Baltic Dry Index. 987 -36 Brent Crude 80.67
Spot Gold 2705 US 2 Year Yield 4.27 +0.04
US Federal Debt. 36.373 trillion!
For better and for worse, the rapid
pace of the Roaring ‘20s heralded many major societal changes: In these 10
years, women gained the right to vote; Prohibition sparked a black market of
bootleggers and raucous speakeasies; technology innovations including the
telephone and “talking pictures” arrived; cities and consumerism began to
rise; and the arts flourished, from the rise of jazz music to the cultural
explosion of the Harlem Renaissance.
12 Quotes on Life
in the Roaring '20s
This time it’s different, right?
The Donald gets inaugurated on Martin Luther King Day in Washington, Monday.
The same day, The World Economic Forum starts its annual four day meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Hong Kong stocks lead gains in Asia-Pacific ahead
of Donald Trump’s inauguration
Updated Mon, Jan 20 2025 12:28 AM EST
Asia-Pacific markets rose Monday, ahead of
Donald Trump’s inauguration as investors awaited greater clarity on the
policies of the incoming U.S. administration.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 2.41% to
the highest level since Dec. 31, lifted by the consumer cyclicals and
educational services sector, data from LSEG showed. Mainland China’s CSI 300
added 0.86% after China left its benchmark lending rates unchanged Monday.
The People’s Bank of China held the 1-year
loan prime rate at 3.1%, and the 5-year LPR at 3.6%. The offshore yuan
strengthened modestly to 7.3345 against the greenback, while the onshore yuan
traded at 7.323 per U.S. dollar.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed 1.19%,
while the Topix added 1.16%. South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.18% and the
Kosdaq rose 0.48%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.46%.
Malaysia’s exports in December surged 16.9% year on year,
shooting past Reuters’ estimates of 8.8%. This compares to November’s 4.1%
rise. The country’s imports grew 11.9% compared to Reuters’ forecasts of 5.2%.
Hong Kong is set to report its
unemployment figures for the same month later in the day.
Several central banks in Asia will be
convening later this week. Malaysia’s central bank is expected to keep its
policy rate steady at 3% on Wednesday. The Bank of Japan is holding its next
policy meeting from Jan. 23 to Jan 24 — BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda has
signaled intentions to hike rates. Singapore’s Monetary Authority of
Singapore will be meeting on Friday.
The three major averages posted their
first weekly gain of the new year on Friday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
334.70 points, or 0.78%, to end at 43,487.83. The S&P 500 gained 1% to
5,996.66, and the Nasdaq
Composite advanced 1.51% to 19,630.20.
President-elect Trump and Chinese
President Xi Jinping spoke
on the phone Friday about trade, Tiktok, fentanyl and more, talks
which Trump described as “very good.”
U.S. markets will be closed on Monday.
Asia markets live: China LPR, Malaysia trade, Hong Kong unemployment
CNBC Daily Open: Markets are getting ready for
Trump 2.0
Published Sun, Jan 19 2025 7:41 PM EST
What you need to know today
Clock restarted for TikTok
TikTok
said in a statement on X that it’s restoring
service in the U.S. after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump wrote on
his social media app Truth Social he would “issue an executive order on
Monday” to delay a
ban on TikTok. On Saturday, Perplexity AI submitted a bid to TikTok’s
parent company ByteDance to create
a new merged entity combining Perplexity, TikTok U.S. and new capital
partners, CNBC learned.
First winning week for U.S. stocks in 2025
Markets
in the U.S. rose
on Friday to end the week higher for the first time in 2025. The
pan-European Stoxx 600 index climbed
0.69%. The U.K.’s FTSE
100 rose 1.35% to close at a record high. The index was lifted by
mining stocks, which advanced on the news that Glencore reportedly considered a merger with Rio Tinto although talks
are no longer active.
TSMC confident of continued funding under
Trump
Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Co expects that it’ll continue to receive the $6.6
billion it was promised under the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act even after Trump takes office,
TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang told
CNBC in an exclusive interview. On the campaign trail, Trump criticized
the CHIPS Act and accused Taiwan of stealing the chip business from
U.S.
Hamas and Israel exchange hostages and
prisoners
The ceasefire
between Israel and Hamas took effect on Sunday. Hamas released three
women to Israel, its first batch of hostages, in exchange for Palestinians
prisoners to be set free by Israel. The process will continue over the next
weeks, during which, Hamas will release 33 of the 98 Israeli and foreign
hostages as Israel returns Palestinian prisoners.
[PRO] Trump to determine direction
of markets
The
inauguration of Trump will happen later Monday. Investors will want to keep an
eye on what
executive orders Trump will sign beginning from the first day of his
presidency, especially as they relate to tariffs and corporate policies. Those
orders could chart the direction of stocks for much longer than just the near
term.
The bottom line
The S&P 500 surged above the
shiny 6,000 level following Trump’s election victory but has largely erased all
its gains and reverted to its pre-election level in the past few weeks. As
Trump prepares to enter the White House, however, it seems like investors are
gearing up to play the market based on his agenda again.
Stocks finally ended the week on a
positive note, their first weekly gain for the year. For the week, the S&P 500 advanced 2.9% and
the Dow Jones Industrial
Average jumped 3.7%, their best weekly performance since the week of
the U.S. presidential election in November. The Nasdaq Composite added 2.5%,
its best week since early December.
Banks largely contributed to the bump in
the indexes as better-than-expected earnings reports from big banks lifted
their shares higher. Shares of Goldman
Sachs popped around 12% on the week and JPMorgan Chase climbed 8% in
the same period. Overall, the financial sector rallied more than 6% last week,
outperforming the S&P.
Trump’s term as president might provide
more forward momentum for bank stocks. Rising business and consumer confidence,
an extension of tax cuts, and deregulation of the finance industry are
potential drivers of the sector, according to Chris Senyek, chief investment
strategist at Wolfe Research.
“We still see Financials as the biggest
sectoral winner under the Trump administration,” Senyek wrote in a note on
Friday.
That said, apart from anticipation of
Trump sitting in the Oval Office, muted back-to-back inflation readings for
December also buoyed animal spirits in the markets: All sectors of the market
ended the week in the green.
The better-than-expected economic data
earlier this week has helped “revive the goldilocks narrative for equities, and
likely prompted some re-risking,” Barclays strategist
Emmanuel Cau wrote in a Friday note.
Typically, any change involves increased
risks. That’s true with Trump 2.0 — but as the number “two” suggests, a change
we’ve seen before might mitigate a tiny bit of that uncertainty.
CNBC Daily Open: Markets are getting ready for Trump 2.0
In other news.
Commerzbank explores thousands of job cuts after
approach from UniCredit, FT reports
Published Sun, Jan 19 2025 4:11 AM EST
Commerzbank is exploring cutting thousands
of jobs as it seeks to fend off an unwanted approach from Italy’s UniCredit,
the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the
matter.
The plans that are not yet finalised, were
expected to be unveiled to the workers’ council over the coming weeks, the
report added.
Commerzbank did not immediately respond to
a Reuters request for comment outside regular business hours.
Commerzbank’s supervisory board chairman
Jens Weidmann said there is little chance for an amicable merger with UniCredit
after the Italian bank’s surprise purchase of a large stake in the German
lender, newspaper Handelsblatt reported earlier this week.
UniCredit now controls around 28% of the
shares in Commerzbank, in which the lender holds about 9.5% directly, and it
has also secured access to a total of 18.5% through financial instruments.
Commerzbank
explores thousands of job cuts after approach from UniCredit, FT reports
Investor who predicted dot-com crash issues
chilling three-word warning as another market storm brews
By LAUREN
ACTON-TAYLOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Published: 03:06, 17 January
2025 | Updated: 07:52, 17 January 2025
A billionaire investor who predicted the
dot-com crash 25 years ago warned that he is 'on bubble watch' as warning signs
appear to have cropped up in the market.
Howard Marks, one of the most respected
value investors, pointed
out cautionary signs in the stock market that could mean poor returns
over the long term or a large decline nearer term.
'It shouldn't come as a surprise that the
return on an investment is significantly a function of the price paid for it.
For that reason, investors clearly shouldn't be indifferent to today's market
valuation,' Marks wrote
in his latest memo.
He said that, although he doesn't believe
a bubble poses an immediate threat, there are signs he's noticing that may
speed up the process.
These include the market optimism since
late 2022, Artificial
Intelligence enthusiasm,
a reliance on tech giants, and index investing bias.
Marks said that the above average
valuation on the S&P 500, and the fact that its stocks in most industrial
groups sell at higher multiples than stocks in those industries in the rest of
the world, was one of the 'cautionary signs' of a bubble.
He also mentioned Bitcoin, and said:
'Regardless of its merit, that fact that its price rose 465% in the last two
years doesn't suggest an overabundance of caution.'
'A bubble not only reflects a rapid rise
in stock prices, but it is a temporary mania characterized by -or, perhaps
better, resulting from - the following: highly irrational exuberance, outright
adoration of the subject companies or assets and a belief that they can't miss,
massive fear of being left behind if one fails to participate, and a resulting
conviction that, for these stocks, "there's no price too high",'
Marks wrote.
Looking at examples of the 2000 bubble, he
highlighted the twenty companies that were the most heavily represented in the
index.
At the beginning of 2024, only six of them
were still in the top twenty. Microsoft Inc, one of today's top leading
companies, was in the top twenty 25 years ago.
'In bubbles, investors treat the leading
companies - and pay for their stocks - as though the firms are sure to remain
leaders for decades,' he said.
Marks notably took trouble with the
enthusiasm behind AI, which he believed may have been extended to other
high-tech areas.
Yet, he also offered counterarguments to
his points stating that the p/e ratio on the S&P 500 is high 'but not
insane.' The top performing seven companies, dubbed the 'Magnificent Seven' are
great companies who may have warranted high p/e ratios.
Marks added that he hadn't heard people
saying, 'there's no price too high', which he considered a sure sign of a
bubble, and he said that, while high-priced, the markets don't appear to be
extreme.
He concluded: 'I'm not an equity investor,
and I'm certainly no expert on technology. Thus, I can't speak authoritatively
about whether we're in a bubble. I just want to lay out the facts as I see them
and suggest how you might think about them... just as I did 25 years ago.'
Burning Teslas add to toxic pollution delaying
L.A. return
The L.A. wildfires have taken at least 27
lives and destroyed thousands of homes
Eliyahu Kamisher, Laura Curtis and Kara
Carlson
Published Jan 16,
2025 • Last updated Jan 17. 2025
As the smoke clears from devastating Los Angeles
wildfires,
efforts to clean up the affected areas are being complicated by burnt-out electric
and hybrid vehicles and
home-battery storage systems.
Lithium batteries from Tesla Inc., along with those
from other carmakers, have added to the mix of toxic materials requiring
specialized removal in the wake of the fires. They will delay the fire victims’
return to their properties.
“A lot of the cars in the evacuation area
were lithium batteries,” said Jacqui Irwin, a state assembly member
representing the Pacific Palisades, one of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by
the fires. “We’ve heard from firefighters that those lithium batteries burned
fires near homes – like those with power walls – for much longer.”
The L.A. wildfires, which began Jan. 7,
have taken at least 27 lives and destroyed thousands of homes. The Federal
Emergency Management Agency has already allocated US$100 million to the cleanup
efforts.
There were over 431,000 Teslas in
operation in the Los Angeles area as of October 2024, according to data from
S&P Global Mobility. Based on new registrations, their market share locally
was three times that of the rest of the nation. The Tesla Model Y was the
biggest-selling vehicle in the state through September, according to the
California New Car Dealers Association.
Fires in lithium batteries can require
large amounts of water to put out. Automakers publish guides for first
responders detailing how to respond.
In some Palisades and Eaton fire areas,
residents who had been under evacuation orders were allowed to return to their
homes Thursday. But others whose homes were destroyed or are in areas of heavy
fire damage will have to wait until utilities and structures are inspected and
determined to be safe before they’re allowed to look for personal items or
inspect damage themselves.
At a briefing Wednesday, county Deputy
Public Works Director Cid Tesoro urged residents allowed into areas burned by
the Eaton fire not to try to clean up debris, which can contain sharp objects
and toxic materials, including asbestos, lead, mercury and other chemicals.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is also
aware of the complications. In an executive order this week, he said the state
is “still adapting to newer technologies” like lithium-ion batteries, which can
pose distinct risks when exposed to high heat from fires. Two years ago, Newsom
signed an executive order requiring all vehicles sold in the state be
zero-emission by 2035.
San Diego firefighter Robert Rezende, a
specialist in lithium-battery hazards who’ll be assisting in the cleanup
effort, said protocols developed during the 2023 fires in Maui will be used in
Los Angeles. But the scale of this event, and the hazards, are magnitudes
larger.
More
Burning Teslas add to toxic pollution delaying L.A. return | Financial Post
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.
Billionaire
wealth surges to ‘unimaginable’ levels in 2024 as Oxfam predicts emergence of
five trillionaires within a decade
Published
Sun, Jan 19 2025 7:02 PM EST
Billionaire
wealth surged in 2024, as the world’s richest people increasingly benefited
from inheritance and powerful connections, according to Oxfam’s latest annual
inequality report.
The
combined wealth of the world’s most wealthy rose from $13 trillion to $15
trillion in just 12 months, the global charity said Sunday. It marks the second
largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since Oxfam records started.
Meanwhile,
the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, the
charity said, citing World Bank Data. The richest 1% of people own nearly 45%
of all wealth, while 44% of humanity are living below the World Bank poverty
line of $6.85 per day, the data showed.
As
the wealth of the world’s richest people accelerates at a faster pace than
previously predicted, Oxfam now expects to see at least five trillionaires
within a decade.
“The
capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once
considered unimaginable,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh
Behar.
More
Oxfam
inequality report: Billionaire wealth surges by $2 trillion
World
Economic Forum President Borge Brende on Planning for a ‘Geopolitical Recession’
January
16, 2025 7:14 AM EST
Do
you think 2025 will be politically more or less stable than 2024?
We’re
planning our annual meeting against the most complex geopolitical backdrop in
decades. I think that will continue into 2025. In a way, we are in a
geopolitical recession. Fortunately, it hasn’t impacted the global economy as
badly as it could have. We’re still
expecting more than 3% growth. Provided there are no further escalations of
conflicts and new crises, we have to expect that 2025 will be, similarly to
2024, a challenging geopolitical year.
What
does “geopolitical
recession” mean?
It
means that we are in a polarized, fragmented world where we see less
cooperation than in the past, and more competition. There is more focus on
national interest. That is a challenge, as many of the biggest problems we face
need global solutions.
This
will be a critical year for the future of Europe. Where do you see the
opportunities for the E.U.?
I
think we are at a 1918, 1945, 1989 [type of] inflection point, in many ways,
because we are between orders. We had one order. There is a new order on its
way, but we don’t know exactly where it is. There is a war going on in Europe,
with Ukraine. A destabilized Syria could have huge impact on Europe.
It will be critical that we don’t see Syria ending up in sectarian wars again,
but that there can be an agreement on an inclusive way of governing the
country, moving forward. Europe is also at an inflection point economically and
will need to decide on how to increase its competitiveness. It is not black and
white. Spain is now the fastest-growing of
the OECD economies.
Greece is one of the fastest-growing European economies too. And the euro is
still the second most important currency in the world. But the two biggest
continental powers have real challenges. Germany, more on the economy side, and
France, more on the political side.
What
does President Donald Trump’s election tell you about what that future order
will look like?
I
think President Trump was elected based on immigration and inflation. There
will be more focus on U.S. national interests. The new world order is not
defined yet, but it will be, in my view, a more multi-polar order, because
there are more nations in the mix, but the U.S. is still extremely important.
In one way, we have a unipolar order when it comes to defense—45% of global
military capabilities are with the U.S. Trump will also be important in
defining this new world order. Will this be multi-polarity with
multilateralism? Or will it be multi-polarity with a clearly shrinking role for
multilateralism? And economically, the U.S. is, together with China and the
E.U., still extremely important.
What
do you hope people take away from Davos?
That
we have tried to identify areas where there is enough self-interest to
collaborate, like cybercrime or being better prepared for future pandemics. AI at its best
can be an equalizer, but it can also be winner-takes-all. We need to start a
discussion of at least some basic traffic rules. Climate change: maybe we can
also get some agreements. Regardless of political views on this, there is a
snowball effect—$2 trillion is being invested annually in
renewables. And Davos is a very good place to create those snowball effects.
We’d like a lot of snowballs rolling down the hills.
WEF President on Planning for a ‘Geopolitical Recession' | TIME
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
The mystery of why
Covid-19 seems to be becoming milder
14th January 2025
Covid-19
is now ubiquitous – but hospitalisations seem to be on a downward trajectory.
No one knows why.
When virologists took
their first peek at XEC, the Covid-19 variant which started to
become dominant in the autumn of 2024, the early signs were ominous.
The latest descendant of
the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, XEC had arisen
through recombination, a process
where two other variants had forged their genetic material together. Tests
seemed to indicate that this would easily allow it to evade the immune
protection offered by past infections or the latest iterations of the Covid-19
vaccines, based on the older JN.1 and KP.2 variants.
"The spike protein
is quite different from previous variants, so it was quite easy to assume that
XEC has the potential to evade immunity induced by JN.1 infection," says
Kei Sato, a virology professor at the University of Tokyo, who carried out one
of the first
studies of XEC, published
in December 2024.
In the US, infectious
disease specialists braced themselves for an immediate surge in
hospitalisations in the wake of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. But it didn't
happen. Surveillance
testing carried out by
measuring Covid in wastewater samples across major cities indicated that XEC
was definitely infecting people. However, the numbers of people actually ending
up in hospital was considerably less than previous winters. According to CDC data, the rate of hospitalisations at the start of Dec
2023 was 6.1 per 100,000 people. During the equivalent week in December 2024,
that had fallen to two per 100,000 people.
What was going on?
"Right now, we're
seeing pretty low levels of people who are critically ill, even though there's
an astronomical amount of Covid in wastewater," says Peter Chin-Hong, a
professor in the Health Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of
California, San Francisco. "It just shows that regardless of how scary a
variant might look in the lab, the environment in which it lands is much more
inhospitable."
Some indications suggest
that Covid in 2025 is a milder disease. The once common symptoms of loss of
taste and smell are becoming
less common. And though some people
are being hospitalised and dying, Chin-Hong says the vast
majority of people will
either be asymptomatic or experience a cold so mild that some might well
mistake it for a seasonal allergy, such as a pollen complaint. While
immunocompromised individuals are still particularly vulnerable, he believes
that the major risk factor for more severe Covid is now simply being over the
age of 75.
Despite this, experts
have advised that all vulnerable
groups should get the
latest Covid-19 vaccine, which can provide vital protection against serious
illness, hospitalisation and death. And while XEC seems to cause less severe
disease, there's no guarantee that more severe variants won't emerge in the
future. This means the threat posed by Covid-19 is far from over and the virus
should not be underestimated. Experts expect it to continue being a significant
and persistent
threat to public health. The risk
of developing Long Covid has not gone away either. For some people, the
condition can last years.
More
The mystery of why Covid-19 seems to be becoming milder - BBC Future
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
observe and control ultrafast surface waves on graphene
January
17, 2025
Imagine
standing by a lake and throwing a stone into the water. Waves spread out in
circular patterns and can reflect at obstacles and boundaries. Researchers at
the University of Regensburg, in collaboration with colleagues from Milan and
Pisa, have recreated this everyday phenomenon in a fascinating miniature world:
They observed the propagation of waves—not on water but in an "electron
sea"—using one of the fastest slow-motion cameras on the nanoscale. The
study is published in Nano
Letters.
Such
electron seas are typically found on the surfaces of metals or materials with
metallic properties. In this case, the material was graphene—a so-called
two-dimensional material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms. Instead of
a stone, the scientists used laser pulses, focusing them on a sharp metallic
tip positioned just above the material's surface.
"The
light sets the electrons in the tip in motion," explains Simon Anglhuber
from the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics of the UR. The resulting
oscillations exert a force on the electrons in graphene.
This
generates a circular electron density wave that propagates through the graphene
beneath the tip. The wave can reflect off the edges of the sample and travel
back to the tip. These reflections can then be measured optically by reversing
the previous process and converting the electron wave back into light. By
precisely moving the tip over the sample, the researchers could record a film
showing the wave's oscillation at various locations over time.
High-precision
analysis of wave motion
The
new technique allows for the direct observation of electron wave propagation in
both space and time. This was achieved with a resolution on the nanometer
scale—relevant for modern semiconductor technologies—and a temporal resolution
in the femtosecond range. In terms of temporal resolution, the method can be
compared to an ultra-fast slow-motion camera with a frame rate of over 10
trillion frames per second.
The
result is a highly precise analysis of wave motion, including its speed,
damping, and frequency, without requiring complex computational
transformations. Notably, the researchers observed a distinction between the
propagation of the wave's center of mass and the propagation of individual wave
peaks and troughs. By precisely measuring these two speeds, it is possible to
infer the properties of the material through which the waves are propagating.
In
their experiments, the researchers compared graphene samples produced by
different methods and found significant differences in wave propagation, which
were linked to variations in sample quality. These findings are expected to
contribute to the development of better samples for use in optoelectronic
devices, such as highly sensitive light sensors.
Remarkably,
the method also works for heavily damped electron waves in the so-called
terahertz and mid-infrared range—a spectral region between our 5G network and
visible light that has been difficult to access so far.
Ultrafast
control of surface waves
As a
final step, the researchers used another laser pulse to deliberately perturb
the electron sea in the graphene sample while the electron wave was
propagating. By including the second laser pulse, they were able to selectively
weaken the wave. This not only allows for observation of the waves and insights
into the material in its static form but also enables control and ultrafast
alteration of material properties.
This
direct control of electron density waves could be a key step toward developing
new electronic components with clock speeds more than a thousand times faster
than current electronics.
Scientists observe
and control ultrafast surface waves on graphene
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
Every
day I wake up determined to deliver a better life for the people all across
America that have been ignored, neglected and abandoned.
Donald
Trump.
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