Baltic Dry Index. 2129 -37 Brent Crude 82.79
Spot
Gold 2361 U S 2 Year Yield 4.87 +0.07
Unlike the days of the gold standard, it is impossible for the Federal Reserve to go bankrupt; it holds the legal monopoly of counterfeiting (of creating money out of thin air) in the entire country.
Murray Rothbard.
While everyone in the
stock casinos piles in, frontrunning the central bankster interest rate cuts, in
the real global economy all I see is trouble piling up, and fast.
The “magnificent
seven” US technology stocks now don’t look so magnificent. The AI bubble has
already been hyped to the moon.
In the auto manufacturing
sector, unwanted at any price EVs are piling up, with manufacturers starting to
cutback hours or lay off workers.
In the US economy,
farm equipment has suddenly stopped selling.
In the UK economy,
supermarkets are engaged in aa all against all price war, a sign that the UK
consumer is drastically cutting back on spending.
In Asia, China’s and
much of the region’s boom has turned towards bust. Bloomberg and others are
reporting/speculating on more US sanctions/tariffs on China coming as soon as
Tuesday next week. (Are they tipped off?)
Buy the rumour, sell
the fact comes to mind.
In stocks, are we now
passing the top?
Dow jumps more than 100 points to post 8th winning day
and best week of 2024: Live updates
UPDATED FRI, MAY 10 2024 4:55 PM EDT
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose
on Friday, wrapping an eighth consecutive winning session and registering its
best week of 2024.
The 30-stock
index added 125.08 points, or 0.32%, to close at 39,512.84. The S&P 500 climbed
0.16%, ending at 5,222.68, while the Nasdaq Composite inched
lower by 0.03% to end at 16,340.87.
The major
averages also wrapped the week on a high note. The Dow posted a 2.16% gain for
the period, its best week since December and its fourth positive week in a row.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite both posted a third consecutive
winning week, rising 1.85% and 1.14%, respectively.
Investor
enthusiasm was kept in check after consumer sentiment data released Friday
morning showed a big uptick in inflation expectations.
The preliminary
May reading for the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index came in
at 67.4, far below a Dow Jones estimate of 76 and marking its lowest reading in
about six months.
The data could
indicate that “inflation is not moving in the right direction either,” said
Brian Nick, senior investment strategist at the Macro Institute. “You get hit
from both sides — people think things are worse than the economy and they’re
going to stay worse, and they’re worried about inflation. And that’s not a
happy formula for stocks or bonds.”
The Federal
Reserve’s rate-cutting path will be further influenced by how much of a
slowdown is seen in consumer spending and in hiring, Nick added. “If those
things don’t seem like they’re completely falling off the cliff, that’s good
enough news for markets that are just kind of starved for rate cuts,” he said.
Investors have
been more optimistic lately after the Fed indicated the next move is unlikely
to be a hike, pointing to a cap on interest rates that could be bullish for
equities. Cooler labor data has also raised traders’ confidence in the outlook
for this year.
However, markets
will be put to the test next
week when April’s consumer price index reading is released.
Stock
market news for May 10, 2024 (cnbc.com)
Europe stocks close at fresh record highs; UK exits
recession
UPDATED FRI, MAY 10 2024 11:38 AM EDT
European
markets closed higher on Friday as positive momentum continued into the end of
the week.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 index was
up by 0.8% by the close. Mining stocks and utilities led gains and were up 1.3%
and 1.5% respectively.
All major bourses were in the
green, with the Stoxx 600, as well as Germany’s Dax, France’s CAC 40 and the
U.K.’s FTSE 100 notching fresh record highs.
“As equities do we’re looking to
the future I think. Generally speaking investors are seeing a brighter future
ahead for European markets and they’re reflecting that now,” Daniel Morris,
chief market strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management told CNBC’s “Squawk Box
Europe” on Friday.
The U.K. economy emerged from a recession, first-quarter gross domestic product data
released Friday showed. GDP rose 0.6% on the previous three months — above the
0.4% estimate. The U.K. had entered a shallow recession in the second half of
2023.
Hong Kong stocks rose Friday, with the Hang Seng Index hitting
its highest level in 10 months. Mainland China stocks were flat.
In
the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose on Friday, putting
the 30-stock index on track for yet another winning session.
Markets reprice Bank of
England rate-cut bets as UK records fastest growth in nearly 3 years
A slew of
commentary from the Bank
of England and a better-than-expected economic growth number
have left traders and investors scrambling to refine their bets on when the
U.K. central bank will start to cut its benchmark rate.
Markets on Friday
were pricing in an around 48% chance of a rate cut in June according to LSEG
data, slightly higher than Thursday’s 45% probability.
Economists at Swiss
Bank UBS were among those who shifted their view on when the BOE may cut
interest rates, saying they were now expecting the first rate cut to take place
in June rather than August.
“The broader
message and the tone of the MPC were more dovish than we had anticipated,” they
said in a note published following the BOE’s latest interest rate decision.
European
markets live updates: stocks, news, data and earnings (cnbc.com)
Consumer sentiment tumbles as inflation fears surge
Consumer sentiment slumped as inflation expectations
rose, despite otherwise strong signals in the economy, according to a closely
watched survey released Friday.
The University of Michigan Survey of
Consumers sentiment index for May posted an initial reading of
67.4 for the month, down from 77.2 in April and well off the Dow Jones
consensus call for 76. The move represented a one-month decline of 12.7% but a
year-over-year gain of 14.2%.
Along with the downbeat sentiment
measure, the outlook for inflation across the one- and five-year horizons
increased.
The one-year outlook jumped to
3.5%, up 0.3 percentage point from a month ago to the highest level since
November.
Also, the five-year outlook rose to
3.1%, an increase of just 0.1 percentage point but reversing a trend of lower
readings in the past few months, also to the highest since November.
“While consumers had been reserving
judgment for the past few months, they now perceive negative developments on a
number of dimensions,” said Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director. “They expressed
worries that inflation, unemployment and interest rates may all be moving in an
unfavorable direction in the year ahead.”
Other indexes in the survey also
posted substantial declines: The current conditions index fell to 68.8, down
more than 10 points, while the expectations measure fell to 66.5, down 9.5
points. Both pointed to monthly drops of more than 12%, though they were higher
from a year ago.
The report comes despite the stock
market riding a strong rally and gasoline prices nudging lower,
though still at elevated levels. Most labor market signals remain solid, though jobless
claims last week hit their highest level since late August.
“All things considered, however,
the magnitude of the slump in confidence is pretty big and it isn’t
satisfactorily explained by” geopolitical factors or the mid-April stock market
sell-off, wrote Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics.
“That leaves us wondering if we’re missing something more worrying going on
with the consumer.”
---- “Uncertainty about the inflation path could
suppress consumer spending in the coming months. The Fed is walking a tightrope
as they balance both mandates of price stability and growth,” said Jeffrey
Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. “Although it’s not our base case, we
do see rising risks of stagflation, a concern the markets will have to deal
with, in addition to the impacts from the presidential election.”
More
Consumer
sentiment tumbles as inflation fears surge (cnbc.com)
Finally, in food
price inflation news, nothing good.
Brazil soy harvest hit by floods,
Argentina corn forecast cut
“‘The
market will soon discover that the Brazilian harvest is far from 155 million
tons’ estimated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to analyst
Fernando Muraro at AgRural,” Mano and Samora wrote.
Published
on May 6, 2024
Reuters’ Ana Mano and Roberto
Samora reported this past Friday that “the outlook for the
soybean harvest in Rio Grande do Sul, which was on track to become the second
largest producer in Brazil behind Mato Grosso state, is deteriorating swiftly
after torrential rains flooded fields, with about a quarter of beans to be
reaped.”
“The impact of the downpours, which left entire
cities and farms underwater, could cause a drop in production of up to 15% in
the state, Leandro da Silva, a manager at farm cooperative Cotrisal, said on
Friday,” Mano and Samora reported. “He now sees output at between 19 million
metric tons and 20 million metric tons.”
“‘There will be quantitative and qualitative losses,’
Silva said by telephone from Sarandi, in the northwest of the state,” according
to Mano and Samora’s reporting. “‘For me, what remains to be harvested
will be 30% to 40% damaged (on average). In the most affected areas, you will
have 70% to 80% of beans damaged.‘”
Current state of the flooding
Argus Media’s João Petrini, Maria
Albuquerque and Nathalia Giannetti reported that, since April
29, “the highest volumes [of rain] reached the central areas of Rio Grande do
Sul, with cities receiving rainfall of 150 to 500mm (6 to 20 inches), regional
rural agency Emater-RS data show. The monitoring station of Restinga Seca city,
in the center of the state, recorded rainfall of about 540mm (21 inches).”
As of May 5, “154 sections of 68 highways were
totally or partially blocked, according to the state’s emergency service,”
Petrini, Albuquerque and Giannetti reported. “…The Rio Grande port has not
suspended operations, but handling is slower. Despite the heavy rainfalls,
demurrage rates and waiting queues for docking and unloading were not altered.”
Mano and Samora reported that the rainfall has “destroyed logistics and power infrastructure. Some fields remain entirely underwater, according to farmers, who circulated videos showing damaged crops and submerged farm equipment.”
---- “‘The market will soon discover that the Brazilian
harvest is far from 155 million tons’ estimated by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, according to analyst Fernando Muraro at AgRural,” Mano and Samora
wrote.
Argentina corn forecast cut again
Reuters’ Maximilian Heath reported that
“Argentina’s Buenos Aires grains exchange slashed its estimate for the
2023/2024 corn harvest on Thursday, citing the effects of a damaging leafhopper
insect plague and poor weather. The exchange cut its forecast for the corn crop
to 46.5 million metric tons, down from the 49.5 million tons previously
estimated, which was already down sharply from initial estimates.”
Brazil soy harvest hit by floods, Argentina corn
forecast cut (agriculture.com)
Brazil suffers crop losses due to heavy floods
May 06 , 2024
Heavy rains strike Southern Brazil leaving many dead,
devastated cities, and ruined crops. Rio Grande do Sul, the largest soybean and
sixth largest corn state producer in Brazil, has seen the most devastation by
the heavy floods and is currently in a state of emergency.
This is the worst flood to hit the country in more than
80 years, dozens have died and nearly a hundred people are missing and
displaced.
According to the State Technical and Extension Service
Enterprise (Emater), the floods caused a significant decrease in maize crops
and soybeans. The expected reduction in maize mean yield is 37% and a drop
of 15.6% in soybean crops. Emater projected a record crop of
22.25 million metric tons.
According to the most recent National Supply Company
(CONAB) report, about 17% of corn and 40% of soybean crops in south and center
Brazil were still out in the fields on April 28, making it difficult to
estimate losses.
---- Fruit
crops in the southern Brazilian region have also suffered due to heavy
rain.
Petrolina, a municipality in Pernambuco, has lost 30% of
its fruit exports which include grapes and mangoes. Apples have already been
harvested in the North, which means the crops were not damaged.
According to Carlo Porro, the CEO of Agricola Famosa, the
rains have caused big losses in melon production, some farms in the North lost
20% to 35% of production, and watermelon farms lost even up to 30% of their
harvest due to continuous big rains of 100 mm per day.
Apples, grapes, and banana crops might also suffer due to
floods and high humidity that are already causing plant disease and might lead
to an increase in local prices.
Brazil is the largest soybean producer and exporter in
the world, in 2023 Brazilian soybean exports amounted to approximately 53.2 billion U.S. dollars, an increase
of around 14% in comparison to the previous year and the highest figure
reported in the decade.
Brazil suffers crop losses due to heavy floods (freshfruitportal.com)
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given our Magic Money
Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation/recession now needs an entire
section of its own.
Recession over as UK GDP grows faster
than expected in first quarter
FRIDAY 10 MAY 2024 7:02 AM
The UK has powered its way out of last year’s recession, new figures
show, after the economy grew much faster than expected in March.
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the
UK economy grew 0.4 per cent on a monthly basis, bringing its total growth in
the first quarter to 0.6 per cent.
Economists had expected the economy to grow just 0.1 per cent in March, which would have brought the quarterly growth rate to 0.4 per cent after growth in January and February.
The figures
mean the recession recorded over the second half of last year, during which GDP
shrunk by a cumulative 0.4 per cent, has come to an end.
“After two quarters of contraction, the UK economy returned to positive
growth in the first three months of this year,” ONS director of economic
statistics, Liz McKeown said.
“There was broad-based strength across the service industries with
retail, public transport and haulage, and health all performing well,” she
continued.
The figures showed that real GDP per head, which has been falling for
seven consecutive quarters, grew 0.4 per cent in the first quarter. However, it
is still 0.7 per cent lower than a year ago.
GDP per head is a good proxy for living standards.
Looking at March
specifically, McKeown noted the economy grew “robustly” thanks to strong growth
in the services sector. Wholesales, the health sector and hospitality performed
particularly well.
Despite falling
into recession last year, growth so far this year has exceeded
expectations on the back of stronger consumer spending.
The combination of
falling inflation and the prospect of lower interest rates has provided a
healthy tailwind for household spending
which many economists think will continue.
“We expect to see continued
growth for the rest of this year, supported by a more favourable economic
backdrop,” Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK said.
More
Recession over as UK GDP grows faster than expected
(cityam.com)
AI giant Coreweave in £1bn UK investment
as London picked for new European HQ
FRIDAY 10 MAY 2024 9:01 AM
An American artificial
intelligence (AI) group has announced
plans to invest £1bn in the UK after opening a new office in London as its European headquarters.
Coreweave said the
move will also create jobs across engineering, operations, finance and
go-to-market while it is also preparing to open two data centres in the country
this year and expand further in 2025.
The business was
founded in 2017 and is based in New Jersey.
The news comes after a
British AI startup that is creating autonomous systems for vehicles announced
it had secured over $1bn (£800m) earlier this week.
Wayve’s Series C
investment round was led by Japanese tech giant Softbank, along with Nvidia and
existing investor Microsoft.
Also earlier this week, Scale
AI also picked London as its European headquarters.
The US company is run
by Alexandr Wang, who became the youngest self-made billionaire in
the world at age 24, according to Forbes, in 2022.
Mike
Intrator, co-founder and chief executive of Coreweave, said: “We are seeing
unprecedented demand for AI infrastructure and London is an important AI hub
that we are investing in.
“Expanding our physical footprint in the UK is an important milestone in
the next phase of Coreweave’s growth.
“Coreweave’s infrastructure will fill a void in the cloud market by
providing AI enterprises with localized high-performance compute solutions that
will help build and deploy the next generation of AI applications.”
More
AI giant Coreweave to make £1bn UK investment (cityam.com)
Covid-19
Corner
This section will
continue until it becomes unneeded.
First it was
withdrawn from the EU, then the UK, now the world. Very reassuring, not.
AstraZeneca withdraws Covid-19 jab from market worldwide
Wed, 8 May 2024 at 3:11
pm BST
The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford scientists during the
pandemic has been withdrawn from the market.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said that it was “incredibly proud” of
the vaccine, but that it had been withdrawn due to plummeting demand.
In December 2020, the vaccine became the second Covid-19 jab to be
approved for use in the UK and former prime minister Boris Johnson hailed it as
a “triumph for British science”.
Vaccine makers agreed that it could be manufactured on a “not-for-profit
basis for the duration of the pandemic across the world, and in perpetuity to
low- and middle-income countries”.
Billions of doses were created and made available across 183 countries.
Estimates suggest that the rollout of the jab saved 6.3 million lives
around the world.
But AstraZeneca said that the rise of new variants in the virus which
causes Covid-19 has shifted market demand towards newer vaccines geared towards
tackling these variants.
A spokesperson for AstraZeneca said: “We are incredibly proud of the
role Vaxzevria played in ending the global pandemic. According to independent
estimates, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and
over three billion doses were supplied globally.
“Our efforts have been recognised by governments around the world and
are widely regarded as being a critical component of ending the global
pandemic.
“As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have since been developed there
is a surplus of available updated vaccines.
"This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no
longer being manufactured or supplied.
"AstraZeneca has therefore taken the decision to initiate
withdrawal of the marketing authorisations for Vaxzevria within Europe.
“We will now work with regulators and our partners to align on a clear
path forward to conclude this chapter and significant contribution to the
Covid-19 pandemic.”
AstraZeneca has faced a number of claims of vaccine injury linked to the
jab.
On April 7 2021, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
(MHRA) issued updated information on the “possible risk of extremely rare and
unlikely to occur specific types of blood clots” following vaccination with the
AstraZeneca jab.
The regulator said the benefits of vaccination “continue to outweigh any
risks” but advised “careful consideration be given to people who are at higher
risk of specific types of blood clots because of their medical condition”.
More
AstraZeneca withdraws Covid-19 jab from market
worldwide (yahoo.com)
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Sea-bed
'air batteries' offer cheaper long-term energy storage
Loz
Blain May 06, 2024
Israeli company BaroMar is preparing to test a
clever new angle on grid-level energy storage, which it says will be the
cheapest way to stabilize renewable grids over longer time scales. This
innovative system lets water do the work.
The zero-carbon energy grid of the future looks
remarkably complex. Solar, wind and other renewable energy sources will all
contribute power when they can – but this won't match up with demand, so energy
storage and release measures will be critical. And these will be needed for a
range of different time scales. Some will need to smooth out daily peaks and
troughs. Others will operate between days and weeks, filling in when overcast
weather makes for a couple of days of poor solar output.
And then there's long-duration storage, which will
attempt to stash electrons for the winter, when there'll be a seasonal lull in
solar generation that wind might not make up. That's the area BaroMar wishes to
address with its interesting take on compressed air energy storage (CAES).
CAES involves using excess energy to run
compressors, typically pumping air into large, rigid tanks where it can be
stored at high pressures, then released through some kind of turbine that can
drive a generator to recover the energy. It's already quite a cost-effective
energy storage option – but BaroMar says it can beat traditional systems over
long-duration energy storage using an amusingly low-tech solution.
Basically, the company's plants will be stationed
near coastlines with access to deep water. And instead of large high-pressure
tanks, BaroMar uses the pressure of the water column to store compressed air in
much cheaper enclosures.
We're talking a series of big, cheap, dumb,
concrete and steel tanks with cages full of rocks on top of them, to keep them
submerged at between 200-700-meter (650-2,300-ft) depths. These tanks have a
number of water-permeable valves around them and start out completely full of
seawater. The compressor and generator systems live close by on dry land, and
when there's excess energy to be soaked up, the compressor feeds ambient air
down to these tanks through long hoses at 20-70 bar (290-1,015 psi), depending on
the depth.
The
compressed air forces water out of the tanks – but since the hydrostatic
pressure of the external water equalises against the internal air pressure, the
tanks don't need to be anywhere near as strong or expensive as land-based tanks
that need to hold high-pressure internal air against regular atmospheric
pressure on the outside.
When it's
time to recoup the energy, the system allow air to run back up the hose into a thermal
recovery system, followed by a turbo-expander that drives a generator. At the
other end, water rushes back into the tank, ready to be displaced again when
the compressor is running.
According to
engineering consultancy Jacobs, which has been appointed to design a pilot
project in Cyprus, the target is a round-trip efficiency around 70% – about the
same as the world's largest CAES plant (a 100-MW, 400 MW/h
installation in Zhangjiakou, northern China), and a very high efficiency compared to
traditional compressed air systems. This underwater pilot will, of course, be
much more modest, storing just 4 MWh.
More
Sea-bed 'air batteries' offer cheaper long-term energy
storage (newatlas.com)
Finally,
our latest new section, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP
compared.
World
Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
This
weekend’s music diversion. Vivaldi season in major keys. Vivaldi at his best. Approx.
12 minutes.
VIVALDI
| Concerto RV 569 in F major | Original manuscript
VIVALDI | Concerto RV 569 in F major | Original manuscript (youtube.com)
This
weekend’s chess update. Approx. 9 minutes.
Just
Modern Chess Stuff || Praggnanandhaa vs Anish Giri || Superbet Poland Rapid
(2024)
This
weekend’s final YouTube diversion. A top US economic advisor gets all tied up
and confused, but inadvertently shows why the USA is headed for a monstrous
currency crash and everyone outside of America is increasingly starting to
hoard gold. Approx. 8 minutes.
SHOCKING Video of the Top US
Economic Advisor Reveals the Truth
🚨
SHOCKING Video of the Top US Economic Advisor Reveals the Truth (youtube.com)
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
Murray Rothbard.
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