Baltic Dry Index. 1504 +72 Brent Crude 81.66
Spot Gold 1983 U S 2 Year Yield 4.17 +0.03
I never put off
till tomorrow what I can possibly do — the day after.
Something’s
changed. Money is tighter. More and more countries on planet Earth are on the
brink of default, or worse, war or civil war.
The
EU’s business model based on cheap energy from Russia has been destroyed,
probably by President Biden.
The
USA itself seems on the brink of a summer of race insurrections unless sanity returns
to mainstream media.
The
Covid vaccines are now causing more harm than Omicron itself and its variants.
Our
central banksters have lost control over inflation, money supply and money
velocity.
Depending
on this year’s northern hemisphere weather, the world is on the brink of a
global food chain crisis. Not that there won’t be enough food to supply the
world’s population, just that much of the world’s population won’t be able to afford
it.
A rocket launch failure is declared a "success!"
Is
this how the Great Nixonian Error of Fiat Money, communist money, ends?
I
don’t know either, but I suspect that it is. If it is, fiat money’s death throes
are only just starting. A decade or more of rising chaos lies ahead.
Not
to worry though, we have team Biden, Trudeau, Sunak, Macron, Von der Leyen and
Scholz on the case. Backed up by Powell, Yellen, Bailey, Lagarde, and the massed
ranks of lesser Keynesian economists working on solutions.
What
could possibly go wrong? Time to send for Sam Bankman Fried? We already did
that back on August 15, 1971.
Stocks end Friday’s session little changed, Dow snaps
4-week win streak: Live updates
UPDATED FRI, APR 21 2023 4:24 PM EDT
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended
little changed Friday and finished lower for the week as investors evaluated
the latest earnings results and concerns of disappointing profits.
The 30-stock index added 22.34
points, or 0.07%, to end at 33,808.96, while the S&P 500 eked
out a 0.09% gain to settle at 4,133.52. The Nasdaq Composite rose
0.11% to close at 12,072.46.
All major indices finished
the week in the red, with the Dow falling 0.23% to snap a
four-week win streak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq saw the biggest decline, falling
0.42%, while the S&P slipped 0.1%.
“There’s the continued push-pull
of the fact that the economy has been a lot more resilient than many people
expected and corporate earnings have held up pretty well, all things
considered,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent
Advisor Alliance.
Even so, he noted that the
Federal Reserve has raised rates substantially over the last year. Zaccarelli
said that even if the central bank hikes as anticipated in May, it will likely
hold rates at a higher level than the market expects.
“You can kind of see the the bull
and bear case really right there in a nutshell as far as resilient economy with
stronger-than-expected corporate earnings versus a very hot, very restrictive
monetary policy coming from the Fed,” he said.
Earnings season continued Friday,
with results from Procter & Gamble.
The consumer products company gained 3.5% after beating
expectations and lifting it sales forecast. As of Friday
morning, 76% of S&P 500 companies reporting earnings so far have beaten
analyst EPS estimates, according to FactSet.
Elsewhere, materials stocks were
the worst
performers, with Freeport-McMoRan falling
4.1% after posting a year-over-year decline in its quarterly results. Albemarle tumbled
10% as Chile said it would nationalize its lithium industry.
While companies broadly beat expectations
this week, overall profit reports failed to boost stocks, with some investors
fearing an earnings drop looms with a likely recession ahead.
“So far, earnings season is off
to an uneventful start, with many companies meeting already reduced earnings
expectations and that helps to explain the lack of movement in the major stock
indices over the past few days,” said Carol Schleif, chief investment officer
at BMO Family Office. She added that she expects stocks to trade in a tight
range for some time.
Earnings continue next week with
results on deck from Big Tech companies Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms and
Microsoft.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Wall St Week Ahead: Tech earnings to
test markets' 'most crowded' trade
April
21, 2023 7:22 PM GMT+1
NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) - A blistering rally
in megacap growth and technology shares has buoyed markets this year, and
earnings reports in coming weeks could help investors determine if those gains
are justified.
U.S. technology stocks are currently the "most
crowded" trade in the market, fund managers surveyed by BofA Global
Research said, as investors pile into megacaps thinking the Federal Reserve
will soon stop tightening monetary policy and that the sector will remain
resilient as growth slows.
Rallies in stocks such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) have helped sustain broader indexes in the face of recession worries and last month's banking crisis sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
Apple and Microsoft, up 27% and 19% this year, respectively, together accounted for nearly half of the S&P 500's (.SPX) total advance through March, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The index is up around 7.5% year-to-date.
Whether
that rally continues could depend on companies beating already-lowered
first-quarter estimates. Technology earnings are seen falling 14.4%.
Communication services companies, including Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), are expected to post declines of
12%, according to Refinitiv data.
----
Alphabet and Microsoft are expected to report their results on April 25,
followed by Apple on May 4. Amazon, part of the consumer discretionary sector,
is expected to announce results on April 27. Tesla shares fell nearly 10% after
missing earnings estimates on April 19.
More
Wall
St Week Ahead: Tech earnings to test markets' 'most crowded' trade | Reuters
In
other news:
Ukraine’s Grain Saga
Takes Another Twist With EU Import Bans
21 April 2023 at 12:00 BST
From restrictions
on Ukrainian grain going to eastern Europe to costly English breakfasts
and drought problems, here’s a snapshot of key food stories from
around the world:
Ukraine Grains
The latest chapter of the Ukrainian grain saga in
eastern Europe returned to Brussels. The European Union will look to
prohibit the domestic sale of Ukraine’s grain in five member states, only
allowing transit to other destinations. That follows unilateral bans by Poland,
Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria on imports of Ukraine’s produce on
fears the supplies are hurting their own markets.
That effectively means Ukrainian exporters face losing
sales in those countries. For example, 7% of Ukraine’s corn and wheat exports
have gone to Poland this season, according to UkrAgroConsult. Some 7% of its
corn shipments have also gone to Hungary.
It’s not the only setback Ukraine’s agriculture
sector has faced this week. Its Black Sea exports were again disrupted
after inspections of
ships under a safe-passage corridor were halted for two days — after
a similar stoppage the previous week. Kyiv has blamed the disruption to the
grain-export deal — which has been crucial for bringing down global
food-commodity costs from records reached after Russia’s invasion — on Moscow.
While the shipping resumption is good news for both Ukraine
and developing nations that import its grain, it highlights uncertainty over
the initiative that Russia has repeatedly threatened to quit.
More
Supply Chain
Latest: EU Bans on Ukraine's Grain - Bloomberg
Credit Suisse
bondholders file lawsuit against Swiss authorities
By Published 5:18 AM EDT, Fri April 21,
2023
Investors
representing more than 4.5 billion Swiss francs ($5 billion) of Credit Suisse
bonds have sued the Swiss financial regulator over its decision to wipe out
their investments during last month’s emergency government-orchestrated
takeover.
Law
firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which is representing the
bondholders, said Friday the move was the first in a series of steps to seek
redress for clients it said had been unlawfully deprived of their property
rights during the takeover of Credit Suisse (CS) by
bigger rival UBS (UBS).
It
is the first major lawsuit in the public domain to be filed over Switzerland’s
decision to wipe out around $18 billion of Credit Suisse’s “additional tier
one” (AT1) debt during the 3 billion Swiss franc ($3.4 billion) all-share
rescue deal last month, which stunned markets and alerted litigators.
The
appeal against FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which
ordered the writedown, was filed on April 18 in the Federal Administrative
Court in St Gallen, north-east Switzerland.
“FINMA’s
decision undermines international confidence in the legal certainty and
reliability of the Swiss financial center,” said Thomas Werlen, Quinn Emanuel’s
Swiss managing partner.
“We
are committed to rectifying this decision, which is not only in the interests
of our clients but will also strengthen Switzerland’s position as a key
jurisdiction in the global financial system.”
FINMA
declined to comment and Credit Suisse did not immediately respond to a Reuters
request for comment.
Bondholders lose out
FINMA
said last month that its decision to impose steep losses on some bondholders
was legally watertight because the bond prospectuses and emergency government
legislation allowed for a total writedown in a “viability event.”
Engineered
in the wake of the global financial crisis, AT1 bonds were designed to ensure
investors, not taxpayers, carry the burden of risk if a bank runs into trouble.
Bondholders
have been seeking legal advice since the rescue upended a long-established
practice of prioritizing bondholders over shareholders in a debt recovery, and
a number of claims have already been filed in Switzerland over the terms of the
deal.
The
Federal Administrative Court said it was still receiving complaints but
declined to name claimants or comment on how many had been lodged by
bondholders or their lawyers.
Some investors have been trading the notes at penny prices in
a so-called litigation play, betting that successful legal claims will boost
values in the future, lawyers have said.
Credit Suisse
bondholders sue Swiss authorities | CNN Business
Google’s 80-acre San Jose mega-campus is on hold as
company reckons with economic slowdown
In June 2021, Google won
approval to build an 80-acre campus, spanning 7.3 million
square feet of office space, in San Jose, California, the third-largest city in
the country’s most populous state. The estimated economic impact: $19 billion.
The timing couldn’t have been
worse.
A decadelong bull market in technology had just about run its
course, and the following year would mark the worst for tech stocks since the
2008 financial crisis. Rising interest rates and
recessionary concerns led advertisers to reel in spending, shrinking Google’s
growth and, for the first time in the company’s history, forcing management to
implement dramatic cost cuts.
The city of San Jose may now be paying
the price. What was poised to be a mega-campus called “Downtown West,” with
thousands of new housing units and 15 acres of public parks, is largely a
demolition zone at risk of becoming a long-term eyesore and economic zero. CNBC
has learned that, as part of Google’s downsizing that went into effect early
this year, the company has gutted its development team for the San Jose campus.
The construction project, which was supposed to
break ground before the end of 2023, has been put on pause, and no plan to
restart construction has been communicated to contractors, according to people
familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to non-disclosure
agreements. While sources are optimistic that a campus will be built at some
point and said Google representatives have expressed a commitment to it,
they’re concerned the project may not reach the scale promised in the original
master plan.
More
Google's
80-acre San Jose mega-campus on hold amid economic slowdown (cnbc.com)
Finally, the UK economy is in the
early stages of recovery, says Growth for Recovery. Well maybe, but this old dinosaur doesn’t
agree.
All I see is rising consumer stress, rising consumer debt and high
priced foodstuffs not selling even after heavy discounting. I think the UK is on the cusp of the next
recession, although it ought to get a sugar lift from the coming Coronation
celebration spending.
UK economy in ‘early stages of recovery’
as families shrug off inflation and interest rate hikes
FRIDAY 21 APRIL 2023 7:00 AM
Britain’s economy could be in the early stages of a recovery, with
consumers holding up pretty well under the pressure of high inflation and
interest rate increases, a closely watched survey out today indicates.
Families’ outlook on how well the economy will perform over the coming
year is improving, while confidence in their own personal finances is
strengthening.
That has pushed Growth for Knowledge’s consumer confidence index – which
has been running since the 1970s – up six points in April from minus 36,
although the reading is still a historic low.
“As food and energy prices continue to rise, and inflation eats into
wages, the cost-of-living crisis is a painful day-to-day reality for many,” Joe
Staton, client strategy director GfK, said.
“But are all consumers buckling under the pressure? On the evidence of
April’s confidence figures, the answer is no,” he added.
A string of data out last week from the Office for National Statistics
(ONS) illustrated just how much pressure households are under at the moment.
Prices have climbed
10.1 per cent over the last year to March, a drop from February’s 10.4 per cent
inflation rate, but still smashing the City and Bank of England’s expectations.
Strong inflationary pressures have prompted Bank Governor Andrew Bailey
and his team of economists to lift interest rates 11 times in a row to 4.25 per
cent.
March’s inflation overshoot prompted markets to price in a five per cent
rate peak, much higher than their expectations before last week’s ONS numbers
were released, suggesting household finances could come under yet more strain.
Despite that outlook, families’ optimism is growing.
“This is the third month in a row that confidence overall has improved;
can we look forward to this momentum building for the year ahead?” Staton said.
Experts have roundly canned their recession forecasts for the UK economy
due to data since the start of the year coming in much better than feared.
More
UK economy in ‘early stages of recovery’ despite high inflation (cityam.com)
Life is too
short to learn German.
Oscar Wilde.
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.
A recession is coming — and stock markets won’t come
through it unscathed, strategist says
PUBLISHED FRI, APR 21 20235:47 AM
EDT
The latest U.S. economic data suggests a recession is coming, according to
the chief executive of financial advisory firm Longview Economics, and
investors may need to prepare for some pain in the stock market.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk
Box Europe” on Friday, Chris Watling said he believed a recession was on
its way, citing what he described as “pretty compelling” and “brutally bad”
leading economic indicators.
The Conference Board on Thursday said its Leading Economic Index for the U.S. fell by
1.2% in March, slipping to its lowest level since November 2020. The data
appeared to indicate that economic weakness could soon intensify and spread
throughout the U.S. economy.
Alongside this warning signal, Watling said the typical timeline for a
recession after the inversion
of the Treasury yield curve, which
first inverted in March 2022, then
again in the following months, was roughly one year or so.
“Every time you’ve had that in the U.S., you’ve had a recession. So, I think
it’s coming, it’s on its way. It’s just a timing issue,” Watling said.
While many economists have warned
of a looming recession, the International Monetary Fund suggested only
last week that it had been surprised by the recent strength of the U.S. labor
market and consumer spending.
----Asked
on Friday whether equity markets could come through an expected economic
downturn relatively unscathed, Watling replied: “I mean they won’t come through
it unscathed in our opinion. I’m not even sure about relatively.”
“The reality is if you look at profit margins, they went to record highs
in 2021 and a bit of 2022, and of course when you have a lot of inflation
around, you can get very good operating leverage so you can get record high
profit margins,” Watling said.
“When you get into recession, we’ve got to do a double hit on profit
margins. You’ve got to normalize them back to normal levels and then you’ve got
to price in a recession. So, I think the expectations for earnings are way too
optimistic and therefore the stock market will have to contend with that at
some point.”
A recession is
coming — and equity markets may incur some pain, strategist says (cnbc.com)
Veteran investor David Roche says a credit crunch is
coming for ‘small-town America’
PUBLISHED THU, APR 20 20239:17 AM
EDT
The banking turmoil of March, which saw the
collapse of several regional U.S. lenders, will lead to a credit crunch for
“small-town America,” according to veteran strategist David Roche.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and two other small U.S. lenders last month triggered contagion fears that led to record outflows of deposits from smaller banks.
Earnings reports last week indicated that billions
of dollars of deposit outflows from small and mid-sized lenders, executed amid
the panic, were redirected to Wall Street giants — with JPMorgan
Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup reporting massive inflows.
“I think we’ve learned that the big banks are seen
as a safe haven, and the deposits which flow out of the small and regional
banks flow into them (big banks), but we’ve got to remember in a lot of key
sectors, the smaller banks account for over 50% of lending,” Roche, president
of Independent Strategy, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.
“So I think, on balance, the net result is going to
be a further tightening of credit policy, of readiness to lend, and a
contraction of credit to the economy, particularly to the real economy — things
like services, hospitality, construction and indeed small and medium-sized
enterprises — and we’ve got to remember that those sectors, the kind of small
America, small-town America, account for 35 or 40% of output.”
The ripple effects of the collapse of Silicon
Valley Bank were vast, setting in motion a chain of events that
eventually led to the collapse of 167-year-old Swiss institution
Credit Suisse, and its rescue by domestic
rival UBS.
Central banks in Europe, the U.S. and the U.K.
sprang into action to reassure that they would provide liquidity backstops, to
prevent a domino effect and calm the markets.
Roche, who correctly predicted the development of
the Asian crisis in 1997 and the 2008 global financial crisis, argued that,
alongside their efforts to rein in sky-high inflation, central banks are “trying to do two things at once.”
“They’re trying to keep liquidity high, so that
the problems of deposit withdrawals and other problems relating to
mark-to-market of assets in banks do not cause more crises, more threats of
systemic risk,” he said.
“At the same time, they’re trying to tighten
monetary policy, so, in a sense, you’ve got a schizophrenic personality of
every central bank, which is doing with the right hand one thing and doing with
the left hand the other thing.”
More
Veteran investor David Roche says a credit crunch is
coming for 'small-town America' (cnbc.com)
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the
noise when opportunity knocks.
Oscar Wilde.
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.
Why a Covid-19 lab leak just
became more likely
April 20, 2023
---- Prof Gao told a conference in Geneva that scientists
were also questioning whether Sars and Mers had jumped directly into humans,
without needing the palm civets or camels originally blamed for the spillover.
Why does this matter? It is
important because bats are not native to Wuhan, where the virus first emerged. They do not live in the
area, and there is no evidence they were being brought from outside for sale in
local wet markets.
Investigate bat coronaviruses
Yet bats were coming into
Wuhan through another route. Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were collecting the animals in China and
south-east Asia and bringing them to the city for “sequencing, archiving,
analysis and manipulation”.
Their goal
was to investigate bat coronaviruses that might evolve to infect humans.
Wuhan
researchers had collected more than 220 Sars-related coronaviruses, at least
100 belonging to the same beta-coronavirus subgenus to which Covid-19 belongs,
which have never been made public. Many were from caves in Yunnan Province,
some 1,000 miles from Wuhan.
King’s
College London has described such fieldwork to collect potential pandemic viruses as
posing “really, really high risks” with researchers often working with limited
light with exposed skin.
Handling bats risks bites and scratches that can create an entry
wound for viruses while collecting blood or urine risks creating infectious
aerosols.
The recent US Senate report into
the origins of the pandemic described Wuhan researchers as having a
“nonchalant” approach to safety.
Staff
were seen without wearing adequate protective equipment. In 2017, Wuhan
researcher Tian Junhua told the Wuhan Evening News that he once forgot his PPE
and was splattered with bat urine which required self-isolation for two weeks.
Some
researchers were videoed collecting samples without masks or gloves.
Once
back in the lab, samples were often processed by graduate students in
inadequate biosafety levels.
More
Why a Covid-19 lab
leak just became more likely (msn.com)
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.
Gogoro's
battery swap GoStations help with power grid stability
Paul Ridden April 19, 2023
Back in
2015, Gogoro proposed setting up a network of battery-swapping stations so
that riders of its electric
smartscooter no longer had to worry about per-charge
range. Now the company operates thousands of them, and has partnered with Enel
X to have the network serve as virtual power plants in Taiwan.
"We
are entering a new era of smart energy infrastructure, and by integrating the
Gogoro Network with the Enel X Virtual Power Plant (VPP) in Taiwan we are
providing a new energy resource," said founder and CEO of Gogoro, Horace
Luke. "It is the first time this technology has been deployed this way in
the world, and it creates a new Gogoro revenue stream beyond mobility."
The basic idea is to have Gogoro's battery hubs
dynamically pause the charging of their docked batteries and feed stored energy
back to the power grid when demand is high or an imbalance is detected. Once
the grid levels out again, a signal is sent out to the Gogoro Network and
charging recommences.
Gogoro and Enel X ran a pilot last year to test the
setup, and found that the network of battery swapping stations involved in the
trial successfully "performed these services without causing any
interruptions to Gogoro Network battery swapping customers, demonstrating that
the network is an ideal resource to support Taiwan’s energy transition."
Now the partnership has announced the commercial
deployment of almost 1,300 GoStations as part of Enel X's VPP, in more than 500
locations throughout Taiwan. By mid-2023, that number will rise above 2,500
across 1,000 locations, though how this translates into potential combined
capacity hasn't been revealed.
Enel X currently operates the largest Virtual Power
Plant in Taiwan, and sees setups like this as being a vital resource to
"help balance the intermittency of large-scale renewable power
stations" as the country moves to decarbonize its energy generation.
Indeed, the Taiwan Power Corporation predicts that
the energy sharing economy will be worth tens of billions of New Taiwan
Dollars, and is calling on more businesses to participate it its Energy Trading
Platform "through professional aggregators like Enel X" and
"work together towards Taiwan’s renewable energy future."
While Taiwan is home to the vast majority of
GoStations, Gogoro does operate networks in several other countries, where the
VPP model could be replicated – though Gogoro hasn't revealed any plans for
global expansion of the project as yet.
Gogoro's battery
swap GoStations help with power grid stability (newatlas.com)
This weekend’s music diversion. Another
forgotten interesting composer. Approx. 5 minutes.
Tommaso
Traetta • Overture [Armida]
Tommaso Traetta • Overture [Armida]
- YouTube
This weekend’s chess update. Approx.
11 minutes.
Level
Up Your Chess with Wesley So's Genius Play
Level
Up Your Chess with Wesley So's Genius Play - YouTube
This weekend, that space launch
“success.” Approx. 5 minutes.
SpaceX
Successfully Launches Starship But Causes Big Damage to the Pad. Explodes
Minutes After!
SpaceX’s
Starship Kicked Up a Dust Cloud, Leaving Texans With a Mess
As the most powerful rocket ever built blasted from
its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday, the liftoff rocked the earth
and kicked up a billowing cloud of dust and debris, shaking homes and raining
down brown grime for miles.
In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest
where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed.
More
SpaceX’s Starship
Kicked Up a Dust Cloud, Leaving Texans With a Mess – DNyuz
I may not agree
with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.
Oscar Wilde.
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