Baltic
Dry Index. 2094 +07 Brent Crude 79.32
Spot Gold 2063 US 2 Year Yield 4.31 -0.02
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history
counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent
that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those
who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the
present.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
It is
the last trading week of 2023. Time to dress up stocks one last time before
what I think will turn unto a global recession in 2024.
Asian stocks stutter, dollar drifts as US rate cut bets rise
By Ankur Banerjee
December
26, 2023 2:29 AM GM
SINGAPORE, Dec 26
(Reuters) - Asian stocks traded tentatively on Tuesday, while the dollar lurked
near a five-month low as cooling U.S. inflation bolstered bets the Federal
Reserve would cut interest rates soon.
Investors
were still digesting data released on Friday that showed U.S. prices fell in November for
the first time in more than 3-1/2 years, underscoring the economy's durability.
MSCI's
broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was 0.18%
higher, on course for a 1.6% gain this year. Japan's Nikkei (.N225) eased 0.07% but
remains the best performing Asian stock market with a 27% gain for the year.
Trading is likely
to be thin on the day after Christmas with several markets, including those in
Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong closed for the Boxing Day holiday.
Stock investors
have cheered recent signs from the Fed on the outlook for rates. At the
conclusion of its policy meeting on Dec. 13, the Fed signalled that it had
reached the end of its tightening cycle and opened the door to interest rate
cuts in the coming year.
"The Federal
Reserve has aggressively changed its rhetoric to engineer a significant easing
of financial conditions," Citi analysts said in a note.
"A
combination of slower core inflation and rising recession concerns led Fed
officials to shift rhetoric away from a commitment to fight inflation with
higher-for-longer rates and toward reassuring markets that they will not 'hang
on' to higher rates for too long."
Markets are now
pricing in a 75% chance of a 25 basis points rate cut from the Fed in March,
according to the CME FedWatch tool, compared with a 21% chance at the end of
November. Markets are also pricing in more than 150 basis points of rate cuts
next year.
In
Asia, China stocks (.SSEC) eased
0.12% in early trading, with online gaming companies still reeling from new
rules to curb spending on video games, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index (.HSI) remained closed.
In the currency
market, moves were muted in holiday-thinned trade, with the dollar index at
101.65, not far from the five-month low of 101.42 it touch
More
Asian
stocks stutter, dollar drifts as US rate cut bets rise | Reuters
China leads declines in Asia markets in last
trading week of 2023
UPDATED MON, DEC 25 2023 11:50 PM
EST
China led declines in Asia-Pacific stock markets
Tuesday in a holiday-shortened week, with Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong
markets closed for Boxing Day holiday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dipped
0.17%, but was set to wrap up the year as the region’s top performer with gains
of over 27%. The broader Topix inched 0.27% lower.
China’s CSI 300 index was down
0.72% by midday trading, after opening marginally lower.
South Korea’s Kospi was
flat around 2,600 level, while the Kosdaq index fell 0.73%.
The Topix has gained 23.5% so far
this year, while the Kospi has advanced 16.2%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index has
been the worst performer of 2023, down about 17.4%.
Wall Street’s major averages clocked an eighth
straight winning week on Friday, looking to extend their year-end rally.
The S&P 500 index
gained 0.17% to 4,754.63 in its previous trading session — just 0.9% shy from
its record close, and 1.3% from its intraday record.
The Nasdaq Composite rose
by 0.19%, while the Dow Jones
Industrial Average fell
18.38 points, or 0.05%.
Live
updates: Asia markets subdued, Japan top performer of 2023 (cnbc.com)
Shipping giant Maersk prepares to resume
operations in Red Sea
Denmark’s Maersk is preparing to resume shipping
operations in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the company said on Sunday,
citing the deployment of a U.S.-led military operation designed to ensure the
safety of commerce in the area.
The shipping giant paused sending
vessels through the Bab el-Mandeb strait earlier in December due to attacks
against its ships. That rendered the Suez Canal, which is key to global
commerce, unusable for most routes.
The United States said on Tuesday it was launching a multinational
operation to protect commerce in the Red Sea from Iran-backed Yemeni militants,
who have been firing drones and missiles at international vessels since last
month in what they say is a response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“As of Sunday, 24 December 2023, we
have received confirmation that the previously announced multi-national
security initiative Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) has now been set up and
deployed to allow maritime commerce to pass through the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden
and once again return to using the Suez Canal as a gateway between Asia and
Europe,” Masersk said in a statement on Sunday.
“With the OPG initiative in
operation, we are preparing to allow for vessels to resume transit through the
Red Sea both eastbound and westbound.”
Maersk said it would release more
details in the coming days. But it said it could again resort
to diverting ship traffic depending on how safety conditions
evolved.
On Tuesday, Maersk said it was
rerouting ships around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. It said it would
impose container surcharges for shipments from Asia to cover the extra costs
associated with the longer journey.
Several other firms have stopped
transiting the Red Sea on safety concerns in recent weeks, as has oil major BP.
Shipping
giant Maersk prepares to resume operations in Red Sea (cnbc.com)
Finally, in 2024 war news, will peace finally get tried?
Not if the war parties in Washington and London can prevent it in Ukraine.
As for the war in the Gaza ghetto, no one in
Washington is even trying to bring that war to an end. Israel is planning for
war into February or March. A wider war lies directly ahead.
With hopes of
victory fading, Ukraine’s war against Russia could get even harder in 2024
At the start of 2023,
hopes were high that a much-vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive — expected to be
launched in the spring — would change the dial in the war against Russia.
It didn’t, and the
prospect of a breakthrough in 2024 is also unlikely, military experts and
defense analysts told CNBC.
They predict intense
fighting is likely to continue into the next year but say Kyiv’s forces are
unlikely to launch any more counteroffensives. Russia, meanwhile, is likely to
focus on consolidating the territory it has already seized, particularly in eastern
Ukraine.
Away from the
battlefield, military experts said that the trajectory the Russia-Ukraine war
takes in 2024 will mostly be dictated thousands of miles away in the U.S.,
Ukraine’s largest military supporter, and whether aid declines in the run-up —
and following — the U.S. presidential election.
“War is an uncertain
endeavor,” retired Army Lt. General Stephen Twitty, former deputy
commander of U.S. European Command, told CNBC.
“Russia can win the
war, or the Ukrainians can win the war. And, as you’re seeing things now, if
you really think about it, what has been achieved this year? Very little has
been achieved by Russia, and you can say the same thing for the Ukrainians,” he
said.
“We’re in this situation now
where if there’s not a clear winner, there’s going to be a stalemate, and
there’s going to be, perhaps, a future frozen conflict. What can tilt the
balance, in my view, is if the Ukrainians are not resupplied and they’re not re-funded
and they don’t get the equipment and people that they need. Then this war could
tilt to the Russians,” Twitty noted.
More
What
could happen in the Russia-Ukraine war in 2024? (cnbc.com)
Israel budget plans
for Gaza war to last through February, widening deficit
By Steven Scheer
December
25, 2023 2:15 PM GMT
JERUSALEM, Dec 25 (Reuters) - Israel's
war with Hamas in Gaza will likely cost it at least another 50 billion shekels
($14 billion) in 2024 and result in a near-tripling of its budget deficit, the
Finance Ministry said on Monday, projecting that fighting will last through
February.
Briefing lawmakers, the ministry's
deputy budget commissioner Itai Temkin said the war was expected to stretch at
least two months into 2024, adding 30 billion shekels for security and another
20 billion for civilian and other expenses.
That, he told the Knesset Finance
Committee, would drive up total defence spending by more than 48 billion
shekels beyond what had initially been allocated.
Total budgetary spending in 2024 would
rise to 562.1 billion shekels from a planned 513.7 billion and lead to a budget
deficit of 5.9% of gross domestic product, up from a target of 2.25%.
With the deficit expected to widen by
75 billion shekels to 114 billion shekels next year, Temkin said the gap would
require cutting other expenses or raising revenue.
He also it was not currently possible
to plan for the possibility that the war against Gaza's Palestinian Hamas
Islamists would stretch into March or beyond.
"It is possible that later in the
year we will have to come and update it and we will have to come with updates
as the war drags on," he said.
More
Israel
budget plans for Gaza war to last through February, widening deficit | 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.
Bank of England official hints at interest rate shift
as UK faces recession
December 22, 2023
One of the Bank of England’s most
hawkish policy makers has signalled he will stop calling for higher interest
rates if inflation continues to cool.
Jonathan Haskel, who had been pushing
for more rate hikes, said he was encouraged by last month’s “broad based” fall
in inflation because more reliable indicators of price changes are also
starting to ease.
It came as official figures
showed Britain is on the brink of recession, cementing bets that the Bank will start cutting interest rates in May.
The economy shrank by 0.1pc
between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics
(ONS), which had previously recorded zero growth for the period.
While the Imperial
College Business School professor, who has voted four times to raise interest
rates to 5.5pc from 5.25pc since August, insisted that he would not shift his
stance “based on one month data”, a darkening economic backdrop will pile more
pressure on the Bank to cut rates to kickstart growth.
Ellie Henderson, an economist
at Investec, said a winter recession was now “far more likely” after the
economy shrank by 0.3pc in October. Another quarter of economic decline would
mark the first technical recession since the first pandemic lockdown.
Inflation, as measured by the
consumer prices index (CPI), fell to 3.9pc in November from 4.6pc in October,
sparking a stock market rally and predictions that mortgage rates will fall
further in the New Year.
Mr
Haskel said another closely-watched measure of services inflation, which strips
out volatile factors like air fares, had also seen a notable decline.
He wrote on social media site
X, formerly Twitter, that this was “news” because the declines were more
“broadly based” than in previous months.
Friday’s updated ONS figures
also revealed that the economy performed worse than expected between April and
June.
Instead of growing by 0.2pc
in the second quarter, as the ONS had previously estimated, the economy
flatlined.
Barclays joined a growing
chorus of economists who are bringing forward their expectations of rate cuts.
Jack Meaning, chief UK
economist at Barclays, said: “Inflation is falling faster than anticipated.
Lacklustre growth and more evidence that slack in the labour market is emerging
lead us to bring forward the timing of the first 25 basis point cut from August
to May 2024.”
Barclays
believes rates will fall to 3.25pc by early 2025.
More
Bank of England official hints at interest rate shift
as UK faces recession (msn.com)
German property prices plummet as housing bubble
bursts
December 22, 2023
House prices in Germany dropped by a
record 10.2pc in the third quarter in a further sign of the struggles faced by
Europe’s largest economy since the pandemic.
It was the fourth consecutive quarter
of declines compared to the same time a year earlier, and the biggest since
Germany’s statistics office began keeping records in the year 2000.
The drop comes amid the
biggest property crisis in decades in Europe’s largest economy.
Konstantin Kholodilin of the
German Institute for Economic Research said: “Until 2022, there was a
speculative price bubble in Germany, one of the biggest in the last 50 years.
“Prices have been falling
ever since. The bubble has burst.”
For years,
the property sector in Germany and elsewhere in Europe boomed as interest rates
were low and demand strong.
But a sharp rise in rates and
costs has put an end to the run, tipping developers into insolvency as bank
financing dries up and deals freeze.
It comes as official data
showed Germany is the worst performing G7 economy since the pandemic, growing
by just 0.3pc.
Britain slipped back behind
France to be the next worst performer after downward revisions to growth left the UK on the brink of recession.
German property prices plummet as housing bubble bursts (msn.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID-19 Vaccines
Can Potentially Worsen Cancer: Review
Researchers
found many factors within COVID-19 vaccinations that predisposed cancer
patients towards a worsening of their condition.
12/23/2023 Updated: 12/24/2023
COVID-19
vaccines can trigger genetic changes in cancer patients that could aid in the
further development of the disease in such individuals, according to a recent
peer-reviewed analysis.
The review, published in the Cureus medical journal
on Dec. 17, looked at the relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and cancer. A
review of multiple studies led the authors to conclude that certain COVID-19
vaccines may create an environment that predisposes some cancer patients,
including survivors, to “cancer progression, recurrence, and/or metastasis.”
The
conclusion was based on two factors. First is the “multi-hit hypothesis” of
cancer, which suggests that cancer is the consequence of several genetic
mutations.
The second is
the “growing evidence and safety reports” in the Vaccine Adverse Effects Report
System (VAERS), which suggested that some cancer patients who took COVID-19
vaccines saw their conditions worsen.
“In light of
the above and because some of these concerns also apply to cancer patients
infected with SARS-CoV-2, we encourage the scientific and medical community to
urgently evaluate the impact of both COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination on
cancer biology and tumor registries, adjusting public health recommendations
accordingly,” the review said.
The review
focused on mRNA vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, and
adenovirus-vectorized vaccines, Johnson & Johnson and Oxford/AstraZeneca,
as these products were most widely used in global COVID-19 vaccination
campaigns.
mRNA vaccines
have the potential to trigger a set of biological mechanisms that could lead to
the progression of cancer, it said.
These effects
are attributed to factors like the “pro-inflammatory action” of lipid
nanoparticles (LNPs) and tumor-causing effects of the vaccines’ antigens,
namely the spike protein.
LNPs are
nanoparticle drug delivery systems that can be used to deliver DNA and mRNA
into a body. The spike protein, found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus,
facilitates the entry of the virus into healthy cells.
The
authors who wrote the review are Raquel Valdes Angues from the Oregon Health
and Science University School of Medicine in Portland and Yolanda Perea Bustos
from the education department in the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.
They declared “no financial support” from organizations that might have an
interest in their work and no other relationships or activities that could have
influenced the review.
More
COVID-19 Vaccines Can Potentially Worsen Cancer:
Review | The Epoch Times
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.
A large solar storm could knock
out the power grid and the internet – an electrical engineer explains how
David Wallace, Mississippi State
University
Sat, 23
December 2023 at 3:04 pm GMT
On Sept. 1 and 2, 1859, telegraph
systems around the world failed catastrophically. The operators of the
telegraphs reported receiving electrical shocks, telegraph paper catching fire,
and being able to operate equipment with
batteries disconnected. During the evenings, the aurora borealis,
more commonly known as the northern lights, could be seen as far south as
Colombia. Typically, these lights are only visible at higher latitudes, in
northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia.
What the world experienced that
day, now known as the Carrington
Event, was a massive geomagnetic
storm. These storms occur when a large bubble of superheated gas
called plasma is ejected from the surface of the sun and hits the Earth. This
bubble is known as a coronal mass ejection.
The plasma of a coronal mass
ejection consists of a cloud of protons and electrons, which are electrically
charged particles. When these particles reach the Earth, they interact with the
magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This interaction causes the magnetic
field to distort and weaken, which in turn leads to the strange behavior of the
aurora borealis and other natural phenomena. As an electrical
engineer who specializes in the power grid, I study how
geomagnetic storms also threaten to cause power and internet outages and how to
protect against that.
Geomagnetic storms
The Carrington Event of 1859 is
the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm, but it is not an isolated
event.
Geomagnetic storms have been
recorded since the early 19th century, and scientific data from Antarctic ice
core samples has shown evidence of an even more massive geomagnetic storm that occurred around
A.D. 774, now known as the Miyake Event. That solar flare produced
the largest and fastest rise in carbon-14 ever recorded. Geomagnetic storms
trigger high amounts of cosmic rays in Earth’s upper atmosphere, which in turn
produce carbon-14,
a radioactive isotope of carbon.
A geomagnetic storm 60% smaller
than the Miyake Event occurred
around A.D. 993. Ice core samples have shown evidence that
large-scale geomagnetic storms with similar intensities as the Miyake and
Carrington events occur at an average rate of once every 500 years.
More
If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
John Maynard Keynes.
No comments:
Post a Comment