Baltic
Dry Index. 1755 -41 Brent Crude 80.96
Spot Gold 1997 US 2 Year Yield 4.89 +0.03
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls
Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
Warren Buffett.
With both the US stock casinos and Japan’s closed for holidays, the thiner trading conditions elsewhere make for an easier time to rig the casinos higher and run a short squeeze.
Today’s worrying news is that the first hostage release has been delayed by at least 24 hours. No word so far as to the cause of the delay.
In other news, the winner of the snap Dutch
election seems to have been a far right, anti-immigrant party. If they make it into the next governing
coalition, the EUSSR is in for an interesting few years. The weekend
OPEC meeting has been delayed until November 30th.
Finally, for more on the OpenAI governance farce, scroll down to the last section.
A Happy Thanksgiving to all celebrating Thanksgiving today. In truth, nearly all of us outside of Ukraine, Gaza, inflation hit Argentina and some flooded parts of Africa, have much to be thankful for, though you wouldn't know that listening to the far left BBC.
Asia markets mixed even as Wall Street goes into
Thanksgiving with a rally
UPDATED WED, NOV 22 2023 11:03 PM
EST
Asia-Pacific
markets are mixed after Wall Street went into the Thanksgiving holiday with a
broad based rally.
More than half of the stocks
trading on the New York Stock Exchange were up Wednesday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq
also saw greater participation, with 62.9% of the stocks in the index rising. Small-
and mid-caps outperformed
Wednesday, rising 0.7% and 0.6%, respectively.
In Asia-Pacific, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was
down 0.5%, extending losses from the day before.
The country saw its business
activity contract at a faster pace in November, according to flash estimates
from Judo Bank. Australia’s composite purchasing managers index slid to 46.4,
down from October’s 47.6.
South Korea’s Kospi reversed
earlier gains and dropped 0.13%, but the small-cap Kosdaq advanced 0.45%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped
0.34%, but the mainland Chinese CSI 300 index was marginally up.
Japan’s markets are closed due to
a public holiday.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes
rebounded from Tuesday’s losses, with the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield
also briefly falling to its lowest level in two months.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury
briefly fell to 4.369% Wednesday morning, the lowest level since Sept. 22. It
later recovered and was last little changed at 4.41%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained
0.53%, while the S&P
500 climbed 0.41%. The Nasdaq Composite advanced
0.46%.
Asia stock markets
today: Live updates, Singapore inflation, Australia PMI (cnbc.com)
European markets head for mixed open ahead
of euro zone business activity data
UPDATED THU, NOV 23 2023 12:33 AM
EST
European
markets are heading for a mixed open Thursday, echoing sentiment in the Asia-Pacific
region overnight.
Investors in Europe will be
keeping an eye on preliminary purchasing managers’ index data from the euro
zone for November for the latest indication of economic activity in the
services and construction sectors.
Markets will also be keeping an
eye on Dutch election results after an exit poll showed
right-wing populist Geert Wilders to be on track for a dramatic victory with
his Freedom Party, the PVV.
In other news, U.S.
stocks rose Wednesday after the benchmark 10-year
Treasury yield briefly fell to its lowest level in two months and the
November market rally broadened into the Thanksgiving holiday.
European
markets live updates: PMIs, stocks, news, data and earnings (cnbc.com)
Big investors say US markets rally could prove short-lived
By Carolina Mandl, Svea
Herbst-Bayliss and David Randall
November
22, 2023 11:08 AM GMT
NEW YORK, Nov 22 (Reuters) - The recent
rally that has lifted U.S. stocks and bonds is more of a year-end rebound than
a turning point, according to big money managers, who see fiscal and monetary
policies, next year's presidential election and recession fears as likely to
start weighing on markets.
Since late October,
the S&P 500 (.SPX) has rallied roughly 10% and the Nasdaq (.IXIC) has
surged 13%, as investors increased bets that the Federal Reserve's tightening
cycle is over after signs of cooling
inflation and job
growth and a better-than-expected third-quarter earnings season.
Ten-year Treasury yields hit a 16-year
high of 5.021% in late October, but have fallen back to 4.414%. Lower yields
have driven a technology-fueled equities rally.
Some big investors and advisers
believe, however, that reasons to cheer are short-lived and growing concerns
over the economy will start weighting on asset prices early next year.
"We've started seeing some signs
that things are a little weaker than what people may believe," Ryan
Israel, chief investment officer of Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital
Management, told clients last week, adding the main focus now is where the
economy is heading.
Markets may have
“gone too far in extrapolating” rate cuts in early 2024 from recent data
suggesting that consumer inflation is falling and the U.S. labor market is
weakening, said Mohamed El-Erian, an adviser to financial services firm Allianz
SE (ALVG.DE).
While inflation has become less
front-and-center after U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in October, on
investors' minds is the fallout from the Fed's 525 basis points in total
interest rate hikes since March 2022 coupled with the central bank's efforts to
reduce its balance sheet, under its so-called quantitative tightening.
Overall, growth in the global economy
is expected to slow
in 2024, hit by elevated interest rates, higher energy prices and cooler
growth in the world's two largest economies, the U.S. and China. Most
economists, however, believe the world will avoid a recession.
----The U.S. presidential race next
year is also a concern because it could be a source of more market instability.
"As we get into 2024, with a general election that's going to be extremely
contested, I think we're going to see more risks there," said Max Gokhman,
head of MosaiQ investment strategy at Franklin Templeton.
MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
One of the biggest sources of
uncertainty for investors is the performance of the so-called Magnificent Seven
group of very large companies, which have driven stock indexes this year.
Bill Gross, the co-founder of bond
giant Pimco who now manages his own money and that of his foundation, told
Reuters in an email that the drop in yields has largely benefited technology
stocks, which are also riding investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence.
But he sees little room for the 10-year Treasury yield to move lower at 4.45%.
"Do not look for yields to be a contributing factor in the future,"
he said.
For a new boost in market performance,
tech stocks will depend more on showing how AI can lift results, investors
said.
More
Big investors say US markets rally could prove
short-lived | Reuters
“When you
combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”
Warren Buffett.
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.
Factbox-Global
economy to slow down but likely avoid recession in 2024
November 22, 2023
(Reuters)
-Some of the major banks in the world expect global economic growth to ease
further in 2024, squeezed by elevated interest rates, higher energy prices and
a slowdown in the world's two largest economies.
The global
economy is forecast to grow 2.9% this year, a Reuters poll showed, with next
year's growth seen slowing to 2.6%.
Most
economists expect the global economy to avoid a recession, but have flagged
possibilities of "mild recessions" in Europe and the UK.
A soft-landing
for the United States is still on the cards, although uncertainty around the
Federal Reserve's monetary tightening path clouds the outlook. China's growth
is seen weakening, exacerbated by companies seeking alternative cost-efficient
production destinations. Following are forecasts from major global banks:
Real GDP
growth forecasts for 2024
GLOBAL U.S.
CHINA EURO UK INDIA
AREA
2.60% 2.10%
4.80% 0.90% 0.6% 6.3%
Goldman
Sachs
2.80% 1.90%
4.20% 0.50% 6.4%
Morgan -0.1%
Stanley
UBS 2.60%
1.10% 4.40%
0.60%
0.6% 6.2%
Barclays 2.60%
1.20% 0.1%
0.30%
4.40% 6.2%
2.20% 1.60%
4.90% 0.40% 0.2% 5.7%
More
Factbox-Global economy to slow down but likely avoid
recession in 2024 (msn.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Long Covid 'changes brains' of people who have it
differently to those who recover, University Hospital Freiburg study finds
November 22, 2023
Long Covid changes the brains
of people differently to those who recover from the virus, reveals new
research. Up to one in four people infected by the virus develop the
debilitating condition now referred to as “Long Covid.”
People with Long Covid may
suffer a range of symptoms - including difficulty concentrating, change in
sense of smell or taste, tiredness, joint or muscle pain, shortness of breath
and digestive issues. The symptoms may persist for weeks, months, or - as is
only now becoming apparent - years after the initial Covid-19 infection.
But the basis of the condition is
poorly understood. Now German scientists have found that people with Long Covid
exhibit patterns of changes in the brain that are different from fully
recovered Covid-19 patients. They used diffusion microstructure imaging (DMI),
a new MRI technique, to detect the changes.
Study lead author Doctor Alexander
Rau, of University Hospital Freiburg, said: “To the best of our knowledge, this
is the first study comparing patients with Long Covid to both a group without
history of Covid-19 and a group that went through a Covid-19 infection but is
subjectively unimpaired."
He explained that DMI looks at the
movement of water molecules in tissues. By studying how water molecules move in
different directions and at various speeds, DMI can provide detailed
information on the microstructure of the brain.
Scientists say it can detect even
very small changes in the brain, not detectable with conventional MRI. Dr Rau
and his colleagues compared MRI brain scans of three groups: 89 patients with
Long Covid, 38 that had contracted Covid-19 but did not report any long-term
symptoms, and 46 healthy controls with no history of Covid.
The research team first compared the
cerebral structure of the three groups to test for atrophy or any other
abnormalities. They then used DMI to gain a deeper insight into the brain.
The three groups were compared to
reveal group differences in the brain’s microstructure. DMI parameters were
read for the grey matter in the brain. Whole brain analyses were also used to
reveal the spatial distribution of alterations and associations with clinical
data, including Long Covid symptoms such as fatigue, cognitive impairment or
impaired sense of smell.
The results showed no brain volume
loss or any other lesions that might explain the symptoms of Long Covid.
However, Covid-19 infection induced a "specific pattern" of
microstructural changes in various brain regions, and the pattern differed between
those who had Long Covid and those who did not.
More
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.
Sam Altman reinstated as CEO of OpenAI
Paul Ridden November 22, 2023
After five
days of turmoil at OpenAI following the firing of CEO Sam Altman, and much
support from investors and employees, the company has confirmed that he is
returning as Chief Executive, together with a board reshuffle.
The drama
at OpenAI began last Friday when board members Ilya Sutskever, Adam D'Angelo,
Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner fired
company co-founder and CEO Sam Altman,
with Chairman and President Greg Brockman also exiting after being removed from
the board.
Though the reasons behind the
move have not been fully explained, chaos
ensued in the days following,
including a groundswell of support for Altman from employees – 95% of whom
threatened to quit if the old leadership wasn't restored.
Microsoft stepped into the
fray and offered Altman and Brockman jobs, and an interim CEO put in place, in
the shape of former Twitch chief Emmett Shear.
A couple of hours ago, OpenAI
posted an update to X stating that an "agreement in principle" had
been reached to secure the return of Altman as CEO, but that the fine print was
still being worked on. The same post also revealed a board shake up, with
everyone apart from D'Angelo gone, who has now been joined by Bret Taylor and
Larry Summers on an interim board.
Post's from Altman and Brockman confirmed their return, with the latter following
up with a photo of smiles all
around at OpenAI and a message of appreciation to the 710+ employees who stood
by the leadership team.
The dust is still settling on
the story, but it seems that the chaotic drama is almost at an end.
Sam Altman reinstated as CEO of OpenAI (newatlas.com)
Exclusive: OpenAI
researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say
By Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu November 23, 2023 2:51 AM GMT
Nov 22 (Reuters) -
Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam
Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a
letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence
discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the
matter told Reuters.
The previously
unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board's
ouster of Altman, the poster child of generative AI, the two sources said.
Prior to his
triumphant return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had
threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft (MSFT.O) in
solidarity with their fired leader.
The sources cited the letter as one
factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman's
firing, among which were concerns over commercializing advances before
understanding the consequences. Reuters was unable to review a copy of the
letter. The staff who wrote the letter did not respond to requests for comment.
After being contacted by Reuters,
OpenAI, which declined to comment, acknowledged in an internal message to
staffers a project called Q* and a letter to the board before the weekend's
events, one of the people said. An OpenAI spokesperson said that the message,
sent by long-time executive Mira Murati, alerted staff to certain media stories
without commenting on their accuracy.
Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced
Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for what's known as
artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI
defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically
valuable tasks.
Given vast computing resources, the
new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on
condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on
behalf of the company. Though only performing math on the level of grade-school
students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future
success, the source said.
Reuters could not independently verify
the capabilities of Q* claimed by the researchers.
'VEIL OF IGNORANCE'
Researchers consider math to be a
frontier of generative AI development. Currently, generative AI is good at
writing and language translation by statistically predicting the next word, and
answers to the same question can vary widely. But conquering the ability to do
math — where there is only one right answer — implies AI would have greater
reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence. This could be applied to
novel scientific research, for instance, AI researchers believe.
More
Let Wall Street have a
nightmare and the whole country has to help get them back in bed again.
Will Rogers.
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