Baltic Dry Index. 1357 +49 Brent Crude 78.93
Spot
Gold 2022 US
2 Year Yield 4.34 unch.
The whole aim of
practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be
led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary.
H. L. Mencken.
In the stock casinos, an end of week relief rally fuelled by AI tech hype..
In the global economy, rising supply chain disruption from the spreading war on Gaza’s women and children.
In the USA, a fix of sorts to keep the US
government functioning. More yield curve flattening.
Taiwan leads gains as most Asia markets
rise; Japan December inflation at its lowest since June 2022
UPDATED FRI, JAN 19 2024 12:44 AM EST
Taiwan led gains in major Asia-Pacific markets
on Friday as chip stocks rose, with heavyweight Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Corp surging as much as 6.63%.
The Taiwan Weighted
Index jumped
2.5%.
Investors also assessed Japan’s
December inflation numbers — the last key data before the Bank of Japan’s first
monetary policy meeting of 2024.
The world’s third-largest economy
saw headline inflation rate hit its lowest level since June 2022, cooling to
2.6% from 2.8% in November.
Japan’s core inflation rate —
which strips out prices of fresh food — also fell to 2.3% from November’s 2.5%,
in line with expectations from economists polled by Reuters.
The Bank of Japan kicks off its
two-day monetary policy meeting on Jan. 22, and will announce its decision the
next day.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rebounded
after two straight days of losses, climbing 1.25%, while the Topix rose 0.6%.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.82%,
while the small-cap Kosdaq declined marginally
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
1.02% to close at 7,421.2, after three straight days of losses.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index inched
down 0.16%, reversing earlier gains, while the mainland Chinese CSI 300 fell
0.41%, after rallying late Thursday.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes
rebounded, powered by tech companies.
Most notably, Apple gained
3.3% after Bank of America upgraded the stock to buy, calling for more than 20%
upside over the next 12 months. The tech giant had its best day since May 5,
2023.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
0.54%, while the S&P 500 climbed
0.88% to end at just 15.62 points from its closing record of 4,796.56.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite posted
the largest gain, jumping 1.35%.
Asia markets live
updates: Japan CPI, Bank of Japan (cnbc.com)
S&P
500 futures are little changed Thursday evening after tech-led rally: Live
updates
UPDATED FRI, JAN 19 2024 12:25 AM EST
S&P
500 futures
oscillated near the flat line on Thursday night.
Futures linked to the broad
market index inched higher by 0.08%, while Dow Jones
Industrial Average futures
slid 28 points or 0.07%. Nasdaq 100 futures rose
0.33%.
In extended trading, iRobot plunged
about 40% after The Wall Street Journal reported that the
European Commission would likely reject Amazon’s bid to acquire the Roomba
manufacturer. The Journal cited people familiar with the matter.
On Thursday, Congress also passed
a bill to avert a partial government shutdown. This stopgap measure keeps the
federal government funded through March 1 and March 8. The Senate voted 77-18
to pass the bill, while the House voted to move it forward, 314-108. The bill
goes to President Joe Biden for signing.
During the regular session, the Dow added
201.94 points during Thursday’s trading session, ending a 3-day string of
losing days. The S&P 500 added
0.88%, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed
1.35%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are now positive for 2024.
On a weekly basis, the Nasdaq is
standing out with a 0.55% advance, while the Dow is down 0.33%. The S&P 500
is marginally lower by 0.06%.
Thursday’s gains were powered by
major advances in the technology sector, after Bank of America upgraded shares
of Apple to
a buy rating. Apple stock closed 3.3% higher, marking its best day since May 5,
2023. Tech shares rallied even as the 10-year Treasury yield topped 4.1%.
----A slew of financial
institutions are set to report earnings Friday before the bell, including Travelers, Regions Financial, Fifth Third, Ally Financial and State Street.
Traders will watch out for December’s existing home sales reading, a reflection
on the current state of the U.S. housing market. Preliminary consumer sentiment
data is also due Friday morning.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
In other
news, more Red Sea supply chain disruption.
Red Sea attacks already bigger issue for
supply chain than pandemic, maritime advisory warns
A leading ocean supply chain advisory firm is
warning that the disruptions
to shipping from the Houthi
rebel attacks in the Red Sea are already more damaging to the
supply chain impact than the early Covid-19 pandemic.
Sea-Intelligence analyzed current
vessel delays compared to delays over the last several years in a report for
clients. The data shows that the longer transit around the Cape of Good Hope as
ships divert from the Red Sea is already having a more significant impact on
vessels available to pick up containers at ports than during the pandemic. This
supply chain measure is known in the industry as “vessel capacity.”
The vessel capacity drop is the second largest in recent years, according
to Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence. The only single event with a bigger
impact than the Red Sea crisis was the “Ever Given,” the giant cargo ship which
got stuck in the Suez Canal for six days during March 2021. Billions
in trade were at a standstill during that event. With that
exception, “This [the Red Sea crisis] is the largest single event – even larger
than the early pandemic impact,” Murphy said.
More
Red
Sea crisis already bigger issue for shipping than Covid, data show (cnbc.com)
Red Sea shipping
attacks pressure China's exporters as delays, costs mount
By Samuel Shen, Casey Hall and Ellen Zhang
January
19, 2024 2:10 AM GMT
SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Jan 19
(Reuters) - For Chinese businessman Han Changming, disruptions to Red Sea freight
are threatening the survival of his trading company in the eastern province of
Fujian.
Han, who exports Chinese-made cars to Africa and imports
off-road vehicles from Europe, told Reuters the cost of shipping a container to
Europe had surged to roughly $7,000 from $3,000 in December, when Yemen's
Iran-aligned Houthi movement escalated attacks on shipping.
"The disruptions have
wiped out our already thin profits," said Han, adding that higher
shipping-insurance premiums are also taking a toll on Fuzhou Han Changming
International Trade Co Ltd, the company he founded in 2016.
The rupture of one of the world's busiest shipping routes has
exposed the vulnerability of China's export-reliant economy to supply snarls
and external demand shocks. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on
Tuesday, Premier Li Qiang emphasised
the need to keep global supply chains "stable and smooth", without
referring specifically to the Red Sea.
Some companies, such as
U.S.-based BDI Furniture, have said they are relying more on factories in
places such as Turkey and Vietnam to mitigate the impact of the disruptions,
adding to recent moves by Western countries to reduce dependence on China
amid geopolitical tensions.
At stake for China now is the danger that other firms will
follow suit and reassess their de-risking strategy, opting potentially to shift
production closer to home, an approach known as "near-shoring".
"If it's permanent, and
it could be permanent, then the whole mechanism will be readjusted," said
Marco Castelli, founder of IC Trade, which exports Chinese-made mechanical
components to Europe. "Some (companies) may also consider moving more
production to India, which is one week closer to Europe. Companies need to
reevaluate everything."
Further Red Sea disruptions would pile pressure on a struggling Chinese economy already
contending with a property crisis, weak consumer demand, a shrinking population and
sluggish global growth.
More
Red
Sea shipping attacks pressure China's exporters as delays, costs mount |
Reuters
Finally, China. Is China now in recession or
entering recession?
China's ageing
population threatens switch to new economic growth model
By Farah Master January 18, 2024 3:27 AM GMT
HONG KONG, Jan 18 (Reuters)
- China's ageing population threatens key Beijing policy goals for the coming
decade of boosting domestic consumption and reining in ballooning debt, posing
a severe challenge to the economy's long-term growth prospects.
A record low birth rate in 2023 and a wave of COVID-19 deaths
resulted in a second consecutive year of population decline,
accelerating concerns about China's demographic downturn.
Large groups of the 1.4 billion people living in the world's
second-largest economy will exit the labour pool and age past a prime period of
their lives for consumption, exacerbating structural
imbalances that policymakers have vowed to address.
Household consumption's
share of economic output in China is already one of the lowest in
the world, while many provincial governments - responsible for pensions and
elderly care - are deep in debt as
a result of decades of
credit-fuelled investment-driven growth.
"China's age structure change will slow down economic
growth," said Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow at the Centre of
Policy Studies (CoPS) at Victoria University in Melbourne.
In the next 10 years, about
300 million people currently aged 50 to 60 - China's largest demographic group,
equivalent to almost the entire U.S. population - are set to leave the
workforce at a time when pension budgets are already stretched.
The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension
system running out of money by 2035, with about a third of the country's
provincial-level jurisdictions running pension budget deficits, according to
finance ministry data.
China, which accepts few and only highly-skilled foreign
workers, has one of the world's lowest retirement ages, at
60 for men, 55 for white-collar women and 50 for women who work in factories. A
record 28 million people are scheduled to retire this year.
More
China's ageing population threatens switch to new
economic growth model | Reuters
For many in China,
the economy feels like it is in recession
By Casey Hall January 17, 2024 11:07 PM GMT
SHANGHAI, Jan 18 (Reuters) -
The night before China's civil service exam, Melody Zhang anxiously paced up
and down the corridor of her dormitory, rehearsing her answers. Only when she
got back to her room did she realise she had been crying the whole time.
Zhang was hoping to start a career in state propaganda after
more than 100 unsuccessful job applications in the media industry. With a record 2.6
million people going for 39,600 government jobs amid a youth unemployment
crisis, she didn't get through.
"We were born in the
wrong era," said the 24-year-old graduate from China's top Renmin
University.
"No one cares about their dreams and ambitions anymore in
an economic downturn. The endless job-hunting is a torture."
A crisis of confidence in the economy is deterring consumers
from spending and businesses from hiring and investing, in what could become a
self-feeding mechanism that erodes China's long-term economic
potential.
China grew 5.2% last year,
more than most major economies. But for the unemployed
graduates, the property owners who feel poorer as
their flats are losing value, and the workers earning less than
the year before, the world's second-largest economy feels like it's shrinking.
Zhu Tian, economics professor at China Europe International
Business School in Shanghai, says the textbook definition of a recession - two
consecutive quarters of economic contraction - should not apply to a developing
country investing roughly 40% of its output annually, twice the level of the
United States.
"We're in a recession," Zhu said.
"If you talk to 10 people, seven will say we've had a bad year."
"I don't think the government can afford that.
This cannot go on forever," he said, urging more stimulus measures to
break out what could be a "vicious cycle" of low confidence that will
affect young people entering the job market in particular.
More
For many in China, the economy feels like it is in
recession | 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.
Maersk says winter
weather, Red Sea disruption cause congestion
January 18, 2024 7:09 AM GMT
OSLO, Jan 18 (Reuters) -
Weather-related disruption at ports in northern Europe and the diversion of
vessels away from the Red Sea are causing congestion at container terminals,
A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO), opens new tab said in an update to
customers on Thursday.
Maersk and other shipping groups have diverted vessels
away from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden following attacks by Yemen's
Houthis, sending them on a long journey around Africa rather than through the
Suez Canal shortcut.
In northern Europe, winter storms and the effects
of the recent holiday season have led to terminal closures and navigation
stoppages, the company said.
"Winter weather conditions as well as the Red
Sea contingencies are expected to affect operations across Europe and Hub
terminals," Maersk said.
"This is leading to increased yard density
across terminals and customers are kindly asked to pick up their units as soon
as possible after discharge to support fluidity," it said.
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc on
Wednesday said the
disruption to global shipping caused by the attacks on vessels in the Red Sea
will probably last at least a few months.
"While we hope for a sustainable resolution in the
near-future and do all we can to contribute towards it, we do encourage
customers to prepare for complications in the area to persist and for there to
be significant disruption to the global network," the company said in its
update on Thursday.
Maersk said it also offers
customers the option to shift some cargo from vessels to air freight at ports
in Oman and the United Arab Emirates to fly goods to final destinations in
Europe or the United States.
Container shipping rates for key global trade routes have soared,
with U.S. and UK air strikes on Yemen stirring fears of a prolonged disruption
to global trade traffic in the Red Sea, one of the world's busiest routes.
Maersk says winter weather, Red Sea disruption cause
congestion | Reuters
Red
Sea ship diversions boost bunker demand, prices in Africa, Mediterranean
By Jeslyn Lerh, Wendell Roelf and Robert Harvey January 18, 2024 10:27 AM GMT
SINGAPORE/CAPE TOWN/LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The
re-routing of a growing number of ships around Africa to avoid potential
attacks in the Red Sea is altering refueling patterns and boosting demand for
bunker fuel at far-flung ports, from the Mauritius to South Africa to the
Canary Islands.
Ships are also expected to top up more at Singapore
and Rotterdam, the two busiest bunkering ports and where fuel is competitively
priced, as they try to hedge against uncertainty over route changes, traders
and analysts said.
Attacks by
Yemen's Houthi militia on merchant ships in the Red Sea and retaliatory U.S. strikes have
ratcheted-up tensions in the Middle East as the Gaza war rages on.
The attacks by the Iran-allied Houthis, which they say are in
support of Palestinians, target a route that accounts for about 15% of the
world's shipping traffic and acts as a vital conduit between Europe and Asia.
Hundreds of large vessels have rerouted around
the southern tip of Africa, adding 10-14 days of travel, to avoid drone and
missile attacks by the Houthis.
"Ships are diverting away from the Red Sea and
re-routing around the coast of South and West Africa – this increased traffic
has created huge congestion in bunkering ports around Africa and placed
significant pressure on port infrastructure," John A. Bassadone, founder
and CEO of independent bunker supplier Peninsula, told Reuters.
Bunker fuel demand has risen at ports including
Mauritius' Port Louis, Gibraltar and ports in the Canary Islands and South
Africa, said traders and industry sources, with sales jumping in Cape Town and
Durban.
Prices of low-sulphur bunker fuel delivered at Cape
Town have jumped 15% to almost $800 per metric ton since mid-November when the
attacks started, data from bunker supplier Integr8 Fuels showed.
"We have seen an increase in bunker demand and
fixtures in South Africa, particularly for bunker-only vessels lately,"
said Philip Wang Balke, a senior bunker trader for Africa at Integr8, adding
that supply is tightening as more shipowners and operators buy fuel in advance
to ensure sufficient supplies.
More
Red Sea ship diversions boost bunker demand, prices in
Africa, Mediterranean | Reuters
A drought has forced authorities to further slash
traffic in Panama Canal, disrupting global trade
January
17, 2024
A severe drought that began last year
has forced authorities to slash ship crossings by 36% in the Panama Canal, one
of the world's most important trade routes.
The new cuts announced Wednesday by
authorities in Panama are set to deal an even greater economic blow than
previously expected.
Canal administrators now
estimate that dipping water levels could cost them between $500 million and
$700 million in 2024, compared to previous estimates of $200 million.
One of the most severe droughts to ever hit the Central
American nation has stirred chaos
in the 50-mile maritime route, causing a traffic jam of boats, casting doubts
on the canal's reliability for international shipping and raising concerns
about its affect on global trade.
On Wednesday, Panama Canal
Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez said they would cut daily ship crossings to 24,
after already gradually slashing crossings last year from 38 a day in normal
times.
"It's vital that the country
sends a message that we're going to take this on and find a solution to this
water problem," Vásquez said.
Vásquez added that in the first
quarter of the fiscal year the passageway saw 20% less cargo and 791 fewer
ships than the same period the year before.
It was a “significant reduction” for
the country, Vásquez said. But the official said that more “efficient” water
management and a jump in rainfall in November has at least enabled them to
ensure that water levels are high enough for 24 ships to pass daily until the
end of April, the start of the next rainy season.
More
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
How Long Does It Take to Get COVID-19? Here's What a New Study Says
January 17, 2024
With COVID-19 spreading as widely as it is right now, you run the risk of meeting an infected person every time you go into a public place. But every trip to the pharmacy or meal in a restaurant doesn’t lead to a case of COVID-19. So what makes some exposures more harmful than others?
The length of time you spend around a person with COVID-19 seems to heavily influence your likelihood of getting sick, according to a recent Nature study that has been peer-reviewed but not fully edited. Most exposures that result in transmission last at least an hour, if not much longer, the researchers say.
Previous studies have
shown that people who spend long bouts of time with someone who has COVID-19
are at increased risk of getting infected, particularly if the encounter
happens in a small, enclosed space. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention also warns that longer COVID-19 exposures are riskier than shorter ones—but the agency has typically said 15 minutes of exposure
is the threshold after which there’s a meaningful chance of getting sick. The
new study, however, suggests it usually takes even longer for the virus to
spread.
The researchers
analyzed data from a COVID-19 tracking app that millions of people in England
and Wales used to report positive test results and get notifications if they
came into contact with someone who tested positive. The authors used data from
7 million of those notifications, which all happened from April 2021 to
February 2022, to assess which exposures led to additional infections.
It’s an imperfect measure. Nonetheless, users reported 240,000 positive test results following the 7 million exposure notifications. In around 80% of these cases, the person who tested positive had previously been around someone with COVID-19 for an hour or longer, says co-author Christophe Fraser, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute (PSI). Transmission was particularly likely within households, where people tend to spend long stretches of time together. These encounters were responsible for 41% of recorded transmissions, according to the study.
“That doesn’t mean some
people haven’t been infected during short exposures,” Fraser says, but these
incidents were relatively rare in the study group.
More
How Long Does It Take to Get COVID-19? Here's What a New Study Says (msn.com)
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.
Researchers find evidence of long-lived valley states
in bilayer graphene quantum dots
January 17, 2023
In quantum
computing, the question as to what physical system and which degrees of freedom
within that system may be used to encode quantum bits of information—qubits, in
short—is at the heart of many research projects carried out in physics and
engineering laboratories.
Superconducting
qubits, spin qubits, and qubits encoded in the motion of trapped ions are
already widely recognized as prime candidates for future practical applications
of quantum computers; other systems need to be better understood and thus offer
a stimulating ground for fundamental investigation.
Rebekka Garreis, Chuyao Tong, Wister Huang, and their colleagues in
the group of Professors Klaus Ensslin and Thomas Ihn from the Department of
Physics at ETH Zurich have been looking into bilayer graphene (BLG) quantum
dots, known as a potential platform for spin qubits, to find out if another
degree of freedom of BLG can be used to encode quantum information.
Their
latest findings, just published in Nature
Physics with collaborators from the National Institute for Materials
Science in Japan, show that the so-called valley degree of freedom in BLG is
associated with quantum states that are extremely long-lived and are thus worth
considering further as an additional resource for solid-state quantum
computing.
----
In bilayer graphene, the system used by the researchers, two sheets of carbon
atoms lie on top of each other. Both graphene and BLG are semimetals, as they
lack the characteristic energy band gap found in semiconductors and, most
notably, insulators. Nevertheless, a tunable band gap can be engineered in BLG
by applying an electric field perpendicularly to the plane of the sheets.
Opening a band
gap is necessary to use BLG as a host material for quantum dots, which are
nanometer-scale 'boxes' capable of confining single or few electrons. Usually
fabricated in semiconductor host materials, quantum dots offer excellent
control over individual electrons. For this reason, they are an important
platform for spin qubits, systems where quantum information is encoded in the
electron spin degree of freedom.
Because
quantum information is much more prone to being corrupted—and therefore become
unsuitable for computational tasks—by the surrounding environment than its
classical counterpart, researchers who study different qubit candidates must
characterize their coherence properties: these tell them how well and for how
long quantum information can survive in their qubit system.
More
Researchers find evidence of long-lived valley states
in bilayer graphene quantum dots (msn.com)
Another weekend and more and more of
the world seems to think the can act like the USA, UK and Israel and fire
missiles and drones into others territory. The latest being Iran and Pakistan.
Where this ends, I have no idea, but it’s not a positive advance for our world
advancing towards World War Three. Hava
a great weekend everyone.
"Get a good night's sleep and don't bug
anybody without asking me."
Richard M. Nixon, 37th President, to
re-election campaign manager John Mitchell.
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