Baltic Dry Index. 1536 +26 Brent Crude 77.94
Spot Gold 2000 US 2 Year Yield 3.86 -0.26
Coronavirus
Cases 01/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 27/04/23 World 686,791,545
Deaths 6,861,758
Taxpayer funds were also paid out to fraudsters but shortcomings
in the performance of the Companies House businesses register is making it easy
to defraud taxpayers, MPs warn.
Confidence in the register of companies and directors is being undermined by errors and inaccuracies, the report says. “False statements, fake entries, errors, fictional company directors and individuals named without their consent can be used to commit crime, including fraud. Making a false declaration to Companies House has been a criminal offence since 2009 but there has only been a single conviction for this offence, in 2018.”
So now we all know how to do it, let’s get started!!!
We are rapidly approaching te end of the trading month in the gambling stock casinos; the May Day bank holiday across Europe and much of the world and the start of the Labour Day Golden Week holiday in China.
Sounds to this old dinosaur markets follower like it’s a no brainer to dress up the stock casinos and try to run a classic short squeeze on the shorts.
When it happens, it’s more exit rally
opportunity for most, ahead of what looks highly likely to be a summer of
distress and stagflation.
Asia markets
trading mixed as new Bank of Japan chief chairs first policy meeting
UPDATED WED, APR 26 2023 11:36 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific market were trading mixed on
Thursday as investors focus on the Bank of Japan’s first policy meeting led by
new BOJ governor Kazuo Ueda.
Ueda is expected to maintain the
ultra loose monetary policy of predecessor Haruhiko Kuroda for now, but
expectations are that he will plot a path out of this policy in the future,
according to media reports.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell
0.23% and the Topix rose marginally, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was
down 0.38%.
South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.22%
and the Kosdaq rose 1.18%, as electronics giant Samsung Electronics posted a 94% year-on-year drop in operating profit for
the first quarter.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell
0.12%, while the Hang Seng Tech index saw a larger drop at 1.16% down. Mainland
Chinese markets were mixed, with the Shenzhen Component marginally
down and the Shanghai
Composite up 0.33%.
Singapore’s benchmark Straits Times Index inched
down 0.52%, after news overnight that the country will increase stamp duties on
property purchases, with the largest increases going to property purchases by
foreigners.
Overnight in the U.S.,
stocks ended mixed as banking fears eclipsed Big Tech earnings on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.68%, paring earlier gains. The S&P 500 slid 0.38%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 0.47%, trimming gains after jumping as
much as 1.43% in the trading day.
Asia
markets trading mixed as new Bank of Japan chief chairs first policy meeting
(cnbc.com)
Nasdaq 100 futures rise Wednesday night
following Meta’s quarterly results: Live updates
UPDATED THU, APR 27 2023 12:10 AM EDT
U.S. stock futures ticked higher on Thursday
morning.
Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.51%,
while S&P 500 futures added 0.22%. Futures linked to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average advanced by 29 points, or 0.09%.
Meta shares leapt in after-hours
trading as the company
reported quarterly revenue that beat analysts’ expectations.
The company issued stronger-than expected guidance for the current period.
During regular trading Wednesday,
the Dow shed
228.96 points, or 0.68%. The S&P 500 slid
0.38%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose
0.47%.
In Wednesday’s session, Microsoft
shares jumped more than 7%, buoyed by an earnings beat posted late
Tuesday. Meanwhile, First Republic shares tumbled almost 30%, as
investors became concerned over the regional
bank’s health.
Liz Young, head of investment at
SoFi, warns investors that despite the majority of S&P 500 companies
reporting earnings higher than expectations, the worst is not yet behind the
market.
“We’ve seen expectations get
revised downward about 15%,” she said. “So the fact that companies are beating
those lowered expectations — although probably a good thing for sentiment in
the moment, because markets don’t like to hear about misses — we’re beating
pretty unimpressive numbers.”
Thursday will be action packed
for earnings, with Eli Lilly, Merck, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines
posting results before the bell. Comcast – which owns NBCUniversal, the parent
company of CNBC – is also expected to report in the morning.
Tech giants Amazon and Intel will
share their quarterly results after the closing bell Thursday.
Key economic data releases
include the initial reading of U.S. gross domestic product for the first
quarter, slated for 8:30 a.m. Weekly jobless claims are due at the same time.
Other major data points include pending home sales for March and the Kansas
City Federal Reserve’s manufacturing index reading.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Finally, in other news back in the real world,
Russia “temporarily” seizes some foreign assets. More on Elon’s Big Bang.
Australia’s gold rock. More Trade in China’s Yuan. More Layoffs.
Russia seizes more
Western assets, narrowing options for company exits
April 26, 2023
MOSCOW/HELSINKI (Reuters) -Russia seized temporary control of assets of Finnish energy group Fortum and its former German subsidiary Uniper, sowing confusion over the fate of other Western companies in Russia as pressure grows to hit Moscow with more sanctions over Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin late on Tuesday signed a decree establishing temporary control of the Russian assets of the two European state-owned energy firms. Fortum said it was "investigating" and both Uniper and the German finance ministry had no immediate comment.
The decree -
outlining possible retaliation if Russian assets abroad are seized - showed
Moscow had already taken action against Uniper's Russian division Unipro and
Fortum's assets. Russia made clear that the move could be reversed.
Moscow has
reacted angrily to reports that Group of Seven nations are considering a
near-total ban on exports to Russia, while many have called for far tougher
sanctions to limit Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine. The European Union is
looking at using frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine.
Uniper owns
83.73% of Unipro, which operates five power plants with a total capacity of
over 11 gigawatts in Russia and about 4,300 employees.
Fortum is
majority-owned by Finland, which joined the NATO military alliance early this
month. Moscow said Finland had made a dangerous mistake.
The Finnish
foreign ministry would not immediately comment on how Russia's decision would
reflect on relations between the two countries.
"Fortum's
current understanding is that the new decree does not affect the title
(registered ownership) of the assets and companies in Russia," the company
said in a statement.
"However,
it remains unclear how this affects e.g. Fortum's Russian operations or the
ongoing divestment process," it added.
More
Russia seizes more
Western assets, narrowing options for company exits (msn.com)
Disastrous SpaceX
launch under federal investigation after raining potentially hazardous debris
on homes and beaches
April 26, 2023
SpaceX's Starship has been grounded by the U.S. government following claims that the rocket's explosive first launch spread plumes of potentially hazardous debris over homes and the habitats of endangered animals.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — the U.S. civil aviation regulator — has stopped SpaceX from conducting any further launches until it has concluded a "mishap investigation" into Starship's April 20 test launch. The massive rocket’s dramatic flight began by punching a crater into the concrete beneath the launchpad and ended when the giant rocket exploded in mid-air around 4 minutes later.
Dust and debris from the test reportedly rained down on residents in Port Isabel, Texas — a town roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the launchpad — and across Boca Chica's beaches, which are nesting grounds for endangered animals, including birds and sea turtles.
Dave Cortez, a chapter director for the Sierra Club environmental advocacy group, said that Port Isabel residents reported broken windows in their businesses and ash-like particles covering their homes and schools.
SpaceX's launchpad was also left with extensive damage that includes charred, twisted metal and shattered concrete. The force from the rocket's engines blew a hole in the launchpad and created a crater beneath it. "Concrete shot out into the ocean," Cortez told CNBC, creating shrapnel that "risked hitting the fuel storage tanks which are these silos adjacent to the launch pad."
----The FAA's mishap investigation is standard practice when rockets go
astray. The FAA’s investigation will need to conclude that Starship does not
affect public safety before it can launch again. As debris spread far further
than anticipated, the FAA's "anomaly response plan" has also come
into force, meaning SpaceX must complete extra "environmental
mitigations" before reapplying for its launch license.
More
Detectorist
Down Under Finds 10-Pound Gold Nugget Worth $250,000 As Gold Prices Soar in
Australia
APRIL 19, 2023
An
amateur gold hunter Down Under hit pay dirt in March when he stumbled on a
massive nugget worth a cool quarter million.
The
finder, who wished to remain anonymous, was scanning Victoria’s “golden
triangle” between St Arnaud, Bendigo, and Ballarat when he heard his detector
sound.
The
man brought the gold specimen to gold expert Darren Kamp, operator of Lucky
Strike Gold Prospecting in Newcomb, to have it appraised.
“He
came into our shop and was asking some basic questions about pin-pointers and
other equipment and he pulled a rock out of his backpack and said, ‘Do you
think there would be $10,000 worth of gold in this?’” Kamp told The Epoch
Times. “He dropped it into my hand.
“Gold
is very, very heavy and the rock was dirty, so although you could see some gold
on the outside, the weight of the rock told me there was a hell of a lot of
gold on the inside.”
He
said, “My hand dropped under the unexpected weight and my wife says that
my jaw dropped with it. I said to the guy, ‘Try $100,000!’”
Surprised,
the finder told Kamp that this was just half the rock.
“What
do you mean?” Kamp said.
The
man said, “I have the other half at home.” He had split it in two
expecting to find a nugget inside.
The
gold-bejeweled quartz rock specimen weighs 10.14 pounds (4,600 grams)—very
heavy for its size as it contains 91 ounces (2,580 grams) of the precious
yellow metal inside.
After
performing specific gravity and water displacement tests to calculate the
content, Kamp said it’s worth 245,000 Australian dollars (US$164,000) in
today’s value. Meanwhile, gold prices are only on the rise, having hit record
highs in Australia last month.
The
prospector sold the nugget to Lucky Strike, splitting the proceeds with his two
grown children, according to Kamp.
More
Argentina
to pay for Chinese imports in yuan rather than dollars
April 27, 2023 1:38 AM GMT+1
BUENOS AIRES,
April 26 (Reuters) - Argentina will start to pay for Chinese imports in yuan
rather than dollars, the government announced Wednesday, a measure that aims to
relieve the country's dwindling dollar reserves.
In
April, it aims to pay around $1 billion of Chinese imports in yuan instead of
dollars and thereafter around $790 million of monthly imports will be paid in
yuan, a government statement said.
The decision aims to ease
the outflow of dollars, Argentina's Economy minister Sergio Massa said during
an event following a meeting with the Chinese ambassador, Zou Xiaoli, as well
as with companies from various sectors.
The decision
comes as the South American nation battles critical levels in its dollar
reserves amid a sharp drop in agricultural exports caused by a historic
drought, as well as political uncertainty ahead of elections this year.
In
November last year, Argentina expanded a currency swap with China by $5 billion, seeking to strengthen
Argentina's international reserves.
The
agreement will allow Argentina "to work on the possibility" of
advancing the rate of imports, Massa added, with yuan-denominated import orders
being authorized in 90 days rather than the standard 180 days.
Argentina
to pay for Chinese imports in yuan rather than dollars | Reuters
Tyson
Foods to eliminate 10% of corporate jobs, 15% of senior leaders
April
27, 2023 4:43 AM GMT+1
CHICAGO, April 26 (Reuters) - Tyson
Foods Inc (TSN.N) will eliminate about 10% of
corporate jobs and 15% of senior leadership roles, Chief Executive Donnie King
told employees on Wednesday.
The layoffs are the
latest cost-cutting move for the biggest U.S. meat company by sales as it
grapples with declining profit and struggles to improve results in its iconic
chicken business.
Discussions with
most affected employees are slated to take place this week, King said in a memo
to employees seen by Reuters. Shares closed 1.1% lower at $60.35 on Wednesday.
"We will drive efficiency by
focusing on fewer initiatives with greater intensity and removing duplication
of work," King said.
Tyson had about
6,000 U.S. employees working in corporate offices as of Oct. 1 and 118,000
workers at non-corporate sites such as meat plants and warehouses, according to
regulatory filings.
The eliminated roles
in senior leadership are mostly vice presidents and senior vice presidents, a
company spokesperson said.
Some corporate employees already quit
after Tyson said in October it was relocating all corporate jobs to its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas. The
10% reduction in corporate roles is not due to employees leaving the company
rather than relocating to Arkansas, a spokesperson said.
More
Tyson Foods to eliminate 10% of corporate jobs, 15% of senior leaders | Reuters
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.
"We tend to
buy commodities nine to 12 months out," Pepsico chief financial officer
Hugh Johnston said.
"So to the
degree that the rate of inflation decreases - and it will be a decrease in the
rate of inflation, not deflation by any stretch of imagination - that's going
to happen very slowly over the course of 2023."
No kidding!
Cost inflation is
slowing but shoppers may not see lower prices soon
April 26, 2023
LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) -
The world's top consumer goods companies, making everything from instant
noodles to soap and ice cream, are paying less for their raw materials and
energy, but it may take time before shoppers see significantly lower price tags
for their household goods.
Rising
expenses for everything from sunflower oil to milk and grain have hit the
packaged goods industry hard over the past two years, prompting companies to
hike prices and helping fuel a cost-of-living crisis in many parts of the
world.
Cost inflation
rose during the COVID-19 pandemic and was exacerbated by Russia's invasion of
Ukraine, which sent energy prices soaring to record highs last year. Energy
costs have since dropped, however, and global prices for some commodities are
rising at a slower pace.
Companies like
Nestle, Reckitt Benckiser and Danone continued to raise prices for their goods
sharply in the first quarter even though input price rises have eased and are
expected to moderate further.
Cost of goods
inflation will be "significantly" lower this year - the 5% to 9%
level is what Reckitt is expecting versus 18% last year, the company's finance
chief Jeff Carr said on a call on Wednesday to discuss earnings results.
Carr said that
while salary costs have increased, commodities are a "mixed bag" and
freight costs have declined. First quarter price/mix, rose 12.4% while sales
volumes declined 4.5%.
Danone CFO
Juergen Esser said in a post-earnings call with analysts on Wednesday that
while labour costs, liquid milk and sugar prices are up, some other costs are
down, so "we expect inflation to decrease through the year."
The maker of
Activia yoghurt, Evian water and Aptamil infant milk raised first-quarter
prices by 10.3% and volume/mix rose 0.2%.
It is unclear
when companies may start passing on some of their lower costs to customers. On
Tuesday, Associated British Foods said it does not expect many more price
increases in the second half of this year, as costs including wheat, vegetable
oils, freight and energy start to fall.
Companies
including Unilever, which reports earnings on Thursday, acknowledged in
February that the industry was past "peak inflation, but not yet past peak
pricing".
Several firms
have since made near-record price hikes: beverage giant Coca-Cola Co said
average selling prices rose by 11% in the first quarter, while rival PepsiCo
Inc said its prices gained 16%.
Many in the
industry bought ingredients far in advance, when prices were higher, so it will
take time for that to trickle through to the supermarket shelves.
"We tend
to buy commodities nine to 12 months out," Pepsico chief financial officer
Hugh Johnston said.
"So to
the degree that the rate of inflation decreases - and it will be a decrease in
the rate of inflation, not deflation by any stretch of imagination - that's
going to happen very slowly over the course of 2023."
More
Cost inflation is
slowing but shoppers may not see lower prices soon (msn.com)
China
Jan-Mar industrial profit slump underlines patchy economic recovery
April
27, 2023 5:28 AM GMT+1
BEIJING, April 27
(Reuters) - China's industrial firms' profits shrank at a slightly slower pace
in January-March but the decline remained in the double-digits as the economy
struggled to fully recover despite the country's exit from its zero-COVID policy.
Profits
at these firms fell 21.4% in the first three months from a year earlier,
cumulative data released by the statistics bureau showed on Thursday, as the
factory sector remained underpowered by the crippling pandemic.
The decline
compared with a 22.9% slump in industrial profit in the first two months, data
from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
In
March alone, profits for the sector fell 19.2%, according to the data by the
NBS which only occasionally discloses monthly figures.
Industrial
earnings fell 4.0% in 2022, and the latest numbers underline the gloomy
conditions facing China's vast factory sector as global demand is hit by
slowing world growth. However, some analysts expect to see a recovery over the
second half.
The narrower
profit decline in the fist three months was in part due to a notable
improvement in equipment manufacturing firms’ profits, NBS statistician Sun
Xiao said.
Sun
cited the automobile manufacturing sector, which saw profits rising by 9.1% in
March, recovering part of the 41.7% plunge in the January-February period, as
production and sales picked up amid a revival in market demand.
Industrial
firms' profits will likely return to growth in the second half of the year, Luo
Huanjie, senior researcher at the Zhixin Investment Research Institute, said in
a note to clients.
More
China
Jan-Mar industrial profit slump underlines patchy economic recovery | Reuters
Covid-19
Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Nearly £1bn in Covid
loans paid out in error or fraud set to be ‘written off’
Taxpayers money still ‘at risk’ by Business Ministry’s lax approach
April
26, 2023
The Government is set to
write off nearly £1bn in Covid-support loans that were paid out in error or to
fraudsters, according to a critical report by MPs.
Of an estimated £2.2bn
lost to fraud and error in Covid schemes, ministers and officials were making
slow progress getting the money back with only about £11m recovered so far, MPs on the
influential Public Accounts Committee (PAC)
said.
Since March 2020, the
Business Department has provided councils with £25bn of pandemic
business-support grants to help eligible firms, but errors in council databases
led to millions being paid out erroneously – the total is estimated to be as
much as £985m.
“The department believes
it will not recoup the majority of this, given there was not deliberate fraud, and the businesses were generally struggling due to
Covid,” the report says.
The payments “were not
paid in line with Parliament’s intention therefore it is unclear why the
department is not attempting to recover grants paid in error”, it adds. The
committee’s MPs said they have yet to see the defence from officials that most
of the missing money was paid in error rather than fraud.
It accused the department of taking a
“laissez-faire approach”. The report adds: “It is not clear how the department
holds to account third parties that deliver multibillion-pound programmes on
its behalf. [We] are concerned that a laissez-faire approach may lead to
failure to properly protect taxpayers’ money.”
This is despite promises from Rishi Sunak that the losses were not
“written off” and Government investigators would pursue those who
took improper advantage of the Covid support. Failures over how Covid Bounce Back loans were
awarded has also increased the risk of taxpayer losses, the PAC warned.
Taxpayer funds were also
paid out to fraudsters but shortcomings in the performance of the Companies
House businesses register is making it easy to defraud taxpayers, MPs warn.
Confidence in the register of companies and
directors is being undermined by errors and inaccuracies, the report says.
“False statements, fake entries, errors, fictional company directors and
individuals named without their consent can be used to commit crime, including
fraud. Making a false declaration to Companies House has been a criminal
offence since 2009 but there has only been a single conviction for this
offence, in 2018.”
More
Nearly £1bn in Covid loans paid out in error or fraud set to be ‘written off’ (inews.co.uk)
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.
Quantum
Transport Discovered Combines High-Temperature Superconductors And Graphene
April 26, 2023
Developing new quantum devices relies on
controlling how electrons behave. A material called graphene, a single layer of
carbon atoms, has fascinated researchers in recent years because its electrons
behave as if they have no mass. For decades, scientists have also been
interested in high-temperature superconductors: ceramic materials where
electron interactions yield a macroscopic quantum state where electrons pair
with each other. They do so at a temperature above the usual superconducting
temperature of metals, which approaches absolute zero.
In a recent study published in Physical Review
Letters, researchers from the SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Stony Brook
University and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, along with Aalto
University in Finland, demonstrated a new electronic device that employs the
unique ways in which electrons behave in these two materials – graphene and
high-temperature superconductors.
The experiment, led by Sharadh Jois and Ji Ung
Lee from SUNY with the support of theoretical work done by Jose Lado, assistant
professor at Aalto, demonstrated a new quantum device that combines both
graphene and an unconventional high-temperature superconductor. In particular,
the team demonstrated that the electronic transport between graphene and the
high-temperature superconductor was dominated by a unique transport process
arising from the combination of two peculiar properties: graphene’s Klein
tunneling and the superconductor’s Andreev reflection. The team showed
experimentally, for the first time, that this transport process was fully
consistent with the existing theoretical predictions concerning hybrid
Andreev-Klein electronic transport.
----A milestone in graphene quantum devices
‘The demonstration of electronic transport
stemming from graphene’s Klein tunneling and unconventional superconducting
pairing establishes a milestone in graphene-based quantum devices. This
observation establishes the starting point to develop a whole new family of
graphene-based superconducting quantum circuits that exploit unconventional
superconductivity,’ Lado says.
The unique electronic properties of graphene
have made it a promising platform for developing electronics that do not
consume a lot of power. Conventional superconductors are key materials in a
variety of quantum devices, and they are especially important in one of the
strategies to build both qubit and topological quantum computers. By combining
the two, the study’s results can open new fundamental physics in these
materials and ultimately establish a whole new platform for quantum technology
devices.
“To build may
have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the
thoughtless act of a single day.”
Winston S.
Churchill.
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