Baltic
Dry Index. 2110 +19
Brent Crude 72.35
Spot Gold 2656 US 2 Year Yield 3.55 -0.05
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Gilbert K. Chesterton.
It’s the last trading day of the month. Normally a day to dress up the stock casinos for the all important month-end money manager bonuses.
But today it’s a little more complicated. A tax raiser has become Prime Minister in Japan scaring stocks.
An US east coast and Gulf coast port strike is about to start at midnight. The Boeing strike continues on. Much of the US southeast is still drying out from the remnants of hurricane Helene. If your EV got flooded, don’t try to start it without professional help, say the “experts”.
In Europe, the right wing populist party just topped the election in Austria. The UK’s new far left socialist government is poised to start raising taxes and cutting benefits on October 30th. Le Monde says France is about to raise corporate taxes.
A new wider Middle East war is just getting underway.
In Washington D.C., a team of non-entities lingers in office until January, irrelevant outside of Washington D.C.
All in all, a tricky week in the stock casinos.
China stocks rally 6% as manufacturing contracts
less than feared; Japan’s Nikkei falls more than 4%
Published Sun, Sep 29 2024 7:50 PM EDT
Stocks in mainland China spiked over 6%
while Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled
4.64% on Monday as investors assessed key economic data from the two countries.
China’s official purchasing managers’
index reading for September came in at 49.8, better than the 49.5 expected by
economists polled by Reuters. However, this marked a fifth straight month of
contraction for the manufacturing sector in China.
The Caixin PMI survey, which is a private
survey compiled by S&P Global, reported that the manufacturing PMI fell to
49.3 from 50.4 in September, lower than the 50.5 expected from the Reuters
poll.
The Caixin survey also marked the fastest
decline in the manufacturing in 14 months.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 was up 6.22%,
with the property sector gaining 7.4%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 3.34%
following the release, powered by consumer stocks. The Hang Seng Mainland
Properties Index soared 8%.
Separately in Japan, the Nikkei’s decline
was led by losses in real estate stocks, while the largest loser on the index
was department store holding company Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings,
down 11%. The broad-based Topix fell 3.3%.
Industrial production in the country dropped 4.9% year on year in August, more
than the 0.4% fall in the month before.
On a month-on-month basis, industrial
production dropped 3.3%, a sharper decline than the 0.9% expected in a Reuters
poll and compared with the 3.1% rise in July
The Japanese yen weakened 0.13%
against the dollar, trading at 142.38.
Japan’s August retail sales climbed 2.8% year on year, beating
Reuters poll estimates of a 2.3% rise, and up from a revised 2.7% rise in July.
The moves in Japanese markets come as
investors digest Shigeru Ishiba’s victory in the Liberal Democratic Party
elections last Friday. He will succeed Fumio Kishida as Japan’s prime minister.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed
0.72%, breaching its all-time high of 8,246.2.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.13%, and the
small cap Kosdaq slipped 1.21%.
Overnight in the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose
to a new high on Friday as traders assessed fresh data that showed to more
progress on reining in inflation.
The 30-stock Dow added 0.33%, ending at
42,313.00. The S&P 500 ticked
down 0.13%, while the Nasdaq
Composite lost 0.39%.
This comes as traders assess encouraging
August inflation data, which saw the personal consumption expenditures price
index — the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation — increasing 0.1%,
matching expectations from economists polled by Dow Jones.
PCE
climbed at an annualized pace of 2.2%, below the 2.3% forecast.
Asia markets live: Nikkei 225 drop, China PMI on tap, Ishiba election (cnbc.com)
Wall St Week Ahead Jobs data to test US stock
market's soft-landing hopes
By Lewis Krauskopf September 27, 20249:34 PM GMT+1
NEW YORK, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Investor
hopes for a soft landing for the U.S. economy will be put to the test next
week, as the government releases closely watched labor market data following a
series of disappointing jobs reports.
Wall Street's benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new
tab index
is up 20% year-to-date near a record high. With the third quarter ending on
Monday, the index is on track for its strongest January-September performance
since 1997.
Hopes for a soft landing in which the
Federal Reserve tames inflation without badly hurting growth, have helped drive
those gains, along with a 50 basis point
rate cut the
central bank delivered at its monetary policy meeting this month.
Some worry that the rate cuts may not be
enough to avert a downturn, and Wall Street views the monthly employment report
as one of the more critical reads on the economy. The prior two monthly reports
have shown weaker-than-expected
job increases,
raising the stakes for the Oct 4 data.
"Stocks are priced for a
Goldilocks/soft landing-type scenario," said Wasif Latif, president and
chief investment officer at Sarmaya Partners. "The jobs report could
potentially either confirm that or derail that."
Some recent payrolls reports have roiled
markets, particularly data showing an unexpected slowdown that helped spark a
sharp, days-long selloff in the S&P 500 in early August. The index has
since recovered those losses and gone on to make fresh highs.
For the September report due out next
week, nonfarm payrolls are expected to have increased by 140,000, according to
Reuters data on Friday.
The labor data could help solidify views
on the Fed's next move at its Nov 6-7 meeting. Futures tied to the fed funds
rate currently show bets almost evenly split between a 25 basis point cut or
another 50-basis-point reduction.
"While the totality of the data will
always be important, the burden will be on incoming labor market data to
provide the Fed with greater confidence that the softening trend is
stabilizing," economists at Deutsche Bank said in a recent note.
Investors will also watch an address from
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, set to speak on the economic outlook before the
National Association for Business Economics on Monday.
More
Wall St Week Ahead Jobs data to test US stock market's soft-landing hopes | Reuters
Stock futures are little changed to kick off final
session of a strong month and quarter: Live updates
Updated Mon, Sep 30 2024 7:01 PM EDT
U.S. stock futures were flat to kick off
the final trading session of September after the major averages rose to their
third consecutive week of gains.
Futures tied to the Dow
Jones Industrial Average traded near the flatline. S&P 500 futures added
just 0.04% and Nasdaq 100
futures inched up 0.08%.
The 30-stock Dow rose 0.3% on Friday to
finish at a new all-time high and end the week around 0.6% higher. The S&P
500 also gained about 0.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed almost 1% during
the week.
Wall Street is on track to end September
on a positive note. Month to date, the Dow and the broad market index are up
1.8% and 1.6%, respectively. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has advanced 2.3% in
September. Markets had a rough start to what is historically the weakest
month for the stock market, but rebounded as September went on with the Federal
Reserve cutting interest rates by a super-sized half point.
The S&P 500 is up 5.1% on the quarter,
stretching its year-to-date gain to more than 20%. However, October has a
troubling history as well for markets, known as a time of extreme volatility
with some of the more notable Wall Street drawdowns occurring during the month.
To end last week, August’s personal
consumption expenditures price index came in at
just 2.2%, the lowest since February 2021, making investors more confident on
further rate cuts from the Fed. Additionally, initial jobless claims numbers
released last week fell less than expected, signaling strength in the labor
market.
The encouraging economic data “reinforces
the core beliefs that prices are stabilizing, the consumer is healthy enough,
companies are poised to take advantage of lower rates, and the economy keeps
chugging along,” said Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy at Global
X. “Expect risk assets to keep advancing against this backdrop despite
geopolitical noise.”
Markets will get a major test later in the
week with September’s jobs report out on Friday. On the earnings front,
Carnival will announce its quarterly results Monday morning.
Stock market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
In other news, better food availability news from India. GB’s industrial revolution starts to end. The de-industrialisation of the west.
India allows non-basmati white rice exports
in boost for global supplies
By Mayank Bhardwaj, Sethuraman N R and Rajendra Jadhav
September 28, 2024 1:25 PM GMT+1
NEW DELHI, Sept 28 (Reuters) - India gave
the go-ahead on Saturday for exports of non-basmati white rice to resume as
inventories in the world's biggest exporter of the grain surge and farmers
prepare to harvest a new crop in the coming weeks.
Bigger rice shipments from India would
beef up overall global supplies and soften international prices by forcing
other major exporters of the staple such as Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam to
reduce their rates, traders said.
New Delhi set a floor price for
non-basmati white rice exports of $490 per metric ton, a government order said.
That came a day after the government cut the export tax on white rice to zero.
New Delhi's decision to allow traders to
sell non-basmati white rice on the world market follows a series of moves to
ease export restrictions on premium, aromatic basmati and parboiled varieties.
On Friday, India also reduced the export
duty on parboiled rice to 10% from 20% previously.
Earlier this month, the government removed a floor
price for basmati rice exports to help thousands of farmers who complained
about a lack of access to lucrative overseas markets such as Europe, the Middle
East and the United States.
As the El Nino weather pattern raised the
spectre of poor monsoon rains, India imposed various curbs on rice exports last
year and extended them into 2024 to keep local prices in check ahead of the
April-June national election.
Since the 2023 ban on exports, local supplies
have picked up, bumping up stocks at government warehouses.
Rice stocks at the state-run Food
Corporation of India on Sept. 1 stood at 32.3 million metric tons, 38.6% higher
than last year, giving the government ample room to ease rice export curbs.
Buoyed by copious monsoon rains, farmers
have planted rice on 41.35 million hectares (102.18 million acres), up from
40.45 million hectares (99.95 million acres) last year and an average of 40.1
million hectares (99.09 million acres) over the last five years.
The decision to allow non-basmati rice
exports will raise farm incomes in the countryside and help India regain its
position in the global market, said Rajesh Paharia Jain, a New Delhi-based
trader.
Despite the 10% export tax on parboiled
rice and the floor price of $490 a metric ton, Indian white rice will be
competitive in the international market, said B.V. Krishna Rao, president of
the Rice Exporters' Association.
India allows non-basmati white rice exports in boost for global supplies | Reuters
UK's biggest steelworks to cease production after more than 100 years
29 September 2024
The UK's biggest steelworks will cease
production today after more than 100 years, leading to thousands of job losses
across South Wales.
Blast Furnace 4 - the final furnace
operating at Tata Steel's plant in Port Talbot - will be fully shut down at
about 5pm, with the last steel made late on Monday evening.
In an email sent to staff and seen by Sky
News, Tata UK's chief executive Rajesh Nair admitted it would be a
"difficult day" of "great emotion and reflection".
Tata Steel is replacing
the furnace with a greener electric arc furnace which will use UK-sourced scrap
steel, but that will not be operational until 2028.
The transition will cost £1.25bn, £500m of
which is being paid by the British government and will lead to nearly 3,000 job
losses, almost 75% of the workforce.
Unions have battled for months to push
back the furnace closure and reduce the number of redundancies.
Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of the
Community Union which represents most steelworkers at Port Talbot, said it was
an "incredibly sad and poignant day" for the British steel industry.
----In an email sent to staff last Friday,
Tata UK's chief executive Rajesh Nair said: "Port Talbot has long been
associated with the iron and steel industry and the closure of our heavy end
operations will be a hugely significant and emotional day for employees - past
and present - contractor partners, and the local community.
"While it will of course be a
difficult day, it is a necessary step as we transition to a green steel future
and secure the legacy of steelmaking at Port Talbot for future
generations."
As well as around 2,800 job losses, many
fear there will be a greater number of workers in the wider supply chain
impacted.
----The giant Port Talbot
steelworks will not close completely - it will continue to operate hot and cold
strip mills to roll steel slab imported from overseas.
But it is a hugely significant day not
only for the UK's industrial infrastructure, but for a town built on steel that
will no longer produce it.
The government announced earlier this
month it will publish a strategy for the future of UK steel next spring
UK's biggest steelworks to cease production after more than 100 years (msn.com)
Finally, yet more bad EV news.
Saltwater is making electric cars blow up
29 September 2024
Electric vehicles that have been flooded
with saltwater are being treated as a potential fire hazard in the wake of
Hurricane Helene.
Officials are urging those who evacuated
and left electric vehicles or golf carts in garages or under buildings to
report them if they cannot safely access or move the vehicles.
Saltwater exposure can damage the battery
components in electric vehicles, potentially leading to dangerous chemical
reactions that could cause the vehicle to catch fire.
Residents who may have left electric
vehicles behind when they evacuated from affected areas are being urged to
contact the local emergency services.
Recovery operations continue, and
authorities say they want to mitigate any potential hazards caused by damaged
electric vehicle batteries.
Emergency responders have advisedr esidents
not to move a flooded electric vehicle themselves but instead contact
authorities for help.
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Alabama and Virginia have all declared emergencies in the wake of the
devastating hurricane that swept the southern United States.
Sixty-four people are believed to have
died, and millions have been affected by power outages.
According to officials a number of people
were left stranded or without shelter across the region. About 2.7 million
households were without power throughout the south-east, down 40 per cent
from a peak of 4.6mn on Friday, according to the energy department.
The storm could result in up to $34bn in
losses from damage to property and reduced economic output, according to
Moody’s. Forecaster AccuWeather’s preliminary damage estimate was higher at
between $95bn and $110bn, suggesting Helene might be one of the most
destructive in America’s history.
More
Saltwater is making electric cars blow up (msn.com)
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.
Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they
will always let themselves be deceived.
Niccolo Machiavelli.
Italy
sees debt rising through 2026 in new budget plan
28
September 2024
ROME
(Reuters) -Italy's public debt will only start falling as a proportion of
economic output from 2027 despite a more positive trend in addressing its
significant budget deficit, the Treasury said in its multi-year fiscal plan
published on Saturday.
The
euro zone's third largest economy has a level of debt that is the second
largest in the monetary zone as a share of GDP and under close scrutiny from
rating agencies and markets.
The
debt is targeted at 135.8% of GDP this year from 134.8 in 2023, and seen rising
to 136.9% in 2025 and 137.8% in 2026, before marginally declining to 137.5% in
2027.
The
Treasury said the increase was due to costly home renovation incentives adopted
in the wake of the COVID pandemic -- the so-called Superbonus.
Economy
Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said in the document that a prudent and credible
fiscal policy was crucial to attacking the burden of debt and interest
expenditure.
The
multi-year budget plan, to be presented to the European Commission next month
after parliamentary approval, forecasts gross domestic product will grow by 1%
in 2024, 1.2% in 2025 and 1.1% the following year, in line with previous
estimates made in April
The
Treasury targets this year's budget deficit at 3.8% of national output, below
the 4.3% estimated in April.
After
declining to a projected 3.3% of GDP next year, below a previous 3.6% goal
agreed with the EU, the deficit is seen at 2.8% in 2026, below the EU's 3%
ceiling, according to the latest estimates.
All
figures factor in revisions to economic growth data for 1995-2023 unveiled this
week, which gave a modest boost to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government.
The
EU put Italy under an "excessive deficit procedure" this year after
the 2023 deficit reached 7.2% of GDP.
The
government also needs to comply with the latest reform of the bloc's fiscal
rules, which requires slow but steady cuts in the headline deficit and debt
from 2025 over four to seven years, depending on reform commitments and
strategic investments.
To
this end, the Treasury said it planned to limit the average annual increase in
Italy's net primary expenditure, an indicator that measures spending components
under the government's direct control, to close to 1.5%.
"From
2027, debt will begin to fall in line with new EU rules that call for an
average reduction of 1 percentage point of GDP following the exit from the
excessive deficit procedure," the Treasury said.
Italy sees debt rising through 2026 in new budget plan (msn.com)
Disney
cuts 300 corporate staffers in latest wave of layoffs
Thu,
26 Sept 2024, 7:40 pm BST
Walt
Disney Co. has initiated a fresh round of layoffs, with corporate employees
emerging as the latest victims of the Burbank media and entertainment giant's
ongoing $7.5-billion
cost-cutting effort.
This
week, Disney is in the process of eliminating about 300 jobs, according
to Deadline. In a statement
provided Thursday to The Times, the House of Mouse said it is looking to manage
its resources and costs "more effectively" in order to "fuel the
state-of-the-art creativity and innovation that consumers value and expect
from Disney."
"As part
of this ongoing optimization work, we have been reviewing the cost
structure for our corporate-level functions and have determined there are ways
for them to operate more efficiently," the Disney spokesperson added.
Read
more: Disney
television unit hit with 140 layoffs, including cuts at National Geographic
The
most recent wave of cuts is reportedly expected to span a number of Disney's
departments, including legal, human resources, finance and communications.
Last
year, Disney embarked on a mission to cut 7,000 positions to reduce costs and
turn a profit for its streaming business. With Chief Executive Bob Iger back at
the helm, the company worked fast, eliminating 4,000 staff members by April
2023 and increasing its target to 8,000.
In
May 2024, Disney-owned animation studio Pixar
reduced its staff by
14%, or 175 employees, while the famed unit was experiencing a box office slump
(in part due to the company's controversial decision to send multiple
pandemic-era titles directly to streaming even after movie theaters began to
reopen).
The
Pixar curse has since been lifted, thanks to the summer box office sensation
that was "Inside Out 2."
Read
more: Pixar
layoffs are underway. About 175 jobs are being cut
The
job cuts continued in July at Disney
Entertainment Television, which lost 2% of its workforce, amounting to 140
jobs. The TV staff at National Geographic was hit particularly hard.
Across
the industry, major Hollywood studios have
been tightening their belts and decreasing their output after overspending
during the so-called streaming wars in an effort to compete with Netflix.
Entertainment and media companies, including Paramount, Amazon and Warner Bros.
Discovery, have also been rocked by layoffs.
Disney cuts 300
corporate staffers in latest wave of layoffs (yahoo.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Severe COVID-19 Ages Your Brain 20 Years, New Study Reveals
By University of Liverpool September 28, 2024
A groundbreaking study has revealed long-term
cognitive effects in COVID-19 patients, likening their post-recovery
state to accelerated aging.
Findings include
diminished brain volume and increased brain injury proteins, emphasizing the
severe and lasting impact of the virus on brain health.
UK’s Largest COVID-19 Brain Study
New steps have been taken
towards a better understanding of the immediate and long-term impact of
COVID-19 on the brain in the UK’s largest study to date.
Published on September 23
in the journal Nature Medicine, the study from researchers led
by the University of Liverpool alongside King’s College London and the
University of Cambridge as part of the COVID-CNS Consortium shows that 12-18
months after hospitalization due to COVID-19, patients have worse cognitive
function than matched control participants. Importantly, these findings
correlate with reduced brain volume in key areas on MRI scans as well as
evidence of abnormally high levels of brain injury proteins in the blood.
Cognitive Impacts and Brain Changes Post-COVID
Strikingly, the post-COVID
cognitive deficits seen in this study were equivalent to twenty years of normal
aging. It is important to emphasize that these were patients who had
experienced COVID, requiring hospitalization, and these results shouldn’t be
too widely generalized to all people with lived experience of COVID. However,
the scale of deficit in all the cognitive skills tested, and the links to brain
injury in the brain scans and blood tests, provide the clearest evidence to
date that COVID can have significant impacts on brain and mind health long
after recovery from respiratory problems.
The work forms part of
the University of Liverpool’s COVID-19 Clinical Neuroscience Study (COVID-CNS),
which addresses the critical need to understand the biological causes and long-term
outcomes of neurological and neuropsychiatric complications in hospitalized
COVID-19 patients.
More
Severe COVID-19 Ages Your Brain 20 Years, New Study Reveals
(scitechdaily.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.
Thermoelectric
generator pulls energy from room temperature heat
By Michael Irving September 26, 2024
Scientists in Japan have developed a new organic
device that can harvest energy from heat. Unlike other thermoelectric
generators, this one works at room temperature without a heat gradient.
Thermoelectric devices are designed to tap into a
simple law of physics: heat energy moves from hotter regions to colder ones. In
these devices, electrons move from the warmer surface to the cooler one, which
produces an electric current. In theory, thermoelectric generators, materials
and paints could produce electricity from small
temperature differences in engines, power plants, even body heat.
Usually, the bigger the
temperature gradient, the better the thermoelectric generator, but now
scientists from Kyushu University in Japan have found a way to harness the
relatively low energy available from room temperature, without a gradient at
all.
Instead, the new device works
on a principle called charge separation. Heat from the ambient air causes
negative electrons and positive electron “holes” in the material to separate
and move in different directions, generating a current.
The materials in question are
organic compounds, which can easily transfer electrons between each other.
Different types of these compounds are stacked in thin layers like stairs, and
the heat gives the electrons or holes enough energy to jump up to the next
“step.”
After much trial and error of
different compound combinations, the team settled on a device with a
180-nanometer layer of copper phthhalocyanine, 320 nm of copper hexadecafluoro
phthalocyanine, 20 nm of fullerene, and 20 nm of bathocuproine.
The end result boasted an
open-circuit voltage of 384 millivolts, a short-circuit current density of 1.1
μA/cm2, and a maximum output of 94 nW/cm2. That’s a tiny
amount of electricity, of course, but considering it’s coming from room
temperature, it could make for simpler generators.
“We would like to continue
working on this new device and see if we can optimize it further with different
materials,” said Professor Chihaya Adachi, lead author of the study. “We can
even likely achieve a higher current density if we increase the device’s area,
which is unusual even for organic materials. It just goes to show you that
organic materials hold amazing potential.”
The research was published in
the journal Nature Communications.
Source: Kyushu University
Thermoelectric generator pulls energy from room temperature heat
(newatlas.com)
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
When I
am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government
of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
Winston Churchill.
