Baltic
Dry Index. 1797 -11 Brent Crude 79.49
Spot Gold 2387 US 2 Year Yield 4.36 unch.
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
George Bernard Shaw.
It is central bank week, with the BOJ, the US Fed and the Old bag Lady of Threadneedle Street, the BOE, all holding policy meetings this week and due to give us the best guesses as to what is going on in their respective economies.
Shame about it all coinciding with the critical month-end need to dress up tocks and stock indexes for the Wall Street stock promoters and City Slickers need for month-end bonuses.
Shame about US official Federal debt surging by 30 billion on Sunday to hit a staggering, unrepayable $35, 000,000,000,000.
Asia-Pacific markets slide as the Bank of Japan
begins two-day meeting
Published Mon, Jul 29 20247:46 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets fell across the region on Tuesday as the Bank of Japan kicks off its two-day monetary policy meeting.
When the meeting concludes Wednesday, the
BOJ is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate and trim its Japanese
government bond purchases.
Economists polled by Reuters expect the BOJ to increase its benchmark interest rate to 0.1%, up from the current range of 0% to 0.1%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid 0.7%, while the broad-based Topix was down 0.65%. Japan’s unemployment rate came in slightly lower than expected in July, at 2.5% compared to the 2.6% forecast by a Reuters poll of economists.
South Korea’s Kospi was down 0.9%, while the small-cap Kosdaq saw a smaller loss of 0.7%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.92%. Heavyweight miner Fortescue fell by as much as 9.23% after the Australian Financial Review reported that JPMorgan’s equity capital markets team was looking for buyers for 1.9 billion Australian dollars ($1.2 billion) of discounted Fortescue stock on behalf of an undisclosed institutional investor.
Hong Kong Hang Seng index lost 0.8%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 slipped marginally, extending its losses after closing at its lowest level in almost six months on Monday.
Overnight in the U.S., the three major indexes ended mixed, with the S&P 500 marginally higher as Wall Street geared up for a busy week of corporate earnings and looked ahead to a key policy announcement from the U.S. central bank.
Economists don’t expect the Fed to make any changes to the federal funds rate during this meeting, but traders will look for clues on whether the central bank will cut rates in September.
The broad market index gained 0.08%, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.07%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.12%.
Asia stock markets: BOJ meeting, Japan unemployment (cnbc.com)
US stock futures fall with Fed meeting, mega tech
earnings on tap
July 30, 2024
Investing.com-- U.S. stock index futures retreated in evening deals on Monday as sentiment remained strained in anticipation of a Federal Reserve meeting and earnings from some of the country’s biggest companies.
A rebound in technology stocks ran out of steam this week, with the sector nursing deep losses over the past two weeks amid profit-taking, a shift into more economically sensitive sectors and underwhelming earnings from Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
Traders were reluctant to buy back into the sector, with several tech majors set to report quarterly earnings this week, beginning with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
S&P 500 Futures fell 0.2% to 5,494.0 points, while Nasdaq 100 Futures fell 0.2% to 19,169.75 points by 19:13 ET (23:13 GMT). Dow Jones Futures fell 0.2% to 40,707.0 points.
Microsoft to kick off next round of major tech earnings
The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant is set to report its June quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday.
While the firm is set to clock strong growth in earnings on the back of more artificial intelligence products, investors will be watching for any increased expenditure, and whether AI demand appeared to be sufficiently boosting earnings.
The increased caution comes after high AI spending and some sluggish revenue metrics soured otherwise strong earnings from peer Alphabet last week. The stock had tumbled after its earnings.
Beyond Microsoft, tech heavyweights Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) are set to report earnings on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.
Other major earnings are also on tap this week, with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD), Merck&Company Inc (NYSE:MRK), Procter&Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) due in the coming days.
Markets were also on edge before a Fed meeting this week, with the bank widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged at the conclusion of the meeting on Wednesday.
But any signals on when the bank plans to begin cutting rates will be closely watched, given encouraging signs from inflation and positive comments from Fed officials in recent months.
Markets are pricing in a 25 basis point
cut by the Fed in September, according to CME Fedwatch.
US stock futures fall with Fed meeting, mega tech earnings on tap (msn.com)
In economic madness news, climate change expert Janet Yellen just called for an extra 3 trillion a year of spending, every year out to 2050.
Never mind that yesterday, the US official Federal deficit hit 35 trillion dollars, up from “just” 33 trillion dollars last October! That’s 35 trillion of official debt on an US official GDP of 28.5 trillion dollars. Care to guess what official US Federal debt will be come October?
US weaponised Treasuries anyone? London Irvine Report: CBDCs
Yellen: Low-carbon shift needs $3T
July 28, 2024
BELEM, Brazil — United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday (Sunday in Manila) that the global transition to a low-carbon economy requires $3 trillion in new capital each year through 2050, far above current annual financing, but that filling the gap is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.
Yellen said in Belem, Brazil's Amazon gateway city, that reaching net-zero emissions goals remained a top priority for the Biden-Harris administration, and this would require leadership far beyond US borders.
"Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy. It is bad economic policy," Yellen said in a speech after attending a Group of 20 finance leaders meeting on Thursday and Friday in Rio de Janeiro.
Wealthy economies provided and mobilized a record $116 billion for climate finance for developing countries in 2022, 40 percent of which came from multilateral development banks (MDBs). Yellen said the banks, including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), were setting new targets.
The financing need is "the single-greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century" and can be leveraged to support sustainable and more inclusive growth, including for investment-starved countries, she said.
While in Belem, Yellen met with finance ministers from Amazon basin countries and IDB President Ilan Goldfajn. She reaffirmed the US commitment to the bank's Amazonia Forever platform, which provides a holistic approach to sustainable development in the region through financing, project preparation and collaboration.
"We are hopeful that this program
will incentivize greater private-sector investment in the region that supports
nature," she added.
More
Yellen: Low-carbon
shift needs $3T (msn.com)
Finally, yet more EV battery bad news. Coming soon too a Motorway/Interstate near you. Try not to drive too close to trucks hauling EV batteries, but how will we know until they catch fire?
I-15 traffic nightmare: truck carrying lithium
batteries catches fire, shuts down interstate
Published: Jul. 26, 2024 at 9:03 PM BST
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) - I-15 closed near Baker in both directions after a semi-truck carrying lithium batteries caught fire Friday morning. The fire was reported around 6am. The I-15 was closed in both directions by 8:30am.
According to California Highway Patrol, the San Bernadino County Fire Department responded to the fire and fuel spill. Firefighters say the semi-truck overturned while hauling a “connex of lithium ion batteries.”
A hard closure was implemented to establish a safe distance from the fuel and oil along the roadway. Suppression efforts were complicated by the truck’s content. Lithium battery fires are notoriously hard to fight and can burn for hours.
Additional resources were requested at the scene, including a HazMat unit, additional water, and heavy equipment.
Closures still remain for northbound I-15 as of 10pm Friday. The San Bernardino County Fire Logistics Division brought supplies to the Clyde V Kane Rest Stop off the northbound I-15, south of Afton Canyon Road for motorists without water and experiencing other issues with heat illness or their vehicle.
The traffic back up was significant. Another crash in the Mojave National Preserve closed one alternate route. Drivers were stuck in some cases in standstill backups for hours.
According to an X post, fire officials say they have received multiple calls about medical conditions and heat-related emergencies along I-15 and on the alternate route, I-40. County fire says they brought additional ambulances and paramedics to the area to address the calls.
FOX5 spoke withe several drivers caught in the mess. Crystal Harris left Las Vegas at 8:40am for a family reunion in Bellflower, CA. Harris did not arrive until nearly 10pm on what should have been a four and a half hour drive.
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.
Both
optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the
aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
George
Bernard Shaw.
From bankruptcies to price wars, the US freight recession is reshaping the industry
July 28, 2024
There's no end in sight for the freight recession, and the downturn is reshaping dynamics in the industry.
A lack of certainty looms over experts regarding when the trucking industry could recover from its slump, and there was little good news in the second quarter.
According to the recent AFS Logistics and TD Cowen freight index report, truckload rate per mile has continued to slip this year, and the trend is set to continue for a sixth straight quarter.
At the heart of the problem are simple economics. When COVID-era consumption surged, trucking capacity ballooned to embrace it. But a few years later, high interest rates have pressured Americans' spending habits, leaving the industry with a supply-demand mismatch.
"Now you have more capacity, meaning more trucks, more drivers, chasing less freight," AFS Logistics CEO Tom Nightingale told Business Insider. "What that ultimately means is reduced prices across pretty much all [freight] modes."
AFS tracks truckload, less-than-truckload, and parcel modes. Each segment is facing its own set of issue, Nightingale said, and they're all amplifying the current depressed conditions.
Bankruptcies
One of the dominant themes of the freight recession has been a surge in bankruptcies. According to CarrierOK, 88,000 carriers and 8,000 freight brokers shut down their operations in 2023.
The trend isn't over. This month, S&P Global downgraded the credit rating of Accuride, a trucking parts manufacturer. Part of its reasoning was that commercial trucking would remain depressed for two years, squeezing the firm's sales and cash flow.
"As truckload carriers become increasingly stressed, and in some cases, unable to service their interest payments, we start to see the pace of bankruptcies accelerate," Nightingale noted, and cited this as a strong catalyst for conditions to eventually recover: "That's generally what causes an increase in pricing in the truckload side of things."
Consider the less-than-truckload sector. These carriers, which combine shipments from multiple customers, at first benefited from last year's closure of Yellow.
When
this century-old firm went bankrupt, it pulled supply out of the sector and
buoyed up pricing, Nightingale said.
More
From bankruptcies
to price wars, the US freight recession is reshaping the industry (msn.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Immunity experts explain why everyone is catching Covid again
There are some key reasons why so many people are
feeling ill this summer, and some ways to avoid it
07:50, 29 JUL 2024
Experts have explained
why so many people across the Uk appear to be falling ill this summer.
Researchers say the fact fewer people are getting Covid jabs and that fewer
people caught Covid last winter means immunity levels have dropped - and that
may be why so many people are now feeling ill.
There has been a surge in
cases, hospitalisation and deaths with Covid in the UK in recent weeks.
According to the Health Security Agency, positive Covid-19 tests rose from 4% at the end of March to 14%
by the end of June and kept rising to 17% by July 10.
Dr Allen Haddrell,
research fellow at Bristol University, told the Mirror that school holidays, festival season and the Euros named
as key reasons for the unwelcomed spread.are also helping to spread the virus.
He said: "There's
been some discussion about the Euros, which saw people meeting inside pubs and
bars for prolonged periods of time, typically shouting and screaming. These are
potential places where you'd get higher rates of transmission. There's also
school going off term. Any time you're seeing changes in population dynamics,
it can impact the rates of illness."
Air conditioning units
keeping people cool at work may also be to blame. Dr Haddrell said: "In
offices, people use air conditioning, because having a window open might not
cool the area down very much. Many of these air conditioning units are cooling
the air but also pushing it around and sealing the building in a sense, so that
could also lead to an increase in transmission."
Dr Haddrell added:
"We're four years into a global pandemic, and we've learnt lots of
different ways to deal with this – and yet people aren't really engaging with
them anymore. So it's really not surprising we keep experiencing these waves.
More
Immunity experts explain why everyone is catching Covid again - Wales
Online
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 New Battery
to Power Your Home: Ford's Electric Pickup Truck
July
26, 2024
Sunrun, the
country's largest solar energy company, says it's now operating the first
vehicle-to-home power plant in the US, using Ford F-150 Lightning vehicles. The
program is small: Only three customers of Maryland's Baltimore Gas and Electric
Company (BGE) are using their vehicle, plus a Ford Charge Station Pro and
a Home Integration
System, to send electricity to and from the car's EV battery array.
But it
could be an indicator of what's to come as the idea of using bidirectional
charging to avoid blackouts and help ease the strain
on electrical grids across the country starts to become
a reality. The idea of using an EV's battery when it's not in use to send power
back to a home could also be part of a larger concept called "virtual
power plants," in which solar panel batteries, vehicles, and renewable energy
from other sources could all be smartly utilized to serve enough energy to meet
demand.
Already
this summer, we've seen California avoid a widespread electricity crisis during
a recent heat wave by adding battery capacity and using
batteries in customer homes.
The
Sunrun program, which the company calls "the first operational
bidirectional electric vehicle power plant in the United States that uses a
cohort of customer vehicles" is a proof of concept, but it could spread.
It came about through a US Department of Energy grant awarded to BGE.
Some
EV owners already have a home battery installed, which can store energy generated
from solar panels and power their home and vehicle and even
send power back to the grid. That's not too far off from
what Sunrun and BGE are doing, except electricity can go in both directions,
charging the truck when needed but also bringing power back into the home
directly from the truck's batteries when it's not in use.
The
Ford F-150 Lightning retails for around $73,000 and is listed
among CNET's top EVs. A Ford Charge Station Pro sells
for about $1,310 and
a Home Integration System purchased through Sunrun costs
about $3,785, not including installation fees or home electrical upgrades that
may be required.
A New Battery to
Power Your Home: Ford's Electric Pickup Truck (msn.com)
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
It took
over 45 years for the mutual fund industry to gather in it's first trillion
dollars, a period that included the go-go sixties and the baby boom generation.
It took just 4 years from 1990 to 1994 to get to two trillion dollars. After
all, everyone knows "a one way bet" when they see it.
By the end of 1994 well over 6,000 mutual funds existed, with more being created each week. Let me put this in perspective. It took 200 years, many wars, a great depression and Jimmy Carter to get the National Debt to its first $1 trillion dollars. It took a further 10 years and Reaganomics to triple it.
Yet it took
only 4 years and Presidents Bush and Clinton to add almost $2 trillion more to
raise it to today's $4.8 trillion dollars. That's $4.8 trillion of debt on a
U.S. $6 trillion Gross Domestic Product.
London
Irvine Report: Unsound at Any Price. 1995
No comments:
Post a Comment