Baltic Dry Index. 1091 -21 Brent Crude 74.90
Spot Gold 1919 U S 2 Year Yield 4.87 unch.
July 1, 1867: The British North America Act (today known as the Constitution Act, 1867) creates Canada.
S&P 500 rises on Friday to close out big first half,
Nasdaq posts best start to a year in 4 decades: Live updates
UPDATED FRI, JUN 30 2023 6:36 PM EDT
Stocks rose
Friday and technology
names continued their staggering run to cap off a strong
start to the year, and the best first half for the Nasdaq
Composite since 1983.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained
285.18 points, or 0.84%, to close at 34,407.60. The S&P 500 climbed
1.23% to end at 4,450.38, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced
1.45% to settle at 13,787.92.
Mega-cap technology stocks
responsible for a sizeable
chunk of 2023′s market gains rose Friday. Dominant artificial
intelligence chipmaker Nvidia jumped
3.6%, bringing its yearly gains to more than 189%. Netflix added
about 2.9%, while Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Amazon rose
1.9%, 1.6% and 1.9%, respectively. Apple gained
2.3% to close above a $3
trillion market cap.
Elsewhere, Nike shares
bucked the broad market uptrend. The apparel giant fell 2.7% after reporting a weaker-than-expected
quarterly profit.
Friday marked a pivotal day for
investors, bringing the conclusion of the month, second quarter and first half.
The last six months saw 2022′s beaten-down growth names make a broad comeback
as the promise of artificial intelligence and hope of an end to the Federal
Reserve’s rate campaign lifted major tech players to astonishing heights.
Despite these strong gains, some
on Wall Street expect volatility in the second half and likely profit taking
from investors that benefited from the rally. This, coupled with changing
technicals, could lead to sideways action, or a slight pullback in the S&P,
said Anna Han, equity strategist at Wells Fargo Securities.
“The technicals are telling us
that this ubercap-led rally has just been overextended,” she said. “It’s been
hitting those overbought levels, and we believe it’s time for that trade to
kind of take a pause.”
More
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
European stocks post gains of 8.8% for the first half
despite rate rises and banking crisis
UPDATED FRI, JUN 30 2023 11:52 AM EDT
European stock markets closed higher on Friday
and notched strong first-half gains in a resurgence that came despite interest
rate hikes and bank failures.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 index
closed 1.2% higher for the session, with all sectors and major bourses in
positive territory. Over the first half of the year, the index ended up roughly
8.8%.
It comes as euro
zone inflation data fell more than expected for the month of
June. The figure came in at 5.5% this month, indicating that the fiscal
tightening of the European Central Bank could be starting to have the desired
effect. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose, however, coming
in at 5.4%.
-----Several sectors posted gains of more than
1% on Friday, including banks, chemicals, insurance and retail stocks.
European equity markets ended
Thursday’s session just 0.1% higher, bolstered by robust earnings and a
subsequent 17% share price uptick from H&M.
Elsewhere in the world, Asia-Pacific markets were
mixed after China’s
factory activity shrunk for a third consecutive month in June. U.S.
stocks rose Friday as investors Wall Street got another hint of encouraging
inflation news.
European
stocks post gains of 8.8% for the first half (cnbc.com)
A sharp increase in mortgage costs is expected to
trigger a “significant drag” on the housing market, Nationwide has warned, as
house prices slumped in June.
Property prices fell 3.5pc in June on an annual
basis but edged up by 0.1pc compared with a month earlier, its data showed.
It comes a day after more lenders raised mortgage
rates on two and five-year fixed deals, following the Bank of England’s
increase to the base rate last week.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said:
“The sharp increase in borrowing costs is likely to exert a significant drag on
housing market activity in the near term.”
“House prices remain high relative to earnings, and
as a result, deposit requirements are still a significant barrier for those
looking to enter the market.”
Nationwide said the average first-time buyer
borrowing against a typical property with a 20pc deposit would be spending
significantly more of their take-home pay on their mortgage than the long-term
average.
Mr Gardner added: “A 10pc deposit on a typical
first-time buyer home is equal to around 55pc of gross annual income – this is
down from the all-time highs of 59pc prevailing in late 2022, but still
marginally above the levels prevailing before the financial crisis struck in
2007/8.
“Despite the higher interest rates available to
savers, the sharp rise in rents, together with continued high rates of
inflation more generally is continuing to make it difficult for many
prospective buyers to save for a deposit.”
Europe inflation slips to
5.5% — but that will not stop central bank rate hikes
Inflation in Europe slid
again in June but fell too slowly to offer much relief to shoppers grumbling
over price tags or to stop more interest rate hikes that will raise the cost of
borrowing across the economy.
The annual rate of 5.5% was
down from 6.1% in May in the 20 countries that use the euro currency, the European
Union statistics agency Eurostat said on Friday.
While that is a big drop
from the peak of 10.6% in October, persistently high prices in the US, Europe
and the United Kingdom pushed some of the world’s top central bankers to make
clear they are going to keep raising rates and leave them there until inflation
drops to their 2% goal considered best for the economy.
Consumers saw relief on
energy prices, which dropped 5.6% after last year’s crisis, while food price
inflation was up 11.7%, easing from 12.5% in May.
Core inflation, which
excludes volatile food and fuel and offers a clearer picture of longer-term
price pressures, rose slightly to 5.4% from 5.3% the month before.
----
The global economy’s rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic also strained supplies
of parts and raw materials.
Energy and wheat prices have subsided to pre-war
levels and supply chain problems have eased – but inflation has kept snaking
through other parts of the economy.
Companies selling services instead of goods — a
huge swath of the economy including everything from office cleaning to haircuts
to medical care — have raised their prices.
Hotels and airlines are charging summer travellers
more and workers are pressing for pay raises to make up for their lost
purchasing power.
The European Central Bank (ECB) — along with its
peers around the world — has been rapidly raising interest rates, the chief
medicine against inflation.
Increases in the ECB’s benchmark rate make it more
expensive for people to borrow to buy homes and cars and businesses to acquire
new office buildings and factory equipment.
That reduces demand, working to drop price levels.
Those who have to refinance their home loans are
also facing the prospect of paying thousands more than they used to.
While inflation fell rapidly as the first rate
hikes took hold, going the last mile to 2% may take longer and be more
difficult, central bankers say.
German unemployment rises more than expected in June
BERLIN (Reuters) - German unemployment rose more
than expected in June, showing that difficult economic conditions are taking
their toll in the jobs market, official figures showed on Thursday.
The Federal Labour Office said the number of people
out of work increased by 28,000 in seasonally adjusted terms to 2.61 million.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the figure to rise by 13,000.
"The more difficult economic conditions are
now also being felt in the labour market," labour office head Andrea
Nahles said. "Unemployment is rising and employment growth is losing
momentum."
The seasonally adjusted jobless rate rose to 5.7%
from 5.6% in the previous month.
The number of unemployed is 192,000 higher than in
June 2022. Even without taking into account Ukrainian refugees, unemployment
would have risen year-on-year, the labour office said.
In June, there were 769,000 job openings, 108,000
fewer than a year ago. Although the Federal Labour Office has seen a slowdown
in labour demand in the last year, it remains at a high level.
Economists say the number of unemployed people will
rise slightly in 2023, but the unemployment rate will remain broadly unchanged
from the previous year.
German unemployment rises more than expected in June
(msn.com)
France riots: 45,000 police, armoured vehicles deployed to
quell unrest
July 1, 20234:47 AM GMT+1
PARIS, July 1 (Reuters) - France deployed 45,000
police officers and some armoured vehicles on the streets on Saturday as riots
rocked French cities for a fourth night over a teenager's fatal shooting by an
officer during a traffic stop.
Buildings and vehicles have been torched and stores
looted, and the violence has plunged President Emmanuel Macron into the gravest
crisis of his leadership since the Yellow Vest protests that started in 2018.
Unrest
has flared nationwide, including in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse,
Strasbourg and Lille as well as Paris where Nahel M., a 17-year-old of Algerian and
Moroccan descent, was shot on Tuesday in the Nanterre suburb.
His
death, caught on video, has reignited longstanding
complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism.
Interior
Minister Gerald Darmanin said early on Saturday that 270 people had been
arrested on Friday night, bringing the total to more than 1,100 since unrest
ignited.
Friday
night's arrests included 80 people in the southern city of Marseille, France's
second-largest and home to many people of North African descent.
More
France
riots: 45,000 police, armoured vehicles deployed to quell unrest |
Reuters
China Steelmakers Issue Stark Warning About
Second-Half Outlook
·
Leading
mills highlight soft demand and pressure to cut costs
·
Iron ore
futures slump in Singapore as traders assess outlook
30
June 2023 at 04:09 BST Updated on30 June 2023
at 11:05 BST
(Requires subscription)
China
Steelmakers Issue Stark Warning About Second-Half Outlook - Bloomberg
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.
Something
different this weekend. One central bankster telling the “truth,” well
maybe. One central bankster’s nose
growing like Pinocchio’s.
|
Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill
admits forecasts have struggled to explain inflation shock
THURSDAY 29 JUNE 2023 10:23 AM
Any
central banker would have struggled to accurately forecast the impact of the
series of shocks that have hit the UK economy, the Bank of England’s chief
economist claimed today.
Huw
Pill, a former Goldman Sachs banker, in response to a letter from the Treasury
select committee today hit back at critics who have slammed the Bank for
persistently getting its inflation forecasts wrong.
“Any single model would have struggled to capture the impact and propagation of the economic shocks we [have] seen in recent years,” Pill said, referring to the Covid-19 crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For around a year and a
half, monetary policy committee (MPC) officials have had to revise up their
inflation projections.
That
overshoot has been mainly driven by food prices accelerating more than 18 per
cent, something the Bank has recognised it did not see coming.
That has
led to sharp scrutiny of how the Bank generates its quarterly economic
forecasts. Some have questioned how the MPC can set interest rates effectively
if the group is unable to get a grasp of inflation, growth and unemployment.
Pill
said: “The greatest weakness of the current forecasting framework is the
difficulty it faces in explaining the greater-than-expected persistence in UK
inflation following the large – one could say unprecedented – external
inflationary shock following the invasion of Ukraine.”
More
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.
China DESTROYED samples from Wuhan lab after Covid outbreak
claims leaked documents
June 29,
2023
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been accused
of covering up the Covid outbreak after details emerged of an ultimatum the
government gave lab scientists.
On January 3, 2020, the Chinese National Health
Commission is said to have issued a memo ordering labs to either hand over
their samples or destroy them “on the spot”.
Additionally, the CCP dictated that scientists
should not share information without its permission, vowed to “strengthen law
enforcement inspections" and warned it would “severely deal with” those
that defied the order.
The internal order was allegedly sent out just two
days before the rest of the world were alerted to the outbreak of Covid-19, by
which time it had spread far and wide.
Though China remained silent, the world was alerted
to Covid by the global infectious diseases reporting system ProMed.
Obtained by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
against the State Department, the memo includes the phrase: “No institution or
individual may release any relevant information to the outside world without
authorization.”
The memo also reads: “Opinions that have not been
scientifically verified and reviewed must not be publicly disseminated to the
public.”
The lawsuit was started by US Right to Know
(USRTK), a nonprofit investigative public health research and journalism group
that has been praised by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Lancet
Global Health report.
The scientific community
looking the determine the origins of Covid have long complained about the
investigations being hampered by Chinese censorship and destruction of early
lab samples.
Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo, an evolutionary
biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said: “Having access
to additional sequences from the early days would greatly help researchers to
infer what happened in Wuhan in 2019 and to distinguish between the different
scenarios.”
Courtier-Orgogozo claims that at least 100
individuals with symptoms in December 2019 have been sampled, but only around
20 genome sequences from these patients have been made available to
international researchers.
China’s cloak and dagger approach to public health
information has infuriated researchers for decades.
The leaked order echoes the data censorship during
the Sars epidemic that began in 2002, when the Government decreed that only the
China CDC could legally possess viral samples.
More
China DESTROYED samples from Wuhan lab after Covid
outbreak claims leaked documents (msn.com)
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Hydrogen-powered
passenger train rides the rails in North America
Paul Ridden June 29, 2023
French transport multinational
Alstom debuted the world's first hydrogen fuel-cell passenger train back
in 2016, which went
into service in Germany last
year. Now the Coradia iLint is rolling down the track in North America for the
first time.
The first hydrogen-powered train
journey in North America took place on June 17 as part of a three-month
demonstration project in Canada, and transported a hundred passengers on a
stretch of the Réseau de Charlevoix railway network – a 90-km (56-mile) route
between Parc de la Chute-Montmorency in Quebec City and Baie St-Paul that runs
through the UNESCO-listed Charlevoix Biosphere Reserve.
The two-carriage train makes use of
fuel cells from Accelera by Cummins and, importantly, sources its green
hydrogen from Harnois Énergies in Quebec City, though Engadget does point out that the hydrogen will be hauled to the
refueling point in Baie St-Paul by diesel trucks – at least until on-site
infrastructure cleans up the act.
The Coradia iLint has been designed
specifically to serve non-electrified or partially electrified railway
networks. It's reported able to achieve a top speed of 140 km/h (87 mph), and
boasts similar acceleration and braking chops to regional diesel trains.
With a full tank feeding
the hydrogen fuel cells, the Coradia iLint has a range of around 1,000 km (620
miles), though Alstom reports that a test train did manage 1,175 km (730 miles)
without refueling in September 2022.
The only emissions from
system will be steam and condensed water, and the train should offer a quieter
experience for passengers and for folks living near the railway line.
More
Hydrogen-powered passenger train rides the rails in
North America (newatlas.com)
This weekend’s masterful music diversion.
Dresden’s almost forgotten Pisendel, the top violinist of his day. Many of the
baroque greats wrote pieces especially for him, but thinking them too easy, he
also composed for himself as here.
Just go to the final Allegro starting
about 9:10, where Pisendel merges the slow Andante into the faster closing Allegro
without break. Approx. 15 minutes, although only about 5 minutes from 9:10.
Johann
Georg Pisendel Violin Concerto in D major, Straumer / Guttler
Johann Georg
Pisendel Violin Concerto in D major, Straumer / Guttler - YouTube
Johann Georg Pisendel
Johann
Georg Pisendel - Wikipedia
This weekend’s chess update. Approx.
14 minutes.
Cross
the Squares, Black and White, Dances the Nimble Chess Knight
Cross the Squares, Black and White, Dances the Nimble
Chess Knight - YouTube
This weekend maths update. More math’s
magic from a math’s genius. Way above my math’s level, but worth watching magic
at work. Approx. 27 minutes
Is
this Ramanujan's most beautiful identity? (Mathologer Masterclass)
Is this Ramanujan's most beautiful identity?
(Mathologer Masterclass) - YouTube
Battle of the Boyne, 1690 ⚔️ When the balance of power in Europe changed forever
Battle of the Boyne, 1690 ⚔️
When the balance of power in Europe changed forever - YouTube
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