Baltic
Dry Index. 1829 -18 Brent Crude 82.28
Spot
Gold 2414 US
2 Year Yield 4.82 unch.
It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.
Murray Rothbard.
In the US stock casinos, it’s all about the Nvidia AI bubble. As goes Nvidia so goes America, replacing GM in the old auto adage.
Later today we get Nvidia’s latest results.
Boom or bust big time for US stocks.
Asia-Pacific
markets trade mixed as investors parse slew of Japanese data
UPDATED WED, MAY 22 2024 12:47 AM EDT
Asia-Pacific
markets traded mixed Wednesday.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
0.08%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell
0.62% lower, while the Kospi inched
up 0.23%.
There was a marginal improvement
in business sentiment, with the Reuters Tankan non-manufacturing index coming
in at +26. Japan is slated to release its April trade data, as well as
machinery orders for the month of March.
New Zealand’s S&P/NZ50 inched
slightly above the flatline after the Reserve
Bank of New Zealand held official cash rate unchanged at 5.5% for
the seventh consecutive time.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose
0.18%. The CSI 300 was up 0.067%.
Overnight in the U.S., all three indexes closed
in positive territory, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite closing at
new records as investors looked toward AI darling Nvidia’s earnings
report.
The Nasdaq Composite rose
0.22% to 16,832.62. The S&P
500 added 0.25% to 5,321.41. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed
0.17% higher at 39,872.99.
Asia-Pacific
markets: Japan trade, RBNZ decision (cnbc.com)
Stock
futures are little changed after S&P 500 closes at a record, Nvidia
earnings loom: Live updates
UPDATED WED, MAY 22 2024 12:20 AM EDT
U.S. stock
futures were little changed early Wednesday as investors looked ahead to the
widely-anticipated release of Nvidia’s
latest earnings report.
Dow
Jones Industrial Average futures inched
higher by 3 points. Futures tied to
the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 hovered
near the flatline.
In extended trading, Urban Outfitters gained
5% after the clothing retailer posted beats on the top and bottom line in its
latest quarter. Homebuilder Toll Brothers inched
higher by 1% after surpassing analysts’ estimates and raising its full-year
delivery guidance.
The moves followed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite’s
new record-setting closes on Tuesday afternoon. The broader market index added
0.25%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.22%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
0.17%.
Nvidia was at the forefront of
investors’ minds, as they looked ahead to the semiconductor giant’s quarterly
report on Wednesday afternoon. The stock has rallied nearly 93% so far in 2024
and added 0.6% during Tuesday’s trading session.
The market rally has the
potential to broaden beyond tech, but it will be important that the earnings
season wrap up on a strong note, according to Charles Schwab’s chief investment
strategist Liz Ann Sonders.
More
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Nvidia is talk of
the town at AI events leading into this week’s earnings
At the start of last week, OpenAI’s technology
chief personally thanked Nvidia CEO
Jensen Huang for “bringing us the most advanced” chips needed to run the demo
for a presentation the company delivered on its latest
artificial intelligence models.
A day later, at Google’s annual
developer conference, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted his
company’s “longstanding partnership with Nvidia,” and noted that Google Cloud
will be using the chipmaker’s Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs) in
early 2025.
And this week, Microsoft,
which provides servers to OpenAI,
will announce new AI advancements and features that were developed on the
company’s massive clusters of Nvidia GPUs. The company is hosting its Build
conference in Redmond, Washington.
Heading into its quarterly earnings
report on Wednesday, Nvidia finds itself at the center of the action in
technology, a position that’s become increasingly commonplace for the
31-year-old company, whose market cap has ballooned past $2
trillion this year.
Nvidia is expected to report
year-over-year revenue growth in excess of 200% for a third straight quarter,
with analysts projecting a fiscal first-quarter bump-up of 243% to $24.6
billion, according to LSEG. More than $21 billion of that is expected to come
from Nvidia’s data center business, which includes all the advanced processors
the company is selling to Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon,
OpenAI and others.
Nvidia is squeezing so much profit
out of its AI suite of products that net income is expected to be up more than
fivefold from a year earlier to $13.9 billion.
The stock has soared 91% this year
after more than tripling in 2023.
More
Nvidia is talk of town at AI events before fiscal Q1 2025 earnings (cnbc.com)
In other news.
'Big
Short' Investor, Who Predicted 2008 Housing Crash, Buys 440K Units of Physical
Gold Fund
May 29, 2024
Legendary investor Micheal Burry's
bet against the housing market in the 2008 financial crash netted him $700
million—the saga was chronicled in the award-winning film "Big
Short."
Since the global financial crisis,
Burry's notable investment decisions also showcased strategic foresight. He
invested in water assets, predicting future scarcity, and GameStop before it
became a meme stock.
He has also wagered against
Elon Musk's Tesla, Cathie Wood's Ark
Innovation ETF, and Blackrock's iShares Semiconductor ETF, which has Nvidia as
one of its top holdings.
In the
latest 13-F filing released
last week, the metalhead's Scion Asset Management revealed making several
adjustments to multiple trade positions, but what stood out was buying over
440,000 units of the Sprott Physical Gold Trust valued
at $7.6 million.
Blurry's new position in
physical gold via the trust is the firm's top buy in Q1 2024 and currently
accounts for 7.4% of his portfolio.
Burry's latest investment in
the gold trust returned 16% in value in the first three months of 2024,
outperforming the 11% gains showcased by the S&P 500. This trust now holds
the fifth-largest allocation in Scion's portfolio.
Simply
put, it is a closed-end fund that offers investors exposure to gold without the
hassles of handling and storing physical gold.
Burry made several changes to his
portfolio last quarter. He increased his holdings in JD.com to $9.9 million and
Alibaba to $9 million while offloading stakes in tech firms like Oracle,
Google, and Amazon.
However, he increased his stake by
$4.4 million in China's tech firm Baidu to 4.1% of the total portfolio while
adding $5.1 million to First Solar in Q1. The asset management firm's total
investments increased to $103.5 million from $94.6 million over the quarter.
Burry's notable bet on bullion as a
buffer against market volatility and inflation aligns with American billionaire
hedge fund manager John Paulson, who leads New York-based Paulson & Co. In
2021, he projected sticky inflation and aggressive rate hikes by the US Federal
Reserve would compel investors to dump cash for gold and similar assets with
limited supply.
Since then, gold prices have jumped
to record levels above $2,400 per troy ounce in recent weeks from $1,800. Both
investors remain bullish, believing that gold will benefit in the foreseeable
future.
More
Europe sets benchmark
for rest of the world with landmark AI laws
By Foo Yun Chee and Tassilo Hummel
May 22, 2024 1:29 AM GMT+1
BRUSSELS, May 21 (Reuters) -
Europe's landmark rules on artificial intelligence will enter into force next
month after EU countries endorsed on Tuesday a political deal reached in
December, setting a potential global benchmark for a technology used in
business and everyday life.
The European Union's AI Act is more comprehensive than the
United States' light-touch voluntary compliance approach while China's approach
aims to maintain social stability and state control.
The vote by EU countries
came two months after EU lawmakers backed the AI
legislation drafted by the European Commission in 2021 after making a number of
key changes.
Concerns about AI contributing to misinformation, fake news and
copyrighted material have intensified globally in recent months amid the
growing popularity of generative AI systems such as Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI's ChatGPT, and
Google's (GOOGL.O) chatbot Gemini.
"This landmark law, the first of its kind in
the world, addresses a global technological challenge that also creates
opportunities for our societies and economies," Belgian digitisation
minister Mathieu Michel said in a statement.
"With the AI Act, Europe emphasizes the
importance of trust, transparency and accountability when dealing with new
technologies while at the same time ensuring this fast-changing technology can
flourish and boost European innovation," he said.
The AI Act imposes strict transparency obligations
on high-risk AI systems while such requirements for general-purpose AI models
will be lighter.
It restricts governments' use of real-time
biometric surveillance in public spaces to cases of certain crimes, prevention
of terrorist attacks and searches for people suspected of the most serious
crimes.
The new legislation will have an impact beyond the
27-country bloc, said Patrick van Eecke at law firm Cooley.
"The Act will have global reach. Companies
outside the EU who use EU customer data in their AI platforms will need to
comply. Other countries and regions are likely to use the AI Act as a
blueprint, just as they did with the GDPR," he said, referring to EU
privacy rules.
While the new legislation will apply in 2026, bans
on the use of artificial intelligence in social scoring, predictive policing
and untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage will
kick in in six months once the new regulation enters into force.
Obligations for general purpose AI models will
apply after 12 months and rules for AI systems embedded into regulated products
in 36 months.
Fines for violations range from 7.5 million euros
($8.2 million) or 1.5% of turnover to 35 million euros or 7% of global turnover
depending on the type of violations.
Europe sets benchmark for rest of the world with landmark AI laws | 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.
Grocery price inflation slows to lowest level since
October 2021
May
21, 2024
Grocery price inflation has
slowed to its lowest level since October 2021 – but consumers are showing no
sign of ending their cost-of-living crisis behaviour, figures suggest.
Supermarket prices are 2.4%
higher than a year ago, slowing for the 15th month in a row from April’s 3.2%,
according to analysts Kantar.
Grocery inflation is now just
0.8 percentage points above the 10-year average of 1.6% between 2012 and 2021,
just before prices began to climb.
However, cheaper supermarket
own-label lines are proving resilient, and are still growing faster than
brands, making up more than half (52%) of total spending, Kantar said.
Sales of premium own label ranges continue to increase
too, up by 9.9% compared with a year ago.
Fraser McKevitt, head of
retail and consumer insight at Kantar, said: “Grocery price inflation is
gradually returning to what we would consider more normal levels.
“Typically, an inflation rate
of around 3% is when we start to see marked changes in consumers’ behaviour,
with shoppers trading down to cheaper items when the rate goes above this line
and vice versa when the rate drops.
“However,
after nearly two-and-a-half years of rapidly rising prices, it could take a bit
longer for shoppers to unwind the habits they have learnt to help them manage
the cost of living crisis.”
Figures show shoppers made
the most of the early May bank holiday weekend to dust off the barbecue, with
burger sales climbing by 13% and beer and wine sales up by 9% and 21%
respectively compared with the week before.
Ocado was again the fastest growing grocer over the 12
weeks to May 12, with sales up by 12.4% – well ahead of the total online
market’s 5.4% uplift.
Lidl reached a new record-high market share of 8.1%,
fuelled in part by its bakery counters, as well as its loyalty scheme.
Britain’s biggest
grocer Tesco now takes 27.6% of the market, its 5.6% growth in
sales matched by Sainsbury’s, which now claims 15.1%.
Grocery price inflation slows to lowest level since
October 2021 (msn.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
A UK NHS blood scandal 1970-2000. No similarity to Covid 19 vaccines 2021-2024 then. Approx. 20 minutes.
Confirmed
horrifying scandal
Confirmed horrifying scandal (youtube.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.
New
method may facilitate the use of graphene nanoribbons in nanoelectronics
May 20, 2024
An international collaborative study that
features researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU), presented a new method for
growing ultra-long and ultra-narrow strips of graphene (a derivative of
graphite), which exhibit semiconducting properties that can be harnessed by the
nanoelectronics industry. The researchers believe that the development may have
many potential technological applications, including advanced switching
devices, spintronic devices, and in the future, even quantum computing
architectures.
The study
was conducted under the leadership of an international research team that
included Prof. Michael Urbakh and Prof. Oded Hod from TAU's School of
Chemistry, as well as scientists from China, South Korea, and Japan. The study
was published in the journal Nature.
Prof. Urbakh and Prof. Hod
explain that graphene is actually a single layer of graphite made of carbon
atoms and built similar to the shape of a beehive. Graphene is very suitable
for technological uses.
Apart from its extraordinary
mechanical strength, additional properties have been discovered in recent years
regarding certain structures made of a small number of twisted (laterally
rotated with respect to each other) graphene layers. These properties include
superconductivity, spontaneous electric polarization, controlled heat
conduction, and structural superlubricity—a state in which materials
demonstrate negligible friction and wear.
One of the limitations for the use of
graphene in the electronics industry is that it is a semi-metal, namely that
charge carriers can move freely in it, but their density is very low. Hence,
graphene cannot be used either as a conducting metal or as a semiconductor used
by the electronic chip industry.
However, if long and thin strips of
graphene (termed graphene nanoribbons) are cut out of a wide graphene sheet,
the quantum charge carriers become confined within the narrow dimension, which
makes them semi-conducting and enables their use in quantum switching devices.
As of today, there are a number of barriers to using graphene nanoribbons in
devices, among them is the challenge of reproducibly growing narrow and long
sheets that are isolated from the environment.
In this new study, the researchers
were able to develop a method to catalytically grow narrow, long, and
reproducible graphene nanoribbons directly within insulating hexagonal
boron-nitride stacks, as well as demonstrate peak performance in quantum
switching devices based on the newly-grown ribbons. The unique growth mechanism
was revealed using advanced molecular dynamics simulation tools that were
developed and implemented by the Israeli teams.
---- The researchers see the development as a scientific and
technological breakthrough in the field of nanomaterials, one which is expected
to open the door to a wide range of studies that will lead to their utilization
in the nanoelectronics industry.
Prof. Urbakh and Prof. Hod summarize,
"The importance of this new development is that for the first time, it is
now possible to fabricate carbon-based nanoelectronic switching devices
directly within an isolating matrix. These devices will likely have many
technological applications, including electronic and spintronic systems, and
even quantum computing devices."
New method may facilitate the use of graphene
nanoribbons in nanoelectronics (msn.com)
Next, our
latest new section, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money.
Murray Rothbard.
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