Baltic
Dry Index. 981 +40
Brent Crude 74.35
Spot Gold 2936 US 2 Year Yield 4.19 -0.09
US Federal Debt. 36.518 trillion!
Gentlemen, I am ready for the questions to my answers.
Charles de Gaulle.
A rocky week ahead for stocks on both side of the Atlantic?
How will the EU stock markets react to the outcome of the German elections?
In US stock casinos, will it be Rebound Monday or Black Monday?
Below, not much guidance so far from Asia.
Asia-Pacific markets mostly fall as U.S. data
stokes fears of sticky inflation and slower growth
Updated Mon, Feb 24 2025 11:03 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell Monday,
breaking ranks with Wall Street which logged its worst session of the year last
Friday as U.S. economic data pointed to a slowing economy and sticky inflation.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down
0.63%, after notching a nearly three-year high in its previous session.
Mainland China’s CSI300 index fell 0.11%
in choppy trading.
In South Korea, the Kospi fell 0.65%, while the
small-cap Kosdaq was down 0.71%.
Indian stocks began the day in negative
territory, with the Nifty 50 down
0.76%, while the BSE Sensex index fell 0.55%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.12%
in choppy trading in its last hour of trade.
Japanese markets are closed for a public
holiday.
Singapore is slated to release its
inflation numbers for January later in the day. A Reuters’ poll forecasts the
city-state’s consumer price index reading at 2.15% year on year, higher than
December’s 1.60%.
Meanwhile, the poll estimates that core
inflation rate, which strips out accommodation and private transport costs,
will expand 1.5% year on year, lower than the 1.8% rise in the month before.
In U.S., the three major averages closed
lower on Friday, as fresh data raised investors’ concerns on the economy.
Losses also intensified amid fears of further policy moves by U.S. President
Donald Trump, who has already proposed a slew of tariffs and other changes
within a month of taking office.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost
748.63 points, or 1.69%, to close at 43,428.02. Friday’s decline, its worst
this year, brought its two-day losses to roughly 1,200 points. The S&P 500 slid 1.71% to end
at 6,013.13, marking a second negative session after the index closed at a
record on Wednesday. The Nasdaq
Composite dropped 2.2%, settling at 19,524.01.
Asia
markets live update: Asia stocks mostly fall
Stock futures rise early Monday morning after
losing week on Wall Street: Live updates
Updated Mon, Feb 24 2025 12:44 AM EST
Stock market futures moved higher early
Monday as Wall Street looked to bounce back from a slide late last week.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average added
220 points, or 0.51%. S&P
500 futures added 0.54%, while Nasdaq 100 futures were up
0.53%.
The move follows the stock market’s fall
on Thursday and Friday to end the week in the red. The Dow finished down 2.51% for
its worst weekly performance since October. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slipped
1.66% and 2.51%, respectively, for the week.
The week ahead includes key readings on
corporate earnings and the economy. Earnings reports from Home Depot and Lowe’s
on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, will give investors a better sense of
how U.S. consumers are faring. Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday evening
could be even more impactful, as the artificial intelligence-linked chipmaker
is still one of the biggest stocks by market cap.
This will be Nvidia’s first earnings
report since the emergence of the DeepSeek large language model from China that
cast doubt on the sustainability of the AI trade.
“It’s definitely one of the top things
that the markets will be looking at [this] week. They really want to see
whether the DeepSeek news ... is solid in terms of disrupting these types of
companies’ margins in the future,” said Lale Akoner, global market analyst at
eToro.
Then Friday will deliver the January
reading of the personal consumption expenditures index, which is the Federal
Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation.
The slide for stocks last week came amid
renewed concerns about economic growth in the U.S. However, the market indexes
are all still within 4% of their record highs.
Stock market today: Live updates
In other news.
Germany’s conservatives win election as far-right
AfD leaps to second place, exit polls show
Published Sun, Feb 23 2025 12:14 PM EST
BERLIN — The Christian Democratic Union
and the allied Christian Social Union secured the largest share of votes in the
German federal election on Sunday, according to exit polls from German
broadcaster ZDF.
This puts the party’s lead candidate
Friedrich Merz in prime position to take over from Olaf Scholz as chancellor of
Europe’s largest economy.
The CDU-CSU won 28.5% of votes, with the
far-right AfD in second place with 20% and Scholz’s Social Democratic Party
coming in third with 16.5%, according to ZDF exit polls data.
“We have won it because the CDU and CSU
worked well together and we prepared very very well for this election and also
for taking over governing responsibility,” Merz said, according to a CNBC
translation, extending thanks to CSU chief Markus Söder and other supporters.
“It was a great campaign.”
He acknowledged that the challenges would
not be easy to tackle, noting it was now time for political groups to hold
talks and set up a new government as soon as possible.
“It is a bitter election result for the
Social Democratic Party. It is also an election defeat, [and] I think that
needs to be said once clearly, from the start, given a result like this,”
Scholz said at the party’s headquarters, as he thanked campaigners and
supporters. He said he took responsibility during the previous federal vote,
when the SPD achieved a better performance and that “this time the election
result is bad and therefore I also have responsibility for this election
result.”
Scholz also congratulated Merz and the
CDU-CSU on their own voting outcome.
The CDU and
its regional sister party the Christian Social Union were topping the polls in
the lead-up to the election, with support dipping slightly just ahead of the
vote. The far-right AfD was polling in second place, followed by the SPD.
This marked a drop in support for the SPD,
which took the top spot during the 2021 election, followed by the CDU/CSU. The AfD
clinched fourth place at the time.
Germans cast two votes on Sunday, one to
directly elect a member of parliament to represent their constituency and one
for a party list. The second vote determined the proportional make-up of the
German Parliament, the Bundestag, with parties sending their candidates to
Berlin to ensure representation.
---- A key focus around the election has been
how smaller parties fare, which could impact both coalition building and the
ability of the incoming government to reform constitutional rules, for example
around spending and debt. They would need a two-thirds majority to do so.
Observers were also closely watching
the performance of
the far-right AfD amid a broader rightward political shift across the Western
world.
The election comes at a tumultuous time
for Germany, both politically and economically.
The Sunday vote is only the fourth early
election in the country’s history and took place after the former ruling
coalition made up of the SPD, the Green party and the Free Democratic Party
collapsed late last year, in another rarity for local politics. Deeply rooted
long-term disagreements among about economic, fiscal and budget policies had
led to the union’s effective
break-up.
Such policies will also be top of the
agenda when it comes to the post-election coalition building process and then
governance, especially due to the sluggish
German economy, which contracted in both 2023 and 2024. Further concerns
lie ahead, including a strong focus on exports, a housebuilding crisis and
difficulties in the key auto sector.
The new ruling coalition will also need to
contend with a fierce domestic debate about migration, the rising popularity of
the far right, and broader tensions between Europe and the U.S. as President
Donald Trump advances his trade and Ukraine war policies in his second term.
German
2025 federal election results
Singapore inflation climbs at the slowest rate
since February 2021
Published Mon, Feb 24 2025 12:15 AM EST
Singapore’s inflation climbed by its
lowest rate since February 2021, increasing 1.2% year on year in
January, down from a revised 1.5% in December.
This is the first key piece of economic
data since Singapore unveiled its 2025 budget on Feb. 18, which promised more
support for households and businesses to combat cost of living
pressures.
During the budget speech, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong
said, “While inflation is expected to ease further this year, prices remain
high. Singaporeans are still adjusting to these new price realities.”
The headline inflation figure is a wide
miss from the 2.15% rise expected by economists polled by Reuters.
Core inflation in the country — which, strips out prices of private transport
and accommodation — rose by 0.8% year on year, down from December’s
1.8% rise and below the 1.5% growth expected.
The figure comes as Singapore in
January loosened
its monetary policy for the first time since 2020, citing a faster
than expected decline in inflation and potential for a growth slowdown.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore said
inflation will remain below 2% this year, “reflecting the return to low and
stable underlying price pressures in the economy.”
More
Singapore inflation climbs at the slowest rate since February 2021
Finally, bad EV battery news. Is there ever any good EV battery news?
Fire reignites at Moss Landing lithium battery storage facility; residents told to close windows
Updated on: February 19, 2025 / 6:50 PM
PST
Monterey County residents near Moss
Landing were told late Tuesday to close their windows and doors overnight after
a fire broke out at the Vistra Energy lithium-ion battery storage facility near
the Moss Landing Harbor.
The fire was emitting "light
smoke" according to a press release from county spokesperson Maia Carroll
that said first responders and the North County Fire Protection District were
in a unified command at the facility in
a message sent at 10:03 p.m.
The same facility, off state Highway 1 and
Dolan Road, was
the site of a massive fire in January, prompting evacuations because of
unknown hazards posed by the smoke.
An earlier message sent via the county's
alert system at 8:37 p.m. said the fire Tuesday had been detected at 6:30 p.m.,
coming from the burned-out area from the previous fire on Jan. 16. The message
said the fire did not appear to be burning undamaged batteries still at the
site that had not burned during that fire.
The Jan. 16 fire grew
out of control when
the facility's internal fire suppression system failed.
There are two separate facilities at the
site, which was once a former Pacific Gas & Electric power plant. One is
owned by Texas-based Vistra Energy, while the other is owned by PG&E.
The county said the unified command was
monitoring the situation for air particulate matter and metals and that updates
would be forthcoming.
Earlier this month, Moss Landing
residents filed
a lawsuit against both Vistra and PG&E over the January fire, The suit accuses
Vistra of failing to take safety measures and complying with updated safety
standards while claiming PG&E is responsible for the design of the
facility.
BMW pauses £600m upgrade to Oxford Mini plant as
electric car demand falls
22 February 2025
BMW Group has paused a £600m investment
into a Mini car assembly plant on the outskirts of Oxford, amid a declining
demand for electric vehicles.
In 2023, the German carmaker, which has
owned Mini since 2000, announced
the investment to upgrade its Cowley plant for electric production of
the Mini. It was supported by government-backed investment, and was forecast to
secure 4,000 jobs in electric vehicle production.
BMW will now review the plans to
manufacture battery-powered Minis at its Cowley site. “Given the multiple
uncertainties facing the automotive industry, the BMW Group is currently
reviewing the timing for reintroducing battery-electric Mini production in
Oxford,” the company confirmed in a statement.
The carmaker said Plant Oxford was “at the
heart of Mini production, manufacturing and exporting a range of models which
are sought after in the UK and around the world”.
It continued: “Much of the investment is
progressing, with construction well underway to make the plant future-ready.
One of the projects is a brand-new state-of-the-art logistics facility.”
The company has informed the UK government
of its decision to review the timeline, and has confirmed it will not take the
previously announced grant. “We remain in close dialogue about our future
plans,” the statement said.
Oxford Plant will continue to produce
Minis with internal combustion engines in the meantime. The site, which employs
4,500 people and dates back more than a century, is still due to become an
electric-only plant by 2030. The halting of the investment has called its
future into question, and means BMW will have to pay import duties for longer
than expected.
More
BMW pauses £600m upgrade to Oxford Mini plant as electric car demand falls
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.
Economists
fear Trump’s mass layoffs will trigger 'deep, deep recession' — and soon
22
February 2025
The
total number of federal government workers who will lose their jobs because
of mass
layoffs being
pushed by the second Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE) remains to be seen. But according to reporting
from the Washington
Post and Newsweek, the number could
be as high as 200,000.
In
an article
published on February 22, Salon's Daria Solovieva examines the layoffs'
possible economic impact. And she warns that according to some economists, the
layoffs could trigger a major recession.
"A
month into President Donald Trump's second term," Solovieva
reports,
"the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which is not a
government agency, but an outside advisory group — has been on a rampage in
what is shaping up to be the biggest purge of the federal government in modern
American history…. While most Americans support the idea of making the
government run more efficiently, the way these layoffs are carried out is
raising concerns about the immediate and long-term impact on the U.S.
economy."
One
of the economists who is sounding the alarm is Jesse Rothstein, who teaches at
the University of California, Berkeley.
In
a thread
posted on Bluesky on
February 18, Rothstein wrote, "It seems almost unavoidable at this point
that we are headed for a deep, deep recession. Just based on 200K+ federal
firings & pullback of contracts, the March employment report (to be
released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever
outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020…. Add on to that enormous private market
uncertainty - how could you hire in these conditions? - and this is going to be
very, very bad."
More
Economists fear
Trump’s mass layoffs will trigger 'deep, deep recession' — and soon
US consumer sentiment plunges over tariff and inflation fears
Updated
10:21 AM EST, Fri February 21, 2025
WashingtonCNN —
Inflation
is picking up again and President Donald Trump said this week it’s all his
predecessor’s fault.
But no matter who Trump blames for inflation, America’s economic mood is now
souring — and Trump is getting the heat for it.
The
University of Michigan’s latest survey, released Friday, showed that US
consumer sentiment declined in February for the second consecutive month,
according to a final reading, down by a steep 10% from January. That was double
the decline initially reported earlier this month.
It’s
a stunning about-face after American consumers and businesses grew hopeful
(briefly) about the economy’s future following Trump’s election in November.
The latest decline in consumer sentiment was driven by worries over Trump’s
tariffs potentially jacking up prices.
A
new CNN poll released Thursday similarly showed pessimism on the
rise because
of prices: Nearly two thirds of US adults nationwide, 62%, said they feel
Trump’s isn’t doing enough to address inflation. The Michigan survey showed
that Americans are now fearful of higher inflation on the horizon.
On
the campaign trail, Trump promised to “bring down prices, starting on Day One.”
Clearly, that didn’t happen. In January, consumer prices climbed at the fastest
monthly pace since August 2023, increasing 0.5% from December.
Joanne
Hsu, the Michigan survey’s director, said in a release that the broad decline
was “in large part due to fears that tariff-induced price increases are
imminent.”
But
changes in sentiment are beginning to diverge based on political affiliation.
“While
sentiment fell for both Democrats and Independents, it was unchanged for
Republicans, reflecting continued disagreements on the consequences of new
economic policies,” she said.
Inflation
jitters, the future and the Fed
The
Trump administration’s aggressive approach to tariffs is a key reason why
attitudes about the economy are souring, according to various consumer surveys
and polls.
So
far, the administration has implemented 10% across-the-board tariffs on all
Chinese goods and announced 25% tariffs on all steel and
aluminum imports,
with no exceptions. It is also studying how best to apply “reciprocal
tariffs” on
America’s trading partners, which could come in early April. Trump is also
keeping 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on the table, as soon as next month, a
move that economists say would likely stoke inflation.
“The
economy faces heightened uncertainty,” Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic
said in an essay published Thursday. “A trade policy
uncertainty index by
a group of Federal Reserve economists has surged past its historic peak.”
All
the drama around tariffs has affected Americans’ perception of prices:
Expectations for inflation in the year ahead surged this month to 4.3%,
according to the Michigan survey, up a full percentage point from January to
the highest level since November 2023. On a call with reporters Thursday,
Bostic said “we’re going to pay attention to all” measures of inflation
expectations.
More
US consumer
sentiment plunges over tariff and inflation fears | CNN Business
Home
sales drop sharply as prices hit an all-time high for January
Published
Fri, Feb 21 2025 10:00 AM EST Updated Fri, Feb 21 2025 11:35 AM EST
The
U.S. housing market continues to weaken, as potential buyers face stubbornly
high mortgage rates, elevated prices and limited supply of listings.
Sales
of previously owned homes fell 4.9% in January from the prior month to 4.08
million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the
National Association of Realtors. Analysts were expecting a 2.6% decline.
Sales
were 2% higher than January 2024, but are still running at a roughly 15-year
low.
This
read is based on closings, so contracts likely signed in November and December
when mortgage rates came down from over 7% to the 6% range.
“Mortgage
rates have refused to budge for several months despite multiple rounds of
short-term interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve,” said Lawrence Yun, chief
economist for the NAR. “When combined with elevated home prices, housing
affordability remains a major challenge.”
There
were 1.18 million homes for sale at the end of January, an increase of 3.5%
from December and 17% from January 2024. Although inventory is gaining, it is
still at a 3.5-month supply at the current sales pace. A six-month supply is
considered balanced between buyer and seller.
The
average home for sale last month spent 41 days on the market. That is the
longest since January 2020, pre-Covid.
Tight
supply continues to pressure prices. The median price of a home sold in January
was $396,900, up 4.8% from the year before and the highest price ever for the
month of January. All four regions tracked by NAR saw price gains. About 15% of
homes sold above list price, virtually unchanged from 16% in both the pervious
month and the year-earlier period.
More
Home sales drop
sharply in January as prices hit high
Walmart
issues ominous warning about US economy in 2025... sending Wall Street into a
spin
February
21, 2025
Walmart — America's
biggest retailer and a key economic bellwether — just dropped some concerning
signals about 2025, and Wall Street isn't happy.
Despite
solid sales growth to close out 2024, the retail giant warned profits will
likely shrink in 2025 — something not seen since the pandemic
Bosses
pointed to fears that inflation-weary will cut back spending, while tariffs
from President Donald Trump will drive up costs.
The
gloomy forecast triggered a broad stock selloff that pulled all three
major US stock indexes into negative territory by the time markets closed at
4pm in New York.
The
blue-chip Dow suffered the steepest loss, shedding 1 percent. The S&P 500
snapped its two-day string of record closing highs. Walmart itself was down 6.5
percent.
Gold
prices, often seen as a safe-haven asset, surged to a record high amid growing
economic uncertainty.
'With
the consumer driving 70 percent of the U.S. economy, Walmart's weak guidance
gave rise to some nervousness [about] potential consumer spending going
forward,' said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth.
Walmart
expects sales growth of three to four percent in the year ahead. That pales in
comparison to last year's 9.7 percent growth. Full-year profits are also
expected to fall.
More
Walmart issues ominous warning about US economy in 2025... sending Wall Street into a spin
Covid-19
Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Scientists find new virus that could infect humans in same way as
COVID-19
22 February 2025
A newly discovered bat coronavirus could at some
point spread to humans like COVID-19, Chinese researchers have found.
The virus, HKU5-CoV-2, does not enter human cells
as readily as SARS-CoV-2, which
causes COVID-19, the scientists reported in the journal Cell.
However, they found that the bat virus uses the
same cell-surface protein, ACE2, as SARS-CoV-2 to help it enter human cells.
In lab experiments, HKU5-CoV-2 infected human cells
with high ACE2 levels in test tubes and in models of human intestines and
airways.
In further experiments, the researchers identified
antibodies and antiviral drugs that are able to target the bat virus.
Asked about concerns raised by the report of
another pandemic resulting from this new virus, Dr Michael Osterholm, an
infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, called the reaction
to the study "overblown".
He said there is a lot of immunity in the
population to similar COVID-19 and SARS viruses compared with 2019.
The study itself noted that the virus has
significantly less binding affinity than SARS-CoV-2.
Scientists
find new virus that could infect humans in same way as COVID-19
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.
After Google on Friday, Microsoft
Monday.
Microsoft’s New Majorana 1 Processor Could
Transform Quantum Computing
The
processor uses qubits that can be measured without error and are resistant to
outside interference, which the company says marks a “transformative leap
toward practical quantum computing.”
Feb 22, 2025 8:00 AM
Researchers at Microsoft have announced the
creation of the first “topological qubits” in a device that stores information
in an exotic state of matter, in what may be a significant breakthrough for
quantum computing.
At the same time, the researchers also
published a paper in Nature and a “road map” for further work. The design of the Majorana 1 processor is supposed to
fit up to a million qubits, which may be enough to realize many significant
goals of quantum computing—such as cracking
cryptographic codes and designing new drugs and materials faster.
If Microsoft’s claims pan out, the
company may have leapfrogged competitors such as IBM and Google, who currently
appear to be leading the race to build a quantum computer.
However, the peer-reviewed
Nature paper only shows part of what the researchers have claimed, and the road
map still includes many hurdles to be overcome. While the Microsoft press
release shows off something that is supposed to be quantum computing hardware,
we don’t have any independent confirmation of what it can do. Nevertheless, the
news from Microsoft is very promising.
By now you probably have some
questions. What’s a topological qubit? What’s a qubit at all, for that matter?
And why do people want quantum computers in the first place?
Quantum Bits Are Hard to Build
Quantum computers were first dreamed
up in the 1980s. Where an ordinary computer stores information in bits, a
quantum computer stores information in quantum bits—or qubits.
An ordinary bit can have a
value of 0 or 1, but a quantum bit (thanks to the laws of quantum mechanics,
which govern very small particles) can have a combination of both. If you
imagine an ordinary bit as an arrow that can point either up or down, a qubit
is an arrow that can point in any direction (or what is called a
“superposition” of up and down).
This means a quantum computer
would be much faster than an ordinary computer for certain kinds of
calculations—particularly some to do with unpicking codes and simulating
natural systems.
So far, so good. But it turns
out that building real qubits and getting information in and out of them is
extremely difficult, because interactions with the outside world can destroy
the delicate quantum states inside.
Researchers have tried a lot
of different technologies to make qubits, using things like atoms trapped in
electric fields or eddies of current swirling in superconductors.
Tiny Wires and Exotic Particles
Microsoft has taken a very
different approach to build its “topological qubits.” They have used what are
called Majorana particles, first theorized in 1937 by Italian physicist Ettore
Majorana.
Majoranas are not naturally
occurring particles like electrons or protons. Instead, they only exist inside
a rare kind of material called a topological superconductor (which requires
advanced material design and must be cooled down to extremely low temperatures).
Indeed, Majorana particles
are so exotic they are usually only studied in universities—not used in
practical applications.
The Microsoft team say they
have used a pair of tiny wires, each with a Majorana particle trapped at either
end, to act as a qubit. They measure the value of the qubit—expressed by means
of whether an electron is in one wire or the other—using microwaves.
More
Microsoft’s New Majorana 1 Processor Could
Transform Quantum Computing | WIRED
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
It's
impossible in normal times to rally a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.
Charles de Gaulle.
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