Baltic Dry Index. 1721 -41 Brent Crude 79.57
Spot Gold 2511 US 2 Year Yield 3.83 -0.08
The number one problem in today's generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.
Alan Greenspan.
In the US stock casinos, it all come down to Nvidia.
Elsewhere, rising signs of a global slowdown, if not a new recession underway.
But that assumes the Washington – London War Party doesn’t blunder us into World War Three. Probably the shortest of the two world wars before it.
Eerily, we are less than a week away from the anniversary of the start of World War Two.
Asia-Pacific
markets fall as Australia reports higher-than-expected inflation
Published
Tue, Aug 27 2024 7:54 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific
markets fell on Wednesday, as investors assessed Australia’s July inflation numbers, which came in higher
than expected.
Australia’s
CPI rose 3.5% year on year, slightly above the 3.4% expected by economists
polled by Reuters and compared to 3.8% in June. The latest CPI figure is the
lowest since March.
Minutes
of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s last meeting revealed that the central bank
had considered raising interest rates as it strives to tame inflation.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was 0.7%
down after the CPI release.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was 0.14% lower,
while the broad-based Topix fell marginally.
South
Korea’s Kospi slipped
0.51%, but the small-cap Kosdaq saw a smaller loss of 0.08% down.
Hong
Kong’s Hang Seng index and
the mainland Chinese CSI 300 lost 0.11% and 0.03% respectively.
Chinese
online retailer JD.com announced a $5 billion buyback late Tuesday, prompting
a 2.24% jump in its U.S. listed shares, while the firm’s Hong Kong listed
shares inched up 0.98%.
Overnight
in the U.S., all three major indexes finished higher as investors looked toward
tech giant Nvidia’s earnings report due Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average inching
up 0.02% to end at another record close of 41,250.5.
The S&P 500 and the tech
heavy Nasdaq Composite crept
up 0.2% to end at 17,754.82.
Asia stock markets: Australia CPI, Nvidia earnings (cnbc.com)
S&P
500 futures tick lower as Wall Street looks toward Nvidia earnings: Live
updates
Updated
Wed, Aug 28 2024 8:05 PM EDT
S&P
500 futures inched lower Tuesday night as investors waited in anticipation for
chipmaker Nvidia’s quarterly earnings announcement Wednesday after the bell.
Futures tied to the broad
market index slipped 0.16%, while Nasdaq 100 futures dropped
0.31%. Dow Jones Industrial
Average futures lost 18 points, or 0.04%.
In
after-hours action, Nordstrom advanced
7% after the retailer posted adjusted earnings in the second
quarter that surpassed expectations. Semiconductor developer Ambarella jumped nearly 20%
on upbeat revenue guidance in the third quarter. PVH, owner of Calvin Klein, slumped
more than 7% on a disappointing outlook for the current quarter.
During
Tuesday’s trading session, the broad market index and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both added
nearly 0.2%. Nvidia posted
a roughly 1.5% gain that helped buoy both indexes. The 30-stock Dow, meanwhile, added just 0.02% —
just enough to post a second straight record close.
Wall
Street is keeping an eye on Nvidia, the leader of the artificial intelligence
trade, to gauge the broader sustainability of the broader tech and AI trade.
The semiconductor giant has surged 159% in 2024, raising questions of how much
more room there is for the stock to run.
Focal
points for investors include the
delivery schedule for Nvidia’s Blackwell chips and an update on the
demand for AI.
“It’s
hard to say that there’s not a lot of optimism priced into the market
tomorrow,” Erin Browne, Pimco managing director and portfolio manager, told
CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on
Tuesday.
More
Stock market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
In other news, drifting into World War Three. A Russian warning but no one anywhere is listening.
Russia
warns the United States of the risks of World War Three
August 27, 2024
MOSCOW
(Reuters) - Russia said the West was playing with fire by considering allowing
Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles and cautioned the
United States on Tuesday that World War Three would not be confined to Europe.
Ukraine
attacked Russia's western Kursk region on Aug. 6 and has carved out a slice of
territory in the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War Two.
President Vladimir Putin said there would be a worthy response from Russia to
the attack.
Sergei
Lavrov, who has served as Putin's foreign minister for more than 20 years, said
that the West was seeking to escalate the Ukraine war and was "asking for
trouble" by considering Ukrainian requests to loosen curbs on using
foreign-supplied weapons.
Since
invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin has repeatedly warned of the risk of a much
broader war involving the world's biggest nuclear powers, though he has said
Russia does not want a conflict with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
"We
are now confirming once again that playing with fire - and they are like small
children playing with matches - is a very dangerous thing for grown-up uncles
and aunts who are entrusted with nuclear weapons in one or another Western
country," Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
"Americans
unequivocally associate conversations about Third World War as something that,
God forbid, if it happens, will affect Europe exclusively," Lavrov said.
Lavrov
added that Russia was "clarifying" its nuclear doctrine.
Russia's
2020 nuclear doctrine sets out when its president would consider using a
nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other
weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons "when the very
existence of the state is put under threat".
RUSSIA'S
RESPONSE
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier this month that the assault on
Russia's Kursk region showed that Kremlin threats of retaliation were a bluff.
Zelenskiy
said Ukraine, because of the restrictions imposed by allies, could not use the
weapons at its disposal to hit some Russian military targets. He urged allies
to be bolder in their decisions about how to help Kyiv in the war.
More
Russia warns the United States of the risks of World War Three (msn.com)
German economy
shrinks as consumers shy away from spending
27 August 2024
Germany’s
economy took a step back in the second quarter of 2024, with the gross domestic
product contracting by 0.1%, according to final figures released Tuesday by the
Federal Statistical Office.
This
downturn, following a modest 0.2% growth in the first quarter, signals growing
concerns of an impending recession if economic conditions do not improve in the
current quarter.
"After
the slight increase in the previous quarter, the German economy slowed down
again in spring," stated Ruth Brand, President of the Federal Statistical
Office, highlighting the fragility of Germany's economic recovery.
Compared
to a year earlier, the German economy showed no growth, having last recorded
year-on-year expansion in the first quarter of 2023.
Consumer
spending and investments weaken
The
economic decline was largely driven by a reduction in household consumption and
investment. Household final consumption expenditure fell by 0.2%, reversing the
gains seen earlier in the year. On the other hand, government final consumption
rose by 1.0% from the previous quarter.
Investments
showed significant weakness underscoring the hesitancy of businesses to commit
to new projects amid growing economic uncertainty.
Gross
fixed capital formation, a measure of investment in physical assets, saw a
steep decline. Investment in machinery and equipment dropped by an annualized
4.1%, while construction investment fell by 2.0% on the quarter.
Foreign
trade, typically a strong point for the German economy, also failed to provide
any positive momentum. Exports of goods and services declined by 0.2% compared
to the first quarter of 2024, reflecting weaker global demand and supply chain
disruptions.
Sector-wise,
the construction activity faced significant challenges, contracting by 3.2%.
The downturn in building construction and completion work highlights the
broader slowdown in one of Germany's most critical industries.
Despite
the economic slowdown, employment trends remained positive. The number of
employed persons rose by 0.4% compared to the second quarter of 2023.
Additionally, average gross wages and salaries per employee increased by 5.1%
year-over-year, providing some relief to workers amid rising inflation and
economic uncertainty.
----Consumer
confidence plummets
Adding
to the gloomy economic outlook, a separate report released on Tuesday by the
GfK revealed a sharp decline in consumer confidence.
The
forward-looking Consumer Climate index fell by 3.4 points to -22.0 in
September, as income and economic expectations weakened significantly, and the
willingness to spend also dropped.
"Apparently,
the euphoria of German consumers triggered by the European Football
Championship was only a brief flare-up and faded after the end of the
tournament," noted Rolf Buerkl, a consumer expert at the Nuremberg
Institute for Market Decisions (NIM).
He
added that "negative news about job security is making consumers more
pessimistic, and a fast recovery in consumer sentiment seems unlikely".
More
German economy shrinks as consumers shy away from spending (msn.com)
China’s
Nongfu Spring sees shares fall over 12% after beverages maker posts decline in
profit growth
Published
Wed, Aug 28 2024 12:13 AM EDT
Shares
of China’s largest bottled water producer Nongfu Spring slumped on Wednesday, a
day after the company reported a sharp slowdown in profit growth in the first
half of the year.
Shares
of Nongfu Spring listed in Hong Kong, which have declined over 41% so far this
year, dropped 12% on Wednesday, according to LSEG data.
The
company’s net income grew 8% year on year to 6.24 billion yuan ($876
million) in the first half of the year compared to 23.3% growth on the first-half of 2023.
Increased
competition and an online backlash and “malicious defamation” affected sales,
Nongfu said in its exchange filing.
“Due
to the online public opinions in the first half of the year, the Group’s brand
reputation and sales of packaged drinking water products has been adversely
impacted,” it added.
Nationalist
Chinese internet users have accused
the firm of having pictures of Japanese religious buildings on its green tea
packaging, leading to calls of boycotts. Some
7-Eleven stores reportedly stopped selling Nongfu products following
the controversy. Nongfu had claimed that the architectural patterns were
inspired by Chinese temples.
The
company said it would “firmly take legal actions” against corporations and
individuals who have “slandered” the brand.
The
company said that domestic demand in general was picking up, while noting that
the competition in the beverages space “is increasingly intense.”
Revenue
from Nongfu’s packaged drinking water products, which make up 38.5% of its
total revenue, plunged 18.3% to 8.53 billion yuan from 10.44 billion yuan in
the same period last year.
Revenue
from tea beverage products, which make up 38% of the company’s total revenue,
rose nearly 60%.
China's Nongfu Spring shares fall after sharp slowdown in profit growth (cnbc.com)
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.
Alan Greenspan.
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.
Well
maybe this time it’s different, but that’s not the way I’d bet. My guess is
that the Perkins rule is giving another false positive signal.
The Sahm Rule has flashed, but there's a simpler recession indicator investors should be watching
August 26, 2024
Countless
recession indicators have flashed over the past few years, from an inverted
yield curve to the
Sahm Rule, and
yet the economy continues to grow in defiance of the signals.
However,
there is a more straightforward recession indicator that investors should pay
attention to, and it could be a more timely indicator of when an economic
downturn may occur.
GlobalData
TS Lombard managing director Dario Perkins coined the "Perkins Rule"
in a series of notes over the past month.
The
recession indicator triggers when the jobs market contracts.
That
means instead of using a three-month moving average of unemployment or looking
at signals in the bond market, the Perkins Rule is activated simply when a
negative monthly payroll report is received.
"The
Perkins rule asks whether payrolls are declining. Not rocket science,"
Perkins said in a note on Monday.
And
so far, with the US economy consistently adding well over 100,000 new jobs per
month, there have yet to be any signs of a negative monthly payroll report,
suggesting the economy is likely to continue to grow.
"True
uncertainty is where we cannot assign probabilities, because the world is
behaving in a way we haven't seen before. I think this applies to the current
recession debate," Perkins said in a note this month.
He
added: "You have to keep an open mind, and not assume the economy will
follow classic cyclical patterns. Leading indicators, yield inversion, perhaps
even the Sahm rule, none of these rules seem reliable."
The
Perkins Rule doesn't suffer from the potential flaw of the unemployment-based
Sahm Rule, which experts say is being distorted because a rise in labor supply
has driven the unemployment rate higher over the past year, rather than a
decline in labor demand.
"If
the unemployment rate is rising because the labour force is growing quickly, it
is not clear that this can set off the true recessionary dynamic - because it
is not such an obvious source of reflexivity," Perkins explained.
The
Perkins Rule hits on the "reflexivity" of employers and the Federal
Reserve, as a negative jobs report could quickly send shockwaves across the
labor market and ultimately cascade into a painful economic downturn.
"People
lose their jobs (or they become fearful of losing their jobs), spending goes
down, which reduces corporate revenues, which leads to further rounds of
redundancies. You can see why even small employment cuts lead to bigger
ones," Perkins said.
But
that's not happening right now.
Even
when accounting for the BLS'
major downward revision in job gains from April 2023 through March 2024
of 818,000, the US economy is still adding an average of about 175,000 new jobs
each month.
Compared
to the Sahm Rule, the Perkins Rule has had more false positives, Perkins
admitted.
"While
it is rare for US payrolls to decline outside of recessions, it does happen
occasionally," Perkins said. "Usually this is due to obvious
distortions, such as extreme weather events."
The
Perkins Rule flashed a false signal during the 1995 soft landing, and in the
late 1960s.
"So
the Perkins rule isn't fool proof. But that's not the point. The important
thing is that when you look at every time the Sahm rule has triggered since
WW2, there were only three occasions where payrolls weren't ALREADY
negative," Perkins said.
He
added: "Usually when the Sahm rule triggers, the Perkins rule has already
triggered. That matters because this is NOT what is happening today. The latest
triggering of the Sahm rule looks very different to the average recessionary
experience."
Investors
will get to see if the Perkins Rule triggers next week when the August jobs
report is released on September 6. Economists expect the report to show 114,000
jobs were added to the economy in August.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
New intranasal COVID-19 vaccine promises broad protection and accessibility
August
27, 2024
A
next-generation COVID-19 mucosal vaccine is set to be a gamechanger not only
when delivering the vaccine itself, but also for people who are needle-phobic.
New
Griffith University research, published in Nature Communications,
has been testing the efficacy of delivering a COVID-19 vaccine via the nasal
passages.
Professor
Suresh Mahalingam from Griffith's Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics has
been working on this research for the past four years.
This
is a live attenuated intranasal vaccine, called CDO-7N-1, designed to be
administered intranasally, thereby inducing potential mucosal immunity as well
as systemic immunity with just a single dose."
Suresh
Mahalingam, Professor, Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, Griffith
University
Mahalingam
added, "The vaccine induces strong memory responses in the nasal mucosa
offering long-term protection for up to a year or more.
"It's
been designed to be administered as single dose, ideally as a booster vaccine,
as a safe alternative to needles with no adverse reactions in the short or long
term."
Live-attenuated
vaccines offer several significant advantages over other vaccine approaches.
They
induce potent and long-lived humoral and cellular immunity, often with just a
single dose.
Live-attenuated
vaccines comprise the entire virus thereby providing broad immunity, in
contrast to a single antigen which is used in many other vaccine platforms.
Lead
author Dr Xiang Liu said the vaccine provides cross-protection against all
variants of concern, and has neutralising capacity against SARS-CoV-1.
"The
vaccine offers potent protection against transmission, prevents reinfection and
the spread of the virus, while also reducing the generation of new
variants," Dr Liu said.
"Unlike
the mRNA vaccine which targets only the spike protein, CDO-7N-1 induces
immunity to all major SARS-CoV-2 proteins and is highly effective against all
major variants to date.
More
New intranasal COVID-19 vaccine promises broad protection and accessibility (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.
Electric
Nissan GT-R primed for solid-state battery tech
27 August
2024
Solid-state
batteries are the next big advance set to come from Nissan –
and its future sports cars could be the models that benefit the most.
The
firm is currently developing a new pilot line for solid-state
batteries at its facility in Yokohama, Japan, and its target is to
launch series-production EVs using the technology by 2028.
These
batteries have the potential to offer a significant technology leap for electric
cars. Their greater density and more advanced technical make-ups
enable much longer ranges and faster charging compared with today’s lithium ion
packs.
Asked
which sort of vehicles solid-state batteries will be used in, Ivan Espinosa,
Nissan’s global vice-president of product planning, told Autocar: “You can
imagine multiple things, because you can package as much energy in half the
space. So you easily apply it to things like sports
cars.”
Espinosa
said he was “not ready to talk about costs” but did acknowledge that
“initially, the cost might be high”.
He
added: “But as the technology matures, costs will go down. And because it has
greater density, you need less material per battery in order to deliver the
same amount of power, so the overall cost should be competitive.”
Solid-state
batteries are likely to appear first in the production version of Nissan’s
Hyper Force concept, the radical electric successor to
the Nissan GT-R.
The
tightly packaged flagship would be the perfect car to introduce the technology,
hinted Espinosa.
“You
can bring it to small cars, because it will be easier to package in a kei car,
or maximise the cabin space in a big SUV,” he
added.
Electric Nissan
GT-R primed for solid-state battery tech (msn.com)
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
The
abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to
use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. In the
absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from
confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. Deficit
spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands
in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property
rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the
statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Alan
Greenspan.
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