Baltic Dry Index. 1632 +03 Brent Crude 82.47
Spot
Gold 2030 US
2 Year Yield 4.59 -0.05
It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his
money.
W. C. Fields.
In the global stock casinos,
rising fear that they just ran out of the pool of greater fool buyers. Sell? To
whom, sir?
Hong Kong market jumps 2% as wider
Asia-Pacific stocks trade mixed; Japan business sentiment sours
UPDATED WED, FEB 21 2024 1:02 AM EST
Hong Kong
stocks gained more than 2% as the wider Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed
following Wall Street losses Wednesday, while investors assessed
Japan’s trade data and souring business sentiment among large
manufacturers.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced
2.36%, driven by property, technology and health-care stocks. China’s CSI 300
traded 2.55% higher.
The Nikkei 225 lost
0.34% after Japanese manufacturers’ business confidence tumbled to -1 in
February, compared with the previous month’s reading of 6, according to the
Reuters Tankan poll. That marks the first negative reading since last April.
The data comes less than a week
after Japan slid into a technical recession and
lost its spot as the third-largest
global economy to Germany.
The Reuters monthly poll is
considered to be a leading indicator of the Bank of Japan’s official survey.
South Korea’s Kospi shed
0.29%, while Australia’s S&P/ASX
200 dipped 0.66% to close at 7,608.4.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes
ended the trading session in negative territory as Nvidia led a
broader tech decline ahead of the chipmaker’s earnings report
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped
64.19 points, or 0.17%, settling at 38,563.80. The S&P 500 slipped
0.6% to end at 4,975.51. The tech-heavy
Nasdaq Composite lost 0.92% to close at 15,630.78.
Asia-Pacific
markets, Japan tankan and trade: Live updates (cnbc.com)
European markets head for mixed open, struggle
to find positive momentum
UPDATED WED, FEB 21 2024 12:23 AM EST
European
stocks are heading for a mixed open Wednesday as regional markets struggle to
find positive momentum.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong stocks
gained more than 3% as wider Asia-Pacific
markets traded mixed overnight following Wall Street losses
Wednesday, while investors assessed
Japan’s trade data and souring business sentiment among large
manufacturers.
U.S.
stock futures ticked down Tuesday night after the major
averages incurred a second day of losses, fueled by a decline in Nvidia.
European
markets live updates: stocks, news, data and earnings (cnbc.com)
Nasdaq 100 futures slip after major
averages incur back-to-back losses: Live updates
UPDATED TUE, FEB 20 2024 7:58 PM EST
U.S. stock
futures ticked down Tuesday night after the major averages incurred a second
day of losses, fueled by a decline in Nvidia.
Nasdaq
100 futures shed
0.2%. Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average slipped
just 25 points, or 0.06%. S&P 500
futures declined
0.1%.
In after-hours action, Palo Alto Networks shed
20% after the cybersecurity company cut its full-year revenue
guidance. SolarEdge
Technologies lost
more than 10%, dropping on weak
first-quarter guidance.
During the regular session, the
three major averages slid, dragged lower by tech. The Nasdaq Composite lost
0.92%, while the S&P 500 fell
0.6%. The 30-stock Dow fell
0.17%.
A slump in Nvidia —
which slid more than 4% — weighed on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 as sentiment
soured the day before the chip giant is expected to post its quarterly results.
Concerns surrounding Nvidia’s
high valuation have grown leading up to the company’s earnings announcement,
slated for Wednesday after the bell. The stock has soared about 225% over the
past year.
The broader tech sector is now
overvalued, according to Alex McGrath, chief investment officer at NorthEnd
Private Wealth. He thinks Tuesday’s sell-off of Nvidia and other big tech names
could mean investors are coming to terms with “the greater fool theory” — that
is, when overvalued assets continue to rise because there are enough investors
willing to pay more, until there aren’t any more left.
“People continued to pay higher
and higher prices for the tech sector throughout [the rally]. It had to have
been a core asset allocation, but as you get longer and longer into this, the
biggest question is: When do you start to trim?” McGrath said. “And with the
Nvidia action today, I think that’s what you’re seeing.”
On Wednesday, Wall Street will
also have an eye out for the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s January
meeting, seeking further insight on where the central bank stands on rates.
This comes on the back of hotter-than-expected economic data the previous week.
Other companies slated to
announce their quarterly results Wednesday include HSBC, Wingstop and Analog Devices before
the bell. In addition to Nvidia, Etsy will
also report its results in the afternoon.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Morning Bid: Markets
wait on Nvidia, Fed minutes
February 21, 2024 5:50
AM GMT
A look at the day ahead in
European and global markets from Ankur Banerjee
Investors are holding their breath for perhaps the most influential earnings in a long
while, with the poster child of the AI boom, Nvidia (NVDA.O), set to report another blockbuster quarter.
And yet investors, who have seen the stock skyrocket in the past
18 months on the back of AI frenzy, may still be disappointed if the chipmaker
is unable to maintain its astonishing growth.
The spotlight, perhaps not as brightly, will also
be on the minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve's meeting in January as traders
try to predict the start of the monetary easing cycle.
But with data last week showing inflation refusing
to slow significantly, some of the comments from central bankers may already be
outdated. Market participants have scaled back expectations for early and steep
interest rate cuts and now anticipate June to be the starting point of the
easing cycle.
More
Morning
Bid: Markets wait on Nvidia, Fed minutes | Reuters
Finally, did a political
judge just kill NY’s golden goose.
Businessmen Say
They Will No Longer Invest in New York After Justice Engoron’s Trump Ruling
The
justice’s finding that former President Donald Trump is liable for fraud has
some investors taking their business elsewhere.
2/20/2024 Updated: 2/20/2024
Some real
estate investors are losing interest in investing in the Big Apple after New
York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s staggering ruling last week in a
civil fraud case against President Donald Trump.
President Trump
and Trump Organization executives were ordered on Feb. 16 to pay $355 million
in fines, plus interest, after Justice Engoron found them liable for inflating
the values of their assets to obtain better rates from lenders and insurers.
The judge also
barred the former president and his sons from managing their businesses in New
York for three years.
“I’m shocked at
this. I can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all. There’s no
rationale for it,” “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary told Fox Business on
Feb. 19.
The Canadian
businessman, often called “Mr. Wonderful,” described New York as a “mega loser
state” for business.
“New York was
already a loser state, like California’s a loser state,” he said. “There are
many loser states because of policy, high taxes, uncompetitive regulation. It
was already on the top of the list of being a loser state. I would never invest
in New York now.”
Instead, Mr.
O’Leary said he would be looking to Oklahoma, North Dakota, and West Virginia
for future investment opportunities.
“Those are winner
states. They don’t do things like this.”
President Trump expressed appreciation for
Mr. O’Leary’s comments in a post on his Truth Social platform.
----And at
least one other investor is doing just that.
Grant
Cardone, a private equity fund manager and owner of real estate investment firm
Cardone Capital, said he was considering investing in New York before Justice
Engoron’s ruling.
“CardoneCapital just started to research
real estate investments in New York believing it was time to get into the
market,” Mr. Cardone said in an X post. “After the over reach [sic.] by the judge in
the Trump case & penalties imposed of $355M I told them team do NOT waste
time in New York.”
The real estate mogul
added that his companies would now be doubling their efforts in Florida,
Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee instead.
More
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.
Transitory?
UK inflation can’t be explained away by Bank of England’s easy answers
TUESDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2024
6:00 AM
Last week new figures
on the UK economy suggested that something unusual is happening – inflation and
unemployment are falling at the same time.
In January, inflation
came in below expectations at four per cent, down from peaks of over 11 per
cent in October 2022.
Most economists think
inflation will fall to the two per cent target as
soon as the spring.
Simultaneously
unemployment is, apparently, going down. Having peaked at a post-Covid high of
4.3 per cent in July 2022, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) now
estimates the unemployment rate to be 3.8 per cent.
There are two
caveats on the unemployment point. Firstly, the ONS has well-publicised issues
with its labour force survey, which raises a few question marks about the
accuracy of the data. Speaking in the House of Lords Economic Affairs
Committee, Andrew Bailey said it is “really hard to judge” whether unemployment
is at 3.8 per cent or 4.2 per cent.
Secondly, the fall
in unemployment was counterbalanced by rising inactivity rather than rising
employment. In other words, it does not necessarily mean that more people are
in work.
However, what seems
fairly clear is that the labour market remains remarkably tight given the rapid
rise in interest rates.
Why is this
surprising? Standard economic theory suggests that unemployment should rise as
inflation falls. Higher rates of inflation point to an overheating economy,
which require higher interest rates to slow the economy back down again. The
cost of slowing the economy is that people are put out of work.
Clearly this has
not happened (at least not yet), which raises questions about the nature of the
inflation shock the Bank has been dealing with.
Was inflation
transitory after all?
Those backing
the case that the spike in inflation was transitory argue that the
inflation shock was driven primarily by supply shocks relating to Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine and post-pandemic disruptions to supply chains.
As those shocks
unwound, inflation would dissipate without the need for the Bank’s repeated
interest rate hikes. Some have argued that this transitory inflation would
probably take around two years to unwind.
As things stand,
inflation in the UK is set to approach two per cent – the Bank of
England’s target rate -within this timeframe. The fact that unemployment has
actually fallen in the past few months does suggest that inflation was
overwhelmingly caused by snare-ups on the supply side rather than pent up
demand.
If you were to take
the transitory argument to its conclusion, the implication is that interest
rates may never have needed to be hiked in the first place and should now
definitely be cut.
---- here are also
clearly domestic inflation pressures in the UK, which are not transitory.
Annual wage growth in
the UK
stands at 6.2 per cent – still far too
high to be consistent with the Bank’s two per cent target. Indeed, real wages
have grown at roughly the same rate in both the US and the UK since 2019,
despite significantly stronger productivity growth in the US.
Services inflation,
the most important measure of domestic inflation, stands at 6.5 per cent in the
UK, compared to four per cent in the eurozone and 5.4 per cent in the US.
The point of the
Bank’s rate hikes was to contain the second round effects from the initial
supply shocks. Although waning, these second round effects are most pronounced
in the UK.
More
Transitory? UK inflation can't be explained away by Bank's easy answers (cityam.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
New study links COVID-19 vaccine to possible health
issues, but adverse effects rare
February 20, 2024
(NewsNation) — A new study discovered possible links between
the COVID-19
pandemic and possible neurological,
blood and heart-related conditions.
The new study, published
in Vaccine, is the largest study of its kind since the pandemic
began and could reignite the debate over the risks and benefits of the vaccine.
Over the past three years, more than 13.5
billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have
been administered around the world. The World Health Organization recently
announced that vaccination has saved at least a million and a half lives in
Europe alone.
The study
links vaccines to slight
increases in neurological, blood and heart-related conditions such as
myocarditis, pericarditis and Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Researchers stressed that
an association between the vaccine and adverse side effects does not prove the
vaccine caused them and that side effects were rare.
Of the more than 99 million
people studied, researchers observed 190 cases of Guillian-Barre Syndrome,
which is typically developed after a viral infection but has also been linked
to vaccines in rare cases, and 69 cases of hematological conditions.
COVID-19 itself can also cause side effects that
affect the heart, including myocarditis.
More
New study links COVID-19 vaccine to possible health
issues, but adverse effects rare (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.
Another bad idea from UK
government. Due to the Li-ion battery
fire risk, perhaps a fire engine can accompany each EV ambulance. Oh wait, fire
engines are going EV Li-ion fire risk too!
NHS net zero mayhem
as electric ambulances 'will respond to 5,000 fewer incidents per day'
EXCLUSIVE:
Eye-opening data warns of a drop in the number of incidents that electric
ambulances would be able to respond to, when every second counts.
14:32, Thu, Feb 15, 2024 | UPDATED: 12:30, Sat, Feb 17, 2024
The NHS has been given a stark warning about electric
ambulances, as an expert has claimed they could respond to 1.9million callouts
in a year - about 5,000 fewer per day compared with hydrogen-powered vehicles.
A number of
NHS trusts across the UK are now trialling electric vehicle (EV) ambulances as
the drive towards net zero becomes
ever more fierce. London Ambulance Service put its first electric ambulance
into service on New Year's Eve.
But an expert from a company that harnesses a rival
energy source - hydrogen - has now given the NHS a stark warning about EV capabilities.
EV equivalents take up to 5.5 hours to fully
recharge, meaning more time off the roads than traditional petrol or diesel
counterparts.
And new data reveals
that with refuelling time in mind, if England’s current ambulance fleet was
entirely EVs, it would be able to respond to 5,341 fewer incidents per day than
if it was powered by hydrogen.
An NHS spokesman, however,
disputed the claims - saying that electric ambulances can be "effectively
recharged" and that it was "incorrect" to say they would deliver
a reduced service compared with other methods of transport.
Robbie
Harbison, product manager at hydrogen compression technology experts Haskel,
told Express.co.uk: "Ambulances and the workforce that run them are a
vital part of our community, helping to save lives every day.
"It’s important that
when we consider the future for such vital services, we are thinking about how
we can maximise their time on the road helping the sick and the
vulnerable."
Net zero by 2050 is
written into law and all sectors of the UK are scrambling to find ways to
decarbonise. Within transport, electrification is well suited to small
vehicles, taxis and vans, but less so when it comes to larger vehicles like
ambulances, HGVs and buses.
The Government has already
indicated its intention to support hydrogen fuel - and awarded £3.9million to a
project aimed at developing hydrogen-powered vehicles for the emergency
services and councils.
A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
Wall Street with apologies to W. C. Fields.
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