Baltic
Dry Index. 1785 +93 Brent Crude 71.18
Spot Gold 2586 US 2 Year Yield 4.31 -0.03
Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.
David Ricardo.
In the stock casinos, a mixed start to the week, except for Samsung’s stock buyback plan.
In politics, is lame duck Biden trying to force Trump into a deeper US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine? The stumble towards World War Three, Nuclear War One, now increasingly resembles the stumble into World War One.
Meanwhile lame duck President Biden himself is on leg two of his South American farewell tour, currently in Brazil “where the nuts come from,” attending the latest G-20 junket in Rio.
Asia markets mostly rise as investors await China
LPR, Japan inflation data this week
Updated Sun, Nov 17 2024 10:27 PM EST
Asia-Pacific stocks mostly rose Monday as
markets kickstarted what ING calls
a “quiet” week for economic data from the region.
Key data this week from Asia will include
China’s loan prime rate, set to be released Wednesday. ING said no change is
expected in China’s LPR, with the one-year rate currently at 3.1% and the
five-year LPR at 3.6%.
Japan will release trade data on Tuesday
and October headline inflation numbers on Friday, while Australia’s central
bank on Tuesday will release minutes of its meeting earlier this month.
Japan’s markets were the outlier in the
region, with the benchmark Nikkei
225 down 0.78%, and the broad-based Topix 0.47% lower.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.09%, leading
gains in Asia, powered by the rise in heavyweight Samsung Electronics, while
the small-cap Kosdaq reversed losses to climb 0.93%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was
marginally up.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was 1.38%
higher, while mainland China’s CSI 300 gained 0.78%.
On Friday in the U.S., all three major
indexes on Wall Street declined as investors worried about the path of interest
rates and sold off pharmaceutical stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost
0.70%, while the S&P 500 slipped
1.32% and the tech heavy Nasdaq
Composite fell 2.24%.
Losses in pharmaceuticals weighed on the
blue-chip Dow and the S&P 500, with Amgen falling about 4.2%
and Moderna sliding
7.3%.
This comes after President-elect Donald Trump said on
Thursday that he planned
to nominate vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services.
Asia markets live: China LPR, Japan inflation
Samsung shares climb more than 7% after surprise
$7 billion buyback plan
Published Sun, Nov 17 2024 10:08 PM EST
Shares of Samsung Electronics jumped on
Monday after the company unveiled a surprise plan to buy back about 10 trillion
South Korean won ($7.19 billion) worth of its own stock over the next 12
months.
The South Korean tech giant’s stock rose
more than 7% in Seoul, after shares had already surged 7.21% on Friday,
following news that the company reached a preliminary agreement with its
largest workers union, which went on strike in July.
Samsung last bought back shares in
November 2017, according to data maintained by LSEG.
In a regulatory filing, the company said that 3 trillion won of
shares will be bought back in the next three months and canceled. While the
repurchase of the remaining 7 trillion won worth of shares will be “authorized
accordingly by the Board, which will decide on ways to enhance shareholder
value, including when and how to use the treasury shares,” it added.
Shares of Samsung had hit a four year low
on November 15, after the company posted a disappointing
profit guidance for its third quarter and amid worries about tariffs after U.S. President-elect
Donald Trump won the presidential election.
More
Samsung shares climb more than 7% after surprise $7 billion buyback plan
Stock futures open little changed as traders await
Nvidia earnings: Live updates
Updated Mon, Nov 18 2024 7:01 PM EST
Stock futures were slightly higher on
Sunday night as Wall Street awaits a major earnings week and monitors a
seemingly fizzled out postelection rally.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial
Average dipped 16 points, or less than 0.1%. S&P futures added 0.1%, while
Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.2%.
Sunday’s move follows a tough week for the
three major benchmarks, which are now off their highs that were seen in the
aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended
the week lower at 43,444.99 points, after earlier surging past 44,000 for the
first time. The S&P 500 also
slipped last week to end at 5,870.62, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dipped to
end at 18.680.12 last week.
Concerns about the path of interest rates
continue to weigh on investors’ minds, particularly after Federal Reserve Chair
Jerome Powell said on Thursday that the central
bank is not “in a hurry” to cut rates given the economy’s strong
growth and a solid labor market — which drove last week’s selloff. Most
investors are now pricing in a year-end overnight lending rate in the range of
4.25% to 4.50%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.
The next major catalyst for the market
this week will be Nvidia earnings,
which are set to be released on Wednesday. Traders will be watching for
guidance about the company’s demand for its Blackwell AI chips.
Earnings from Palo Alto Networks and
several major retailers, including Walmart, Target and Ross, are also on deck this week.
So far, with 93% of S&P 500 companies reporting results, three-quarters of
them have reported a positive EPS surprise and 61% have reported a positive
revenue surprise, according to a Friday note from FactSet’s John Butters.
Stock futures open little changed as traders await Nvidia earnings: Live updates
Biden allows Ukraine to use U.S. arms to strike
inside Russia
Published Sun, Nov 17 2024 1:31 PM EST Updated
Sun, Nov 17 20246:03 PM EST
President Joe Biden’s administration has
allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deep into Russia, two U.S.
officials and a source familiar with the decision said on Sunday, in a
significant reversal of Washington’s policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Ukraine plans to conduct its first
long-range attacks in the coming days, the sources said, without revealing
details due to operational security concerns.
The move comes two months before
President-elect Donald Trump takes
office on Jan. 20 and follows months of pleas by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to
allow Ukraine’s military to use U.S. weapons to hit Russian military targets
far from its border.
The change comes largely in response to
Russia’s deployment of North Korean ground troops to supplement its own forces,
a development that has caused alarm in Washington and Kyiv, a U.S. official and
a source familiar with the decision said.
The White House and the State Department
declined to comment. The Ukrainian foreign ministry and president’s office did
not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Russia has warned that it would see a move
to loosen the limits on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons as a major escalation.
Ukraine’s first deep strikes are likely to
be carried out using ATACMS rockets, which have a range of up to 190 miles (306
km), according to the sources.
While some U.S. officials have expressed
skepticism that allowing long-range strikes will change the war’s overall
trajectory, the decision could help Ukraine at a moment when Russian forces are
making gains and possibly put Kyiv in a better negotiating position when and if
ceasefire talks happen.
It is not clear if Trump will reverse
Biden’s decision when he takes office. Trump has long criticized the scale of
U.S. financial and military aid to Ukraine and has vowed to end the war
quickly, without explaining how.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately
respond to a request for comment. But one of Trump’s closest foreign policy
advisers, Richard Grenell, criticized the decision.
“Escalating the wars before he leaves
office,” Grenell said, in an X post responding to the news.
---- Since
Trump’s Nov. 5 victory, senior Biden administration officials have repeatedly
said they would use the remaining time to ensure Ukraine can fight effectively
next year or negotiate peace with Russia from a “position of strength.”
‘Way too late’
The U.S. believes more than 10,000 North
Korean soldiers have been sent to eastern Russia and that most of them have
moved to the Kursk region and have begun to engage in combat operations.
Russia is advancing at its fastest rate
since 2022 despite taking heavy losses, and Ukraine said it had clashed with
some of those North Korean troops deployed to Kursk.
Stretched by personnel shortages,
Ukrainian forces have lost some of the ground they captured in an August
incursion into Kursk that Zelenskyy said could serve as a bargaining chip.
More
Biden allows Ukraine to use U.S. arms to strike inside Russia
Finally, more AI hype or a real transformation?
A Powerful AI Breakthrough Is About to Transform
the World
The technology driving ChatGPT is capable
of so much more. What’s coming next will make talking bots look like mere
distractions.
Nov. 15, 2024 9:00 pm ET
The AI revolution is about to spread way
beyond chatbots.
From new plastic-eating bacteria and new
cancer cures to autonomous helper robots and self-driving cars, the
generative-AI technology that gained prominence as the engine of ChatGPT is
poised to change our lives in ways that make talking bots look like mere
distractions.
While we tend to equate the current
artificial-intelligence boom with computers that can write, talk, code and make
pictures, most of those forms of expression are built on an underlying
technology called a “transformer” that has far broader applications.
First announced in a 2017 paper from Google
researchers, transformers are a kind of AI algorithm that lets computers
understand the underlying structure of any heap of data—be it words, driving
data, or the amino acids in a protein—so that it can generate its own similar
output.
The transformer paved the way for OpenAI
to launch ChatGPT two years ago, and a range of companies are now working on
how to use the innovation in new ways, from Waymo and its robot taxis to a biology
startup called EvolutionaryScale, whose AI systems are designing new protein
molecules.
The applications of this breakthrough are
so broad that in the seven years since the Google research was published, it
has been cited in other
scientific papers more than 140,000 times.
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that
this one collection of algorithms is the reason that Nvidia is now the most valuable
company on earth, that data centers are popping up all over the U.S. and the
world, driving up electricity consumption and rates, and that chief executives
of AI companies are often—and perhaps mistakenly—asserting that
human-level AI is just around the corner.
----The Google researchers who wrote that
seminal 2017 paper were focused on the process of translating languages. They
realized that an AI system that could digest all the words in a piece of
writing, and put more weight on the meanings of some words than others—in other
words, read in context—could make much better translations.
For example, in the sentence “I arrived at
the bank after crossing the river,” a transformer-based AI that knows the
sentence ends in “river” instead of “road” can translate “bank” as a stretch of
land, not a place to put
your money.
In other words, transformers work by
figuring out how every single piece of information the system takes in relates
to every other piece of information it’s been fed, says Tim Dettmers, an AI
research scientist at the nonprofit Allen Institute for Artificial
Intelligence.
That level of contextual understanding
enables transformer-based AI systems to not only recognize patterns, but
predict what could plausibly come next—and thus generate their own new
information. And that ability can extend to data other than words.
“In a sense, the models are discovering
the latent structure of the data,” says Alexander Rives, chief scientist of
EvolutionaryScale, which he co-founded last year after working on AI for Meta Platforms, the parent
company of Facebook.
EvolutionaryScale is training its AI on
the published sequences of every protein the company’s researchers can get
their hands on, and all that we know about them. Using that data, and with no
assistance from human engineers, his AI is able to determine the relationship
between a given sequence of molecular building blocks, and how the protein that
it creates functions in the world.
More
A Powerful AI Breakthrough Is About to Transform the World - WSJ
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.
Boeing
issues layoff notices to 400-plus workers as it begins drastic cuts
November
16, 2024
Boeing has
delivered layoff notices to more than 400 members of its professional aerospace
labor union, part of thousands of cuts planned as the company struggles to
recover from financial and regulatory trouble as well as an eight-week strike
by its Machinists union.
The
pink slips went out last week to members of the Society of Professional
Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEEA, The Seattle Times
reported. The workers will remain on the payroll through mid-January.
Boeing
announced in October that it planned to cut 10% of its workforce, about 17,000
jobs, in the coming months. CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees the company must
“reset its workforce levels to align with our financial reality.”
The
Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, or SPEEA, union said
the cuts had affected 438 members. The union’s local chapter has 17,000 Boeing
employees who are largely based in Washington, with some in Oregon, California and Utah.
Of
those 438 workers, 218 are members of SPEEA’s professional unit, which includes
engineers and scientists. The rest are members of the technical unit, which
includes analysts, planners, technicians and skilled tradespeople.
Eligible
employees will receive career transition services and subsidized health care
benefits for up to three months. Workers will also receive severance, typically
about one week of pay for every year of service.
Boeing’s
unionized Machinists began returning to work earlier this month following the
strike.
The
strike strained Boeing’s finances. But Ortberg said on an October call with
analysts that it did not cause the layoffs, which he described as a result of
overstaffing.
More
Boeing issues layoff notices to 400-plus workers as it begins drastic cuts
Gold
gains 1% as dollar rally stalls
November
18, 2024
(Reuters)
- Gold prices rose on Monday after last week's sharp declines, as a rally in
the dollar paused, while market participants awaited comments from Federal
Reserve officials this week for more clues on the U.S. interest rate path.
Spot
gold firmed 1% to $2,587.49 per ounce by 0150 GMT, after falling to its worst
week in more than three years on Friday. U.S. gold futures inched 0.9% higher
to $2,592.00.
The
dollar was flat after rising 1.6% last week. A weaker dollar makes bullion less
expensive for buyers holding other currencies.
"Gold
prices are due for a slight recovery following recent bout of hefty sell-offs
and we may expect some drift higher with some rollover in the dollar,"
said IG market strategist Yeap Jun Rong.
"We
can expect less-dovish rhetoric from U.S. policymakers in December, as the Fed
sets the stage for a potential rate hold in January. This has not been fully
priced in by markets yet, so any need for recalibration may still pose an
obstacle for gold."
At
least seven U.S. central bank officials are due to speak this week. Strong U.S.
economic and inflation data continue to reshape the debate among Fed
policymakers over the pace and extent of rate cuts as investors last week
further downgraded their expectations for a rate reduction in December.
Data
on Friday showed that U.S. retail sales increased slightly more than expected
in October, highlighting the economy's resilience.
Higher
interest rates reduce the appeal of holding non-yielding bullion.
Investors
also took stock of news that President Joe Biden's administration has allowed
Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deep into Russia, in a significant
reversal of Washington's policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Spot
silver rose 1.1% to $30.53 per ounce, platinum was up 1.1% at $948.95 and
palladium climbed 1.2% to $962.44.
Gold gains 1% as dollar rally stalls
Goldman
Says ‘Go for Gold’ as Central Banks Buy, Fed Cuts in ‘25
Mon
18 November 2024 at 3:31 am GMT
(Bloomberg)
-- Gold will rally to a record next year on central-bank buying and US interest
rate cuts, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which listed the metal among
top commodity trades for 2025 and said prices could extend gains during Donald
Trump’s presidency.
“Go
for gold,” analysts including Daan Struyven said in a note, reiterating a
target of $3,000 an ounce by December 2025. The structural driver of the
forecast is higher demand from central banks, while a cyclical lift would come
from flows to exchange-traded funds as the Federal Reserve cuts, they said.
Gold
has staged a powerful rally this year — hitting successive records — before
pulling back in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s White House win, which
boosted the dollar. The commodity’s advance has been underpinned by increased
official-sector buying, and the Fed’s pivot to easier policy. Goldman said a
Trump administration may also aid bullion.
An
unprecedented escalation of trade tensions could revive speculative positioning
in gold, they said. In addition, rising concerns over US fiscal sustainability
may also aid prices, they added, noting that central banks — especially those
holding large US Treasury reserves — may opt to buy more of the precious metal.
Spot
gold was last at about $2,589 an ounce, having peaked above $2,790 last month.
More
Goldman Says ‘Go for Gold’ as Central Banks Buy, Fed Cuts in ‘25
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Northwestern study links COVID-19 RNA to cancer-fighting cells
November
15, 2024
CHICAGO - New
research from Northwestern University shows a surprise connection between COVID-19 and cancer regression.
Researchers
found the RNA from the virus triggers a unique type of immune cell with
anti-cancer fighting abilities. They say this new information opens the door
for new research and a way to treat cancer.
Doctors
say this research was inspired by a trend they noticed during the pandemic.
"Some
patients who had stage four cancer, when they develop severe COVID, we found
that some of their cancer sites or the cancer in several sites shrunk,"
said Dr. Ankit Bharat.
So,
researchers at Northwestern started their journey to figure out why this might
be happening. They discovered when someone gets badly infected with COVID, the
virus can actually enter the bloodstream, shedding its RNA. That gets
circulated and becomes a very common immune cell called monocytes.
"They
convert these monocytes into friendly cells. Basically, they convert them into
cells that protect those cancer cells against second invasion by the immune
system of the host. So what we found was that the RNA of the COVID virus could
convert these monocytes into not those cancer-friendly cells, but
cancer-fighting cells," said Bharat.
The
team is hoping that with more research, they can create therapies aimed at
these specific cells to tackle cancers that are tough to handle right now.
Northwestern study links COVID-19 RNA to cancer-fighting cells
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.
Moving
graphene from the lab to fab: How 2D materials could transform everyday
electronics
November 15, 2024
Graphene has lived up to its
promise in the lab. Now, EU researchers are working on supporting its wider
adoption in high-end electronics, photonics and sensors.
Dr. Inge Asselberghs has been
closely involved in advanced graphene research over the past decade. Today,
she's at the forefront of efforts to bring this "miracle material"
out of the lab and into society.
Asselberghs is part of an
international team of researchers that set up a prototype manufacturing
facility for graphene and other 2D materials at Imec, a leading global
nanoelectronics research institute based in Leuven, Belgium.
The team pools expertise from
11 universities, research institutes and companies in six European countries as
part of the 2D experimental pilot line (2D-EPL). Their aim is to advance the
production and integration of graphene in prototypes for use in high-end
electronics, photonics and sensors.
Graphene has the potential to
fundamentally transform many areas of technology. Consisting of just a single
layer of carbon atoms, it is extremely thin.
Graphene is exceptionally
strong, light and flexible, and able to conduct both heat and electricity. This
makes it highly adaptable for a wide range of products, from next-generation
batteries to advanced aeronautic and space applications.
"The hype started as
soon as graphene was discovered. It was much stronger than initially
anticipated," said Asselberghs.
Recognizing the economic
potential of graphene and other 2D materials, the EU launched the 10-year
Graphene Flagship initiative in 2013, bringing together 178 academic and
industrial partners with a budget of €1 billion to boost research in this area.
2D-EPL is part of this wide-ranging initiative.
Experimental
prototypes
The aim of the experimental
pilot line, set up in multiple locations, was to accelerate the use of graphene
and other layered materials in the manufacture of new prototypes for
electronics, photonics, sensors and optoelectronics. This will be a crucial step
before 2D materials can be integrated into full-scale chip manufacturing.
"Our first goal was to
figure out how to make graphene devices on a wafer scale by modifying existing
processes so that they can be handled in automated fabrication
facilities," said Asselberghs.
Wafers are thin round slices
of material for use in electronics and other industries. Reaching the stage
where graphene can be routinely included in sophisticated devices would be a
major milestone.
More
Moving graphene from the lab to fab: How 2D
materials could transform everyday electronics
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
It is
not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith.
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