Baltic Dry Index. 1576 -05 Brent Crude 79.54
Spot Gold 1990 U S 2 Year Yield 4.04 -0.03
April
29, 1707. English and Scottish parliaments accept the Act of Union; creates the
United Kingdom of Great Britain (comes into being 1st May)
Dress up Friday for the professional money
manager month-end bonuses was never easier than yesterday.
But with recession coming, or at best
stagflation, sell in May, go away, looks to be the right play this year in the
stock casinos.
The real interest in this weekend’s update
lies in the last Youtube. Enjoy.
Dow gains more than 250 points Friday as index finishes
best month since January: Live updates
FRI, APR 28 2023 5:03 PM EDT
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose
on Friday, notching its best month since January.
The blue-chip index
closed 272 points, or 0.8%, higher at 34,098.16. The S&P 500 added
0.83% to finish at 4,169.48. The Nasdaq Composite advanced
0.69% to end at 12,226.58 as investors parsed the latest crop of technology
earnings.
The Dow finished
April 2.5% higher, its best monthly showing since January, when the average
ended up 2.8%. The S&P 500 logged a 1.5% monthly gain — its second positive
month in a row — while the Nasdaq ended the month only slightly higher.
On a weekly
basis, the Nasdaq saw the largest gain, at 1.3%, in what was considered Big
Tech’s marquee earnings week. The Dow and S&P 500 each finished the week
about 0.9% higher.
---- Not every tech stock was down following
their respective releases. Intel shares
climbed 4% after the semiconductor firm beat
estimates on the top and bottom lines.
Data released Friday morning
showed the personal consumption expenditures price index rose
0.3% in March, which was in line with economist expectations. The
index is a key gauge of inflation for the Federal Reserve, which has a policy
meeting scheduled for next week.
“Today is reflective of sort of a
three-legged stool,” said Greg Bassuk, CEO of AXS Investments. “Earnings,
economic data and the Fed continue to be the investor narrative.”
Also of note, shares of troubled First Republic Bank plunged
more than 43% after CNBC’s David Faber reported that the most likely outcome
for the regional bank is the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation taking receivership. The stock
has lost more than 97% of its value since the start of the year.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Wall St Week Ahead Recession
worries simmer beneath US stock market rally
April
28, 2023 11:40 PM GMT+1
NEW YORK, April 28 (Reuters) -
Economically sensitive areas of the U.S. stock market are flashing warnings
over growth, even as major equity indexes edge higher.
The S&P 500 is
up 8.6% for the year after gaining 1.5% in April, thanks to roaring year-to-date rallies in shares of Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O) and other growth and
technology stocks that command heavy weightings in broader indexes.
Beneath the surface, however, areas of the market tied to economic
sentiment such as transports, semiconductors and small-cap stocks dropped in April,
while so-called defensive sectors are outperforming.
Investors cited growing caution among market participants faced with a
thicket of concerns, from fears of a possible U.S. default this summer to
worries that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening could bring
on a recession.
“People are starting to more defensively position themselves,” said
Aaron Dunn, co-head of the value equity team at Eaton Vance. “The overall
signal to me is there is still a lot of fear about recession and oncoming
weakness in the back half of the year.”
Areas of the market
showing cracks include the Russell 2000 (.RUT),
an index populated by smaller, domestically focused companies, which was down
1.9% for the month. The Dow Jones Transportation Average (.DJT),
another bellwether of economic health, fell 2.9%.
A 7.3% drop in the
Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index (.SOX) was
a worrying sign, as chips are ubiquitous in a wide range of products. The index
is still up 18% for the year.
Regional banks are
also wobbling, with the KBW Regional Banking index (.KRX) down
3.5% in April following a rout this week in shares of First
Republic Bank (FRC.N). At the same time, consumer staples (.SPLRCS) and
healthcare (.SPXHC), sectors favored by investors
during uncertain times, have rallied in the past month.
Investors will focus
on next week's Fed meeting, with the central bank expected to announce another
25 basis point rate hike on Wednesday. A bevy of earnings are also on deck,
including results from Apple (AAPL.O) on Thursday.
Though the S&P
500 has shown resilience, just seven stocks -- Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet,
Amazon, Tesla (TSLA.O) Meta Platforms (META.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O) -- were responsible for more
than 88% of its year-to-date gain as of Thursday, according to Mike O'Rourke,
chief market strategist at Jones Trading.
“It makes me
nervous to be honest,” said James Ragan, director of wealth management research
at D.A. Davidson. “It just seems like the market gains are being concentrated
in fewer and fewer stocks and that is probably unsustainable for too long.”
More
Wall St Week Ahead Recession worries simmer beneath US stock market rally | Reuters
Finally,
more trouble ahead. Will CA’s First Republic Bank get rescued this weekend or
siezed?
U.S. officials lead urgent rescue
talks for First Republic
April
28, 2023 10:03 AM GMT+1
NEW YORK, April 28
(Reuters) - U.S. officials are coordinating urgent talks to rescue First
Republic Bank (FRC.N) as
private-sector efforts led by the bank's advisers have yet to reach a deal,
according to three sources familiar with the situation.
The Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC), the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are among
government bodies that have in recent days started to orchestrate meetings with
financial companies about putting together a lifeline for the troubled lender, the
sources said.
The government's involvement is helping
bring more parties, including banks and private equity firms, to the
negotiating table, one of the sources added.
It is unclear whether the U.S.
government is considering participating in a private-sector rescue of First
Republic. The government's engagement, however, has emboldened First Republic
executives as they scramble to put together a deal that would avoid a takeover
by U.S. regulators, one of the sources said.
First Republic
became the epicenter of the U.S. regional banking crisis in March after
the wealthy clients it courted to fuel its breakneck growth started withdrawing
deposits and left the bank reeling.
The sources requested anonymity because the discussions are
confidential.
"We are engaged in discussions with with multiple parties about our strategic options while continuing to serve our clients," First Republic said in a statement.
The Treasury Department declined to comment; the FDIC and Federal
Reserve did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment after
hours.
Wall Street banks have been trying to find a solution for First Republic
since 11 of the biggest U.S. lenders deposited $30 billion at the bank on March
16 to stanch a regional banking crisis that led to the failure of Silicon
Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
Discussions for a deal took on new urgency this week after First
Republic revealed on Monday it had deposit outflows of more than $100 billion
in the first quarter. Although the bank said its deposits had stabilized, it
disclosed it was losing money because it had to replace the withdrawn deposits
with interest-bearing funding from the Federal Reserve.
More
U.S. officials
lead urgent rescue talks for First Republic | Reuters
'Big Short' investor Michael Burry predicted a cash crunch. A
top JPMorgan banker says that painful problem is fueling a banking crisis
Thu, 27 April 2023 at 8:55 pm BST
Michael Burry warned last year that US consumers would run short of
money in the face of historic inflation and surging borrowing costs. That's
exactly what's happening now, a top JPMorgan executive told Bloomberg on
Wednesday.
Burry — the investor of "The
Big Short" fame — noted Americans were saving less, racking up credit-card
debt, and burning through the cash they stashed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He predicted those trends would eventually lead to a slump in
consumer spending and a decline in corporate profits.
Bob Michele, the chief investor
of JPMorgan's asset-management arm and the bank's global head of fixed income,
flagged the intense financial pressure on consumers and businesses, and said it
helped fuel the recent banking turmoil.
Both Silicon Valley Bank and
Signature Bank collapsed in March due to a tidal wave of deposit
withdrawals, while First Republic Bank's customers yanked more than $100 billion out of the lender last quarter. The deposits
weren't only pulled because people feared their bank could fail, and because
they could get a better return elsewhere, Michele said.
"They occurred because
businesses and consumers are burning cash in a big way," he said.
"It's the higher price of everything, and it's the higher cost to finance
everything."
Consumers depleted their deposits
in part because they had to cover the higher costs of groceries and other
essentials, he said. Similarly, businesses withdrew cash as the interest rates
on their debts have doubled or tripled from a year ago, he continued.
Households — especially poorer ones — have "blown right
through" their pandemic savings, leaving their deposit balances below
pre-COVID levels, Michele noted.
"They're not frittering it away on stuff, they're spending it to
live off of," he said, adding that credit-card usage has also soared as
people struggle to service their debts.
The elite banker also sounded the alarm on the current chaos in the
regional-banking industry.
"It's somewhat naïve to say that this is just limited to First
Republic," he said. "I think it is a crisis," he added,
questioning how smaller banks will fare once emergency-relief programs end.
Higher rates translate into bigger monthly mortgage payments,
credit-card bills, and car-lease costs for households — which have already seen
their budgets squeezed by spikes in food, energy and housing costs in recent
months.
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.
“When it becomes serious, you have to
lie.”
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former
Luxembourg P.M., serial liar, ex-president of the European Commission. Scotch
connoisseur.
IMF warns of ‘disorderly’ house price corrections in
Europe as interest rates move higher
PUBLISHED FRI, APR 28 2023 2:01
AM EDT
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The International Monetary Fund
warned Friday of “disorderly” house price corrections in Europe, at a time when
the region is struggling to bring down inflation.
In its latest regional economic outlook for Europe,
the IMF said that a downward correction is already underway in some European
housing markets, but this decline could accelerate as central banks increase
interest rates further.
“Disorderly corrections in real estate markets
could occur even if broader financial distress is avoided. A housing market
correction is already underway in some European countries, for instance, in the
Czech Republic, Denmark, as well as in Sweden where house prices declined more
than 6% in 2022,” the Fund said.
“House price declines could accelerate if markets
reprice inflation risks and financial conditions tighten more than expected.
These price declines would have adverse effects on household and bank balance
sheets,” the IMF added.
Mortgage payments might go up as well, as central
banks increase interest rates in efforts to reduce inflation levels.
Consequently, mortgage holders may have less disposable income to spend, and,
in some cases, could even reach a point where they are unable to repay their
credits. Banks could also struggle in an environment where repayments are not
made.
“Empirical models linking house prices to their
fundamental drivers point to an overvaluation of 15–20% in most European
countries. Therefore, with mortgage rates still on the rise and real incomes
dented by inflation, house prices have been declining recently in many
markets,” the Fund said.
Data from Europe’s statistics office Eurostat
showed house prices dropping for the first time since 2015. Across the European
Union, house prices fell 1.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022 from the previous
three-month period.
“General house price issues are across the board,
not just in high debt countries, and they need to be tackled with supervision.
They need to be tackled with stress tests, they need to be watched very
carefully,” Alfred Kammer, director of the European department at the IMF, told
CNBC in Sweden.
At the same time, estimates point to further
challenges with inflation. The IMF expects headline inflation to average 5.3%
in the euro zone this year and 2.9% next year — above the European Central
Bank’s target of 2%.
“The ECB needs to be increasing interest rates
relatively early and need to maintain those through at least mid-2024. We
expect to come back to the inflation target of 2% during 2025,” Kammer told
CNBC.
The European Central Bank is due to meet next week,
and one of its members has recently suggested that a 50 basis point increase is
not off the table. The central bank embarked on a hiking path in July 2022,
when it brought its main rate from -0.5% to 0. The ECB’s main rate is currently
at 3%.
The latest inflation print in the euro zone showed
the headline rate falling to 6.9% in March from 8.5% in February. Core
inflation, which excludes energy and food costs, showed a slight increase over
the same period.
More
IMF
warns of 'disorderly' house price corrections in Europe amid high rates
(cnbc.com)
Euro zone economy ekes out 0.1% growth in first quarter,
misses expectations as Germany stagnates
PUBLISHED FRI, APR 28 2023 5:07
AM EDT
The euro zone economy grew by a marginal 0.1% in
the first quarter of the year, preliminary figures showed on Friday, even as
Germany’s GDP flatlined over the period.
The print came in below analyst expectations, with
a Reuters poll of economists previously forecasting quarterly growth of 0.2%.
The economy expanded by 1.3% on an annual basis, just missing an outlook of
1.4%.
Earlier this month, statistics agency Eurostat had revised
down its fourth-quarter 2022 GDP estimate for the euro zone from 0.1% quarterly
growth to no growth, following 0.4% growth in the third quarter.
The slight first-quarter growth signal comes as economic
performance contends with persistently high inflation. Energy prices have been
a key driver over the past year, as European consumers progressively lost
access to Russian supplies in the wake of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of
Ukraine. Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at Dutch bank ING, said that the
fall in wholesale energy prices, warmer-than-expected weather and fiscal
stimulus had helped the bloc dodge a widely-feared recession over the winter.
----Europe’s leading economies diverged in their
first-quarter performance, national figures showed on Friday. The German
economy stagnated over January-March, compared with the previous
three-month period. It was up 0.2% on an annual adjusted basis and 0.1% lower
on a non-adjusted basis due to one extra working day in the prior year, German
statistics agency Destatis said.
Deutsche Bank economists said Germany had avoided
a technical recession by a “hair’s breadth” and reiterated their call of 0% GDP
growth this year, with the economy held back by high inflation, rate hikes and
an expected second-half U.S. recession.
France’s GDP meanwhile picked up by 0.2% in the
first quarter, Insee statistics revealed,
despite a spate of widespread strikes that slowed activity sparked in protest
of President Emmanuel Macron’s planned pension reforms.
The Irish GDP was a notable weak spot, declining
by 2.7% on the previous quarter, while Portugal’s economy grew by 1.6%.
More
Euro zone economy ekes out 0.1% growth in first
quarter (cnbc.com)
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.
This weekend, the death of a planted story that fooled
the BBC, among others and that the LIR debunked when first leaked.
21st
century adage: Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC?
Raccoon dogs in Wuhan 'did not spread Covid to humans'
April 27, 2023
Raccoon dogs blamed for the
Covid pandemic were not responsible, new analysis suggests, after samples at a
Wuhan market were found to contain virtually no virus.
Last month a controversial study suggested that raccoon dog DNA found at the Huanan
Seafood Wholesale Market in January 2020 was mixed with Covid-19, providing
“strong evidence” that coronavirus jumped to humans from the animals.
The paper was based on swabs
taken by Chinese researchers in the market at the start of the pandemic which
were recently uploaded to an international database. The authors said it
pointed to a zoonotic origin for the pandemic
rather than a laboratory leak.
But a new in-depth genetic
analysis of the samples by respected computational virologist Dr Jesse Bloom,
of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle in the US, showed there is barely
any Covid-19 intermixed with raccoon dog DNA.
Of the 14 raccoon dog samples
studied, 13 had no Covid-19 at all, while one had just one fragment of virus
per 200 million fragments of animal DNA.
In contrast, the virus was
found in greater quantities mixed with human DNA, as well as species such as
largemouth bass, catfish, cow, carp, and snakehead fish, none of which could
pass the virus to humans.
The team
concluded there was actually a “negative correlation” between Covid-19 and
raccoon dog DNA.
----“Environmental samples taken over a month after humans
started spreading the virus do not reliably indicate outbreak origin.
“If
we ever learn the origin of Sars2, I suspect it will come from information on
events that occurred in November 2019 or earlier.”
The
Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was associated with a cluster of early cases,
which has led some scientists to suggest that it is where Covid-19 jumped from
animals to humans.
Raccoon dogs were considered a likely candidate because
they are known to be susceptible to the virus, yet no DNA linking the animal to
Covid-19 had ever been found.
Earlier this year, a group of Chinese scientists uploaded genetic data
from swabs taken in the market during the early days of the pandemic which
seemed to show raccoon dog DNA mixed with Covid-19.
The upload was spotted by Dr Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist
at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who published a
non-peer-reviewed report with colleagues claiming it showed “strong evidence”
for an animal spillover.
Before publication, the story was also leaked to The Atlantic which
claimed it was “the strongest evidence yet that an animal started the
pandemic”.
Chinese scientists who collected the original samples published their
own study in the journal Nature saying there was no way of knowing if the
raccoon dogs were infected, and warning that the origin of Covid could not be
determined from their samples.
More
Raccoon dogs in Wuhan 'did not spread Covid to humans'
(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.
No update this weekend. normal service Monday.
This weekend’s music diversion. Have
another Heinichen. Approx. 8 minutes.
Heinichen
Dresden Concerto in F Seibel 233
Heinichen Dresden Concerto in F Seibel 233 - YouTube
This weekend’s chess update. Approx. 12
minutes.
This is
Why You Should Play The Marshall Attack || Anand vs Nunn (1990)
This
is Why You Should Play The Marshall Attack || Anand vs Nunn (1990) - YouTube
This weekend’s math's update. The truth
about axioms. Approx. 5 minutes.
The
paradox at the heart of mathematics: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem - Marcus du
Sautoy
The
paradox at the heart of mathematics: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem - Marcus du
Sautoy - YouTube
Finally, so you really like flying in
the 21st century. Approx. 17 minutes.
Terrifying
Moments as FOUR Jets Nearly Collide in Boston & Chicago (With Real Audio)
Terrifying
Moments as FOUR Jets Nearly Collide in Boston & Chicago (With Real Audio) -
YouTube
April 29, 1587 Francis Drake’s Singeing the King of Spain's Beard by
sailing into the Bay of Cadiz sinking his fleet, delaying the Spanish
Armada by over a year.
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