Jones had anticipated a 0.4% increase. The Labor Department also reported
an unexpected fall in initial jobless claims for the week ending Feb. 11.
The selloff in equities
intensified late in the day following comments from St. Louis Federal Reserve
President James Bullard. He said he backed a 50 basis point interest rate hike
at the central bank’s previous meeting and that he would
not rule out a rate increase of that magnitude at the March
meeting.
Fed commentary aside, consumers
have been a key focal point for investors this week, particularly in light of
the latest round of inflation and retail sales data.
“I think the equity market is
listening to data about the consumer that’s concurrent — that there’s retail
spending that bounced back, that consumer confidence bounced back, and that
services PMI bounced out of contraction. There are things to be happy about —
the labor market is still tight,” SoFi’s head of investment strategy Liz Young
said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”
“But what I think the equity
market is not pricing in at this point, or is not worried enough about, is that
the consumer spending at some point. Savings run dry, and wage growth is
falling, and it can’t support that level of spending going forward. Debt is
piling up,” added Young.
The major indexes are mixed ahead
of Friday’s session. The Dow is down 0.51% for the week. The 30-stock index is
on pace for its third negative week in a row — a first since September. The
Nasdaq is up 1.18% for the week, on track for its sixth week of gains in seven.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is flat.
Investors will watch Fed
officials for more hints on the central bank’s rate-hiking campaign. Richmond
Fed President Tom Barkin will be speaking about the labor market on Friday morning.
Fed Governor Michelle Bowman is also taking part in a discussion at the
Tennessee Bankers Association’s credit conference.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Analysis:
European firms strike high-stakes bond deals as interest rates rise
February
17, 2023 6:12 AM GMT
LONDON, Feb 17
(Reuters) - European firms are selling debt that can be converted into their
own shares at an unrelenting pace, as they seek shelter from the fastest
escalation in interest rates by major central banks since the 1980s.
After
borrowing heavily during years of rock-bottom interest rates, businesses are
feeling the pinch of rising debt costs and some are turning to convertible
bonds - a form of junior debt that can be converted into a company's equity.
Convertibles can
offer corporations cheaper funding but risk diluting earnings and tilting the
balance of power among shareholders if investors invoke their conversion
rights.
These
"bonds with a twist", as fund manager Schroders (SDR.L) once put it, have historically been associated with
companies that may lack other sources of funding and were perceived by some as
an "admission of weakness".
But
in the current environment, this kind of cheaper financing is increasingly
popular among traditional bond issuers too.
Since January,
companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have raised $2.9 billion
through seven convertible deals, significantly above this time last year and
higher than levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dealogic
data.
The
region is also slightly ahead of the United States in terms of capital raised
via convertible bonds, something that market participants describe as rare,
illustrating the strong appetite from companies on this side of the Atlantic.
"Issuance in
Europe was extremely low last year. But a lot of issuers are now looking at
convertible bonds to reduce their financing costs, as they face upcoming debt
maturities," said Stephanie Zwick, Head of Convertible Bonds at Fisch
Asset Management, which oversees more than 4 billion Swiss francs ($4.34
billion) in convertible debt.
Corporate debt
issuance dried up in the market turmoil following Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
but momentum for equity-linked deals – as the asset class is also known – started
to pick up in the latter part of 2022 and has carried into the new year.
Repeat
issuers like Germany-based food delivery group Delivery Hero (DHER.DE) have come to market to
refinance maturing deals, but there are also new names, like French industrials
company Spie(SPIE.PA).
While
tighter central bank policy has forced companies to bump up interest payments
on new convertibles, the average coupon is still about half that paid in the
junk, or sub-investment grade, bond market, according to market participants.
More
Analysis:
European firms strike high-stakes bond deals as interest rates rise | Reuters
Bank of Japan to
launch pilot program for issuing digital yen in April
The Bank of Japan
(BOJ) said on Friday it has decided to launch a pilot program in April for
issuing a digital yen, moving a step closer to launching a central bank digital
currency (CBDC) in a country that lags in digitizing its payment systems.
The move, which was
widely expected, will follow two years of experiments the central bank has been
conducting to decide whether to issue a CBDC.
“Our hope is that the
pilot program will lead to improved designs through discussion with private
businesses,” BOJ Executive Director Shinichi Uchida said in opening remarks at
the central bank’s meeting with private-sector executives.
While it was up to the public to decide whether to actually issue
a digital yen, the BOJ will “continue to make thorough preparations” when
circumstances lead to the launch of a CBDC, the central bank said in a
statement.
Bank
of Japan to launch pilot program for issuing digital yen in April (cnbc.com)
Finally, in crypto fantasy land, nothing but
more trouble.
SEC charges Do
Kwon, Terraform with fraud in connection with Terra collapse
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged
Terraform Labs and its CEO, Do Kwon, with fraud, alleging that they
orchestrated a multibillion dollar “crypto asset securities fraud,” the SEC
said Thursday.
Kwon and Terraform allegedly
schemed from Apr. 2018 until the collapse of TerraUSD, also known as UST, and
its sister coin luna in May 2022 to raise billions of dollars from investors
through the offer and sale of an “inter-connected suite” of crypto asset
securities, including securities-based swaps that mirrored U.S. equities, and
most famously, the so-called “algorithmic stablecoin” TerraUSD. The company
advertised UST as a “yield-bearing” coin, offering to pay interest of up to 20
percent, according to the complaint.
Like many stablecoins, UST was
pegged at a 1-to-1 ratio with the dollar. Minting one new UST required
“burning,” or destroying, one luna. This structure allowed for arbitrage
opportunities that were key to maintaining the peg: Users could always swap one
luna for UST and vice versa at a guaranteed price of $1, regardless of the
market price of either token at the time.
But the price of luna
grew unstable and forced UST to break its $1 peg, an effort which sent both
terra and luna spiraling.
The complaint against
Kwon and Terraform was filed in federal court for the Southern District of New
York in Manhattan, and charges both with violating the registration and
anti-fraud provisions of both the Securities and Exchange Acts.
The SEC alleges that
Kwon marketed those assets, including those mAsset swaps and Terra, as
profit-bearing securities, “repeatedly claiming” the tokens would increase in
value.
“Today’s action not
only holds the defendants accountable for their roles in Terra’s collapse,
which devastated both retail and institutional investors and sent shock waves
through the crypto markets, but once again highlights that we look to the
economic realities of an offering, not the labels put on it,” SEC enforcement director
Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.
UST had depegged one
time before the trading pair would ultimately collapse in 2022. In May 2021,
the SEC alleges, Terra dropped below $1 and in response, Kwon conspired with an
unnamed third party which purchased massive amounts of UST to restore the
“algorithmic” peg. Publicly, Kwon and Terraform claimed it as a victory for the
algorithm, the SEC alleged, and called it a “black swan” event.
Kwon’s current
whereabouts are unknown, but the Terra co-founder was recently believed to be
in Serbia, according to South Korean intelligence. Kwon is wanted in South
Korea for his involvement in the collapse of TerraUSD.
SEC charges Do Kwon with fraud in connection with Terra collapse (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.
Seems like the media on both sides of the Atlantic are trying to hustle the central banks into stopping inflation beating interest rate hikes. Good luck getting the ECB to u-turn on their promised rate increase next month.
Andrew Bailey is about to make the house price slump even worse
16 February 2023
There is an old trope in financial markets that central banks are always busy fighting the last crisis instead of the current one.
While the Bank of
England is not yet fully guilty of this, it is now surely a serious risk.
Senior policymakers continue to sound hawkish even after Threadneedle Street
increased the bank rate by a hefty 0.5 percentage
points to a 14-year high of 4pc at its meeting this month.
After choosing
to ignore rapidly building inflationary pressures and keep interest rates at a
historical low of 0.1pc through most of 2021, the Bank was forced to slam on
the brakes to curb a second surge in inflation caused by the Russian invasion
of Ukraine.
But now the
balance of evidence is clear: it is time for the BoE to pause.
Although some
backward-looking measures of inflationary pressures are still too high, a
growing list of factors points to a rapid easing of price activity over the
course of the year and into 2024.
Market-based
measures of inflation expectations, such as the five-year breakeven rate, have
returned to levels consistent with the Bank's 2pc inflation target. While still
somewhat elevated, consumer inflation expectations, such as those measured by
the GfK Consumer Confidence Barometer, are heading rapidly lower too.
Softer inflation expectations tally with increasing signs of domestic
economic weakness, especially in services, where price pressures have edged
higher in the past few months.
Furthermore, the unfolding housing market correction
– which is partly the intended result of the Bank's monetary tightening – will
indirectly weaken inflationary pressures.
During the previous housing market corrections, in
the early 1990s and 2008/09, the economy experienced weakening consumer demand
and significant falls in inflation.
Thanks to strong household balance sheets and well capitalised
banks, this house price correction will not be anything like 2008/09, when
prices declined by about 18pc. However, the early 1990s, when house prices
declined by around 12pc, may provide a useful benchmark.
By lowering net worth, lower home values weaken confidence and
the appetite to spend.
It is worth noting that, by this stage of previous
housing corrections, the Bank had already started to cut interest rates.
Although the monetarist view of inflation is no
longer in vogue, as it was during the 1980s, Bank data showing that the UK
money supply has been declining since October may also provide a useful signal
that inflationary pressures are subsiding.
More
Andrew Bailey is about to make the house price slump even worse (msn.com)
Egg Prices Soar Over 70 Percent as Inflation Report Shocks in Some Food Categories
By Tom OzimekFebruary 15, 2023Updated:
February 15, 2023
The latest government inflation data showed that price pressures remained
shockingly high in certain categories, with egg prices up over 70 percent in
annualized terms while many food categories were up by double digits.
While the overall pace of
annual inflation in the United States came in at 6.4 percent in
January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the rate of inflation in some
categories—especially food—was stubbornly high.
Prices of food at grocery stores
rose 11.3 percent year-over-year while food in the “away from home” category
like restaurants rose by 8.2 percent.
Egg prices soared by 70.1 percent
year-over-year, the report showed, while margarine was up 44.7 percent, bread rose
14.9 percent, and ham was up 7.2 percent.
While many of the food price
gains were more modest when looked at in month-over-month terms—margarine up
1.2 percent, bread up 0.2 percent, and ham up 5.2 percent—egg prices rose by a
stunning 8.5 percent in monthly terms as well.
Egg
prices have been under pressure due to a deadly bird flu that has decimated
chicken flocks. While wholesale egg prices have retreated, that hasn’t yet
trickled down to grocery stores.
Bankrate chief financial analyst, Greg McBride,
told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that there were a few brighter
spots in the inflation report but overall it was far from satisfactory.
“The broad-based improvement needed to be seen in
order to feel good about where inflation is headed is still lacking. The
leading contributors continue to be categories that are staples of the
household budget—food, shelter, electricity, natural gas, apparel, vehicle
insurance, and household furnishing and operations,” he said.
More
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.
The Federal Government Is
Tracking the Unvaccinated
Feb 14 2023
The U.S. government has been secretly
tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, as well as those who aren’t up to
date on their shots. Worse, it is recording the reason why. Now that the
program has been widely adopted, know why it’s being done and how you can
outsmart it.
Story at a Glance
·
The
U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab,
or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program
designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
·
The
program was implemented on April 1, 2022, and adopted by most medical clinics
and hospitals across the United States starting January 2023.
·
Under
this program, doctors at clinics and hospitals have been instructed to ask
patients about their vaccination status, which is then added to their
electronic medical records as a diagnostic code, known as ICD-10 code, so that
they can be tracked inside and outside of the medical system.
·
These
new ICD-10 codes are part of the government’s plan to implement medical tyranny
using vaccine passports and digital IDs.
·
The
government is also tracking noncompliance with all other recommended vaccines
using new ICD-10 codes, and has implemented codes to describe WHY you didn’t
get a recommended vaccine. It’s also added a billable ICD code for “vaccine
safety counseling.”
As recently discovered and
reported by Dr. Robert Malone,1 the U.S.
government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or
are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program
designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The program was implemented on
April 1, 2022,2 but didn’t become universally adopted by most
medical clinics and hospitals across the United States until January 2023.
Under this program, doctors at
clinics and hospitals have been instructed to ask patients about their
vaccination status, which is then added to their electronic medical records as
a diagnostic code, known as ICD-10 code, without their knowledge or consent so
that they can be tracked—not just within the health care system but outside of
it as well.
Secret Tracking Program Revealed
The new International
Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes were introduced during the Sept. 14–15,
2021, ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting. The ICD committee
includes representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS) and the NCHS.3
More
The Federal
Government Is Tracking the Unvaccinated (theepochtimes.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.
MIT Physicists
Discover Way To Switch Superconductivity On and Off in “Magic-Angle” Graphene
By
Applying
a quick electric pulse completely flips the material’s electronic properties,
opening a route to ultrafast, brain-inspired, superconducting electronics.
MIT physicists have
revealed a new and exotic property in “magic-angle” graphene: superconductivity that can be turned on and off
with an electric pulse, much like a light switch. To accomplish this, they used
some meticulous twisting and stacking of layers of graphene and boron nitride.
The discovery could lead to ultrafast, energy-efficient superconducting
transistors for neuromorphic devices — electronics designed to operate in a way
similar to the rapid on/off firing of neurons in the human brain.
Magic-angle graphene refers to a very particular stacking of graphene —
an atom-thin material made from carbon atoms that are linked
in a hexagonal pattern resembling chicken wire. When one sheet of graphene is
stacked atop a second sheet at a precise “magic” angle, the twisted structure
creates a slightly offset “moiré” pattern, or superlattice, that is able to
support a host of surprising electronic behaviors.
In 2018, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and his group at MIT were the first to
demonstrate magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene. They showed that the new
bilayer structure could behave as an insulator, much like wood, when they
applied a certain continuous electric field. When they upped the field, the
insulator suddenly morphed into a superconductor, allowing electrons to flow,
friction-free.
That discovery was a watershed in the field of “twistronics,” which
explores how certain electronic properties emerge from the twisting and
layering of two-dimensional materials. Researchers including Jarillo-Herrero
have continued to reveal surprising properties in magic-angle graphene,
including various ways to switch the material between different electronic
states. So far, such “switches” have acted more like dimmers, in that
researchers must continuously apply an electric or magnetic field to turn on
superconductivity, and keep it on.
Now Jarillo-Herrero and his team have shown that superconductivity in
magic-angle graphene can be switched on, and kept on, with just a short pulse
rather than a continuous electric field. The key, they found, was a combination
of twisting and stacking.
In a paper published on January 30 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the team reports that, by
stacking magic-angle graphene between two offset layers of boron nitride — a
two-dimensional insulating material — the unique alignment of the sandwich
structure enabled the researchers to turn graphene’s superconductivity on and
off with a short electric pulse.
“For the vast majority of materials, if you
remove the electric field, zzzzip, the electric state is gone,” says
Jarillo-Herrero, who is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT.
“This is the first time that a superconducting material has been made that can
be electrically switched on and off, abruptly. This could pave the way for a
new generation of twisted, graphene-based superconducting electronics.”
More
Another weekend and will anything else get shot down over North America?
Have a great weekend everyone, but watch out for falling debris. Which pipe
line will get hit next and by whom?
"We've
never shot down anything in over 65 years of NORAD, and in one week they shot
down three things."
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio.
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