Baltic
Dry Index. 997 +03 Brent Crude 74.30
Spot Gold 2623 US 2 Year Yield 4.31 +0.01
"The London Banker Henry Fauntleroy forged to keep his bank solvent. He was executed for it in 1824."
Charles P. Kindleberger, author Manias, Panics and Crashes.
It is almost year-end, normally a time to dress up stocks and stock indexes, but this year?
Will Trump 2.0 bring in boom, as the US stock casinos think, or bust as the US bond market is pricing in?
I think the bond vigilantes have it about right.
South Korea stocks shrug off tepid industrial
data, political turmoil; Jeju Air shares hit record low
Published Sun, Dec 29 2024 6:40 PM EST Updated
54 Min Ago
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed on the
penultimate trading day of this year, after Wall Street declined on Friday.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.91%, while the
Kosdaq added 1.74% Monday, even as the country grapples with political turmoil
and downbeat industrial data, among other things.
South Korea witnessed its deadliest
airline crash on Sunday that claimed 179 lives when a Jeju Air plane
crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport, bursting into flames.
South Korea’s acting President Choi
Sang-mok instructed an urgent safety inspection of the nation’s airline
operation system, to be carried out once the recovery efforts for the Jeju Air
crash are completed.
Shares of Jeju Air hit an all-time low
Monday, according to FactSet data, and were last down 8.53%. Other Korean
airlines’ stocks were volatile. Korean Air slipped 1%, budget airlines T’way
Air and Jin Air fell 3.23% and 2.12%, respectively. Air Busan climbed over 13%.
South Korea’s industrial output contracted 0.7% on a monthly basis in
November, greater than the 0.4% decline expected by Reuters. On an annual
basis, industrial output rose 0.1%, smaller than Reuters’ expectations of a
0.4% climb. This compares to October’s reading of a 6.3% increase.
The country’s parliament on
Dec. 27 voted to impeach acting President Han Duck-soo, not long after Yoon
got impeached as a result of his brief martial law decree, which plunged the
country into political turmoil. The country’s investigation agency on Monday
reportedly sought an arrest warrant for Yoon.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.82%, while
the Topix was down 0.30%
Japan’s factory activity contracted at a slower rate in
December. The au Jibun Bank Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index
climbed to 49.6 in December, coming in slightly above November’s reading of
49.0 and marking the softest contraction in three months. However, the figure
remained below the 50 threshold that separates expansion from contraction.
“The headline reading moved closer to
neutrality amid softer reductions in both production and new order intakes,”
said Usamah Bhatti at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.51%
lower.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.15%,
while mainland China’s CSI 300 climbed 0.53%.
Traders await China’s manufacturing PMI on
Tuesday, while markets will be closed on Wednesday for New Year’s Day holiday.
U.S. stocks fell Friday, led by technology
names, but major indexes still rose for the week.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shed
333.59 points, or 0.77%, to 42,992.21, falling for the first time in six
sessions. The S&P 500 fell
1.11% to 5,970.84. The Nasdaq
Composite slid 1.49% to 19,722.03, as Tesla dropped about 5%
and Nvidia fell 2%.
Asia
markets live updates: Jeju Air, South Korea industrial output
Stock futures inch lower as Wall Street readies
for the final trading week of 2024: Live updates
Updated Mon, Dec 30 2024 12:17 AM EST
Stock futures were slightly lower early
Monday ahead of the last few trading sessions of 2024.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial
Average dipped 81 points, or 0.19%, while S&P 500 futures edged down 0.16%.
Nasdaq-100 futures hovered near the flatline.
The major averages are heading into the
yearend shy of record levels, with the S&P 500 and Dow up more than 25% and
14%, respectively, and on track for the best year since 2021. The Nasdaq has
gained more than 31%.
The benchmarks are also headed for a
winning fourth quarter, with the Nasdaq on pace for its longest quarterly
winning streaking since the second quarter of 2021.
Investors are hoping that stocks will
continue to rise into the year-end and the new year, and trigger what’s known
as a Santa Claus Rally. The phenomenon refers to the market rising into the
final five trading days of a calendar year and the first two in
January. The S&P 500 has returned 1.3% on average during this period
since 1950, according to LPL Financial.
However, some worries have mounted that
the market may be losing momentum, with some year-end profit taking after the
major averages notched losing sessions Friday.
“I think it’s long overdue,” Tavis
McCourt, institutional equity strategist at Raymond James told CNBC’s Closing
Bell on Friday. I would expect more as we get into January. We’ve had a
tremendous amount of momentum into a narrow subset of names for the previous
month.”
This week ushers in a light period for
economic data, with the market closed Wednesday in observance of New Years Day.
Chicago PMI and pending homes sales data are due out Monday.
Stock futures today: Live updates
Finally, more of the spendthrift same in the District of Crooks. Shame no one in DC reads Charles P. Kindleberger’s, book Manias, Panics and Crashes.
Yellen Says Treasury to Hit New Debt Limit in
Mid-January
By Viktoria
Dendrinou and Alexandra Harris December 27, 2024 at 4:51PM EST
(Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Janet
Yellen said her department is likely to begin taking special accounting
maneuvers sometime in mid-January to avoid breaching the US debt limit, and
urged lawmakers to take action defending the “full faith and credit” of the US.
“On Jan. 2, 2025, the new debt limit will
be established at the amount of outstanding debt,” Yellen wrote in a letter on
Friday to House Speaker Mike Johnson and other congressional leaders.
The Treasury will be given a short reprieve,
however, because outstanding debt is scheduled to decrease by $54 billion on
Jan. 2, thanks to the expected redemption of securities held by a federal trust
fund.
The extra headroom is likely to be
exhausted by Jan. 14 to 23, Yellen said. At that point, the Treasury will
resort to special accounting maneuvers to help keep the government funded.
Yellen gave no indication how long those
measures, and the department’s cash reserves, are expected to last.
Wall Street has, however, begun providing
estimates. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economist Alec Phillips wrote in a Dec. 21
note that the ultimate “deadline for debt limit action is likely not until
Jul.-Aug. 2025.”
Prolonged Tussle
Yellen’s letter kicks off what is likely
to be a prolonged tussle over fiscal policy as the new administration led by
Donald Trump takes office.
The party in opposition typically uses the
need for congressional approval of raising or suspending the debt ceiling as
leverage in broader negotiations over taxes and spending.
Some strategists have anticipated an
easier path to an agreement to suspend or lift the cap given Republicans’
unified control of Congress. Yet last week, Trump failed to get a debt-ceiling
measure attached to the latest temporary federal spending bill when members of
his own party shot down a House version that included a two-year suspension.
A showdown over the debt ceiling could
strain financial markets and put upward pressure on already-elevated US
borrowing costs.
Debt ceiling brinkmanship is a recurring
challenge for financial markets. Standoffs typically send front-end interest
rates lower as the Treasury reduces its sales of short-term government debt
when operating under the constraint of the limit.
More
Yellen Says Treasury to Hit New Debt Limit in Mid-January
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.
According to the Wall Street “experts,” predictably, there’s no chance of a US recession in 2025. Still when was the last/first time any of the predicted a US recession was likely?
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
Albert Einstein.
Will
the U.S. Have a Recession in 2025?
December
27, 2024
As
the final days of December approach, it’s time for Wall Street’s favorite
seasonal game: making predictions about whether the U.S. economy will fall into
a recession in the coming year.
Coming
off a year of record-setting stock market gains and lower — albeit still elevated
— inflation, many financial pros are relatively sanguine about the outlook for
2025. For example, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s
Economist Roundtable has a generally upbeat attitude. The survey of more than
20 economists found that, on average, respondents say they predict 1.9% GDP
growth in 2025.
That’s
less than the average expectation of 2.4% GDP growth in 2024 but suggests that
the U.S. economy will keep chugging along without slipping into a
recession. Gross domestic product, or GDP, is a broad measure of the
country’s economic activity. Economists tend to be happy with annual GDP growth
in the 2% to 3% range. Too little growth — or an economy that shrinks — raises
concerns about recession, but runaway
growth isn’t ideal, either, since an overheated economy can trigger inflation.
The
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the quasi-official arbiter of
when the economy enters and exits recessions, but a good rule-of-thumb
definition for a recession links it to two consecutive quarters (half a year)
of negative GDP growth. That indicates the economy is contracting instead of
growing.
Will
we have a recession in 2025?
Although
nobody has a crystal ball, the consensus seems to be that the economy
will continue to expand in 2025, albeit at a slower rate of growth than it
did this year. SIFMA says nearly half of roundtable members believe the odds of
a recession in 2025 to be 15% or less, while another third estimate that the
likelihood of a recession is between 15% and 30%.
Here
are what some individual financial experts have predicted recently about the
2025 economy.
David
Mericle, chief U.S. economist, Goldman Sachs Research
“Recession
fears have diminished, inflation is trending back toward 2%, and the labor
market has rebalanced but remains strong,” Mericle wrote in a Nov. 20
post, predicting 2.5% GDP growth for the year.
He
added that there are three big expected policy changes as a result of
Republicans’ sweep of the White House and Congress that could affect the
economy in 2025: more tariffs, tighter
immigration policy and the extension of a slew of expiring 2017 tax cuts passed
during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term.
Paul
F. Gruenwald, global chief economist, S&P Global
“Even
before taking office, a second Trump administration is already moving the
macro-financial needle and raising downside risks,” Gruenwald wrote in a Nov. 27
research outlook. These implications go beyond just the U.S., he explained, and
could have a significant impact on the global economy.
“Potentially
large changes in fiscal, trade and immigration policy from the U.S. are
significant unknowns at this juncture,” he wrote. “Given the size of the U.S.
economy, policy action on any of these fronts can move the global needle.”
Still,
Gruenwald said he predicts 2% GDP growth for the U.S. next year.
More
Will the U.S. Have a Recession in 2025?
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
FBI's Covid-19 lab theory kept from Biden, scientist claims
Published: 22:36, 26 December 2024 | Updated: 14:54, 27
December 2024
The FBI was not allowed to brief the US President on
evidence that suggested Covid-19 was caused by a lab leak, it was claimed last
night.
Jason Bannan, former
senior scientist at the FBI, alleged the intelligence agency was not invited to
a National Intelligence Council (NIC) briefing with Joe Biden.
Mr Bannan told the Wall
Street Journal: ‘Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin
was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence
in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be
asked to attend the briefing.
'I find it surprising
that the White
House didn’t ask.’
US President Joe Biden
authorised an investigation in May 2021 by US intelligence agencies and
national laboratories to uncover the origin of the virus.
The FBI found that a lab
leak was the likely cause of the virus and had ‘moderate confidence’ in its
assessment.
Meanwhile, the NIC had
concluded with only ‘low confidence’ that Covid-19 had been transmitted from an
animal to a human, but this view was presented to the President.
A spokesman for the DNI’s
office told the Wall Street Journal that the differing views among the
intelligence community had been represented and it was against standard
practice to invite representatives from individual agencies to briefings for
the president.
The DNI and the NIC’s
work on Covid-19 origins ‘complied with all of the intelligence community’s
analytic standards, including objectivity,’ the spokesman added.
Mr Bannan, now retired,
wants the evidence backing a lab leak theory to be reassessed.
‘What ended up on the
intelligence community’s cutting-room floor needs to be re-examined,’ he said.
The US review published
in August 2021 concluded thatit would be hard to confirm the origin without
cooperation from China.
China has only cooperated
on a joint report with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2021 which said
the virus most likely moved from bats to humans via another animal.
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.
Scientists
develop record-breaking tech that could slash the cost of solar power: 'We've
significantly advanced the durability'
Jon
Turi Thu, December 26, 2024 at 11:15 AM
GMT
Perovskite
solar cells offer the promise of increased efficiency and lower costs than
traditional silicon photovoltaics, but long-term stability issues have held
them back.
However,
researchers at Northwestern University have now discovered a more resilient
replacement to the ammonium-based coating layer used currently, as
TechXplore reported.
Instead, they found a more robust layer of amidinium is better able to protect
the perovskite from harsh environmental stresses like heat and moisture.
Photovoltaics
made from silicon have long been the most common choice because of its
resilience, but it's also much more expensive.
Dual-layer
solutions that use both perovskite and silicon have shown promising results,
offering higher efficiencies than either on their own. The Department of Energy
has seen examples of perovskite cells reaching 34%,
which is a far cry from the 3% efficiency reports from 2009.
Now, the
team has found that amidinium-coated perovskite is 10 times more resilient to
decomposition than ones using ammonium, per the report.
They
also managed to hit a respectable 26.3% power conversion efficiency, while
retaining "90% or more of that efficiency for 1,100 hours of maximum power
point operations at 85 degrees Celsius," as their research detailed.
"This
work addresses one of the critical barriers to widespread adoption of
perovskite solar cells—stability under real-world conditions,"
Northwestern's Mercouri Kanatzidis, who co-led the study, shared with
TechXplore.
"By
chemically reinforcing the protective layers, we've significantly advanced the
durability of these cells without compromising their exceptional efficiency,
bringing us closer to a practical, low-cost alternative to silicon-based
photovoltaics."
Solar
power has seen huge advances in recent years, with a Solar Energy Industries
Associate report showing
there are 5 million installations across the U.S., and 97% percent of those are
on residential rooftops.
Those
consumers could benefit from lower costs, which can help ease the expansion
of rooftop
solar, as the market is projected to double by 2030 and triple by 2034.
The
increased resilience will also be a boon for the commercial end of the sector,
as solar power becomes a more grid-connected utility, reducing the reliance on
dirtier fuels for power.
"The
primary barrier to the commercialization of perovskite solar cells is their
long-term stability," Ted Sargent, director of the Paula M. Trienens
Institute for Sustainability and Energy and a co-author of the study, concluded
in the report.
"Due
to its multi-decade head start, silicon still has an advantage in some areas,
including stability. We are working to close that gap."
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
"The
best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them
away."
Ronald Reagan, 40th United States President.
