Baltic
Dry Index. 1261 Thurs. Brent Crude 66.63
Spot Gold 3481 US 2 Year Yield 3.75 -0.06
US Federal Debt. 36.755 trillion!!!
“Do you see over yonder, friend Starmer, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.”
President Trump, with apologies to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
No need for my input today, the articles below speak loudly for themselves.
Asia-Pacific markets subdued after Trump’s attack
on Fed chair sends Wall Street tumbling
Updated Tue, Apr 22 2025 10:47 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets were subdued Tuesday,
tracking Wall Street’s sell-off after U.S. President Donald Trump doubled
down on his pressure campaign on Federal
Reserve Chairman Jerome
Powell.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 as well as the
Topix were trading flat. South Korea’s Kospi added 0.19% and the
small-cap Kosdaq inched 0.16% higher.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.63%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index lost 0.25%.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 slipped 0.17% at the open.
U.S. stock futures were nearly flat.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average lost 18 points. Both the S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures also
traded near the flatline.
Overnight in the U.S., the three major
averages fell following Trump’s
attacks on Powell, raising questions about the central bank’s independence,
while traders received few signs of progress on global trade talks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped
971.82 points, or 2.48% to close at 38,170.41. The S&P 500 shed 2.36% and
ended at 5,158.20, and the Nasdaq
Composite lost 2.55% to settle at 15,870.90.
Powell noted last week that the Fed’s independence is a “matter of
law.” Markets are trying to weigh how serious the termination threat is, versus
jawboning for lower rates, ANZ economists wrote.
Asia-Pacific
markets live: Trump, Fed chair Powell
US Stocks Tank Again as Trump Calls Fed Chair
Names
April 21, 2025 at 11:39 PM GMT+1
Donald Trump sent the US stock market
plummeting again, this time with social media snark and derisive playground nicknames aimed at the
Chair of the US Federal Reserve. The president, under increasing pressure for
singlehandedly destabilizing global markets with his trade war, has turned his
attention to interest rates in a bid to avoid what economists increasingly fear
is a recession dead ahead. Trump’s public mulling over whether he can legally fire Powell have market
watchers eyeing a potential broad-based loss of confidence in the US economy if
he were to try it.
Donald Trump sent the US stock market
plummeting again, this time with social media snark and derisive playground
nicknames aimed at the Chair of the US Federal Reserve. The
president, under increasing pressure for singlehandedly destabilizing global
markets with his trade war, has turned his attention to interest rates in a bid
to avoid what economists increasingly fear is a recession dead ahead. Trump’s
public mulling over whether
he can legally fire Powell have market watchers eyeing a
potential broad-based loss of confidence in the US economy if he were
to try it.
US
Stocks Tank Again as Trump Calls Fed Chair Powell Names - Bloomberg
Asia fights drag from Wall St as US assets buckle
22 April 2025
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stock markets
fought to hold their footing on Tuesday after a furious flight from U.S. assets
undermined Wall Street and the dollar, while concerns about the independence of
the Federal Reserve piled fresh pressure on Treasuries.
Relatively limited losses in Asia sparked
talk that funds could be reallocating money to equities in the area, though the
impact of tariffs on economic growth remained a major drag.
President Donald Trump's increasingly
vocal attacks on Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates saw
Wall Street indexes shed around 2.5% on Monday and the dollar hit three-year
lows.
"The 'sell America' trade was in full
flight," said Tapas Strickland, head of market economics at NAB.
"Whether or not President Trump is
legally able and willing to move against the Fed, the jousting underscores the
loss of U.S. exceptionalism and the very real policy risk for investors."
The selling did abate somewhat in Asia,
allowing S&P 500 futures to bounce 0.4% and Nasdaq futures 0.5%.
The market faces another test from
earnings this week, with Tesla due later in the session, having already shed
almost 6% on Monday amid reports of production delays.
Also reporting this week are Alphabet and
a host of high-profile industrials including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed
Martin and 3M.
The fallout from Wall Street saw Japan's
Nikkei ease a modest 0.3%, while MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares
outside Japan dipped 0.2%. Chinese blue chips were holding steady for now.
European shares were less fortunate, with
futures for the EUROSTOXX 50, FTSE and DAX all down around 0.7% in choppy
trading.
LOSS OF FAITH
Yields on U.S. 10-year notes stood at
4.40%, having climbed on fears the White House could try and replace Powell
with someone more inclined to cut rates, even as inflation was being lifted by
Trump's swingeing tariffs.
There was also the concern that the
current Fed might now be more reluctant to ease policy in case that was
perceived as giving into political pressure.
While White House talks on various trade
deals are underway or about to start, a quick resolution seemed unlikely.
Analysts at JPMorgan noted the average trade deal took 18 months to negotiate
and 45 months to implement.
"We reiterate our view that if
current policies do not change, then the probability of a U.S. recession in
2025 is 90%," they said in a note.
More
Asia
fights drag from Wall St as US assets buckle
Gold maintains record rally following Trump's
criticism of Fed chief
22 April 2025
(Reuters) - Gold prices continued their
record rally on Tuesday, driven by concerns over U.S. President Donald Trump's
criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which dampened risk sentiment
and drove investors towards the safe-haven bullion.
Spot gold was up 1.4% at $3,472.49 an
ounce, as of 0247 GMT, after touching a record high of $3,473.03 per ounce
earlier in the session.
U.S. gold futures firmed 1.7% to
$3,482.40.
"Investors have been giving a wide
berth to U.S. assets amid tariff worries and Trump-Powell dramas, which has
kept gold in prime position to capitalise on the dollar's woes," said Tim
Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade.
Trump reiterated his call for an immediate
reduction in interest rates on Monday, warning that the U.S. economy could face
a slowdown, while criticizing Powell's stance to keep rates unchanged until
clarity on the inflation impact of Trump's tariff plans.
Asian stock markets struggled to maintain
stability following a rapid sell-off of U.S. assets that weakened Wall Street
and the dollar. [MKTS/GLOB][USD/]
On Monday, China accused Washington of
abusing tariffs and warned countries against striking a broader economic deal
with the U.S. at its expense.
More
Gold
maintains record rally following Trump's criticism of Fed chief
In other news.
Trump tariffs could lead to a summer drop-off in
economic activity after an ‘artificially high’ start, Chicago Fed chief says
Published Sun, Apr 20 2025 1:59 PM EDT Updated
Sun, Apr 20 2025 2:14 PM EDT
Business owners and CEOs are already
stocking up on inventory, and some American shoppers are panic buying big-ticket
items in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The
sudden buying binge could cause an “artificially high” level of economic
activity, said Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee.
“That kind of preemptive purchasing is
probably even more pronounced on the business side,” Goolsbee told CBS’ “Face
The Nation” on Sunday, adding: “We heard a lot about preemptive building-up of
inventories that could last 60 days, 90 days, if there [was] going to be more
uncertainty.”
Businesses stockpiling inventory and consumers
accelerating their purchasing decisions — buying an Apple iPhone now, say, rather than
waiting until the fall — may inflate U.S. economic activity in April and lead
to a slowdown in the coming months, Goolsbee suggested.
“Activity might look artificially high in
the initial, and then by the summer, might fall off — because people have
bought it all,” he said.
Sectors affected by Trump’s tariffs,
particularly the auto industry, are most likely to heavily stock up on
inventory now before import levies on goods from other countries potentially
rise further, said Goolsbee. Many car parts, electronic components and other
big-ticket consumer items are manufactured in China, for example, which
currently faces a 145% total tariff rate on goods imported to the United
States.
Trump’s tariffs on
a bevy of other countries are currently in the middle of a 90-day pause,
with a 10% baseline tariff rate instead applying to all imported goods across
the board. The pause is due to expire on July 9, with Trump touting a
series of rate negotiations with foreign leaders between now and then.
“We don’t know, 90 days from now, when
they’ve revisited the tariffs, we don’t know how big they’re going to be,”
Goolsbee said.
Some U.S. business owners who buy goods
manufactured in China say they already can’t afford to place rush orders on
inventory. Matt Rollens, owner and CEO of Granite Bay, California-based novelty
drinkware company Dragon Glassware, says he’s
temporarily holding his products in China because paying the 145% levy
would force him to raise consumer prices by at least 50%, likely drying up
customer demand.
More
Trump tariffs could cause summer economic slump: Chicago Fed president
U.S. chip controls will benefit China’s Nvidia
rivals like Huawei: Analysts
Published Mon, Apr 21 2025 2:01 AM EDT
As the U.S. tightens controls on Nvidia’s
sales to China, the country’s rising domestic artificial intelligence
chipmakers like Huawei stand to benefit, semiconductor analysts say.
The Commerce Department said last
week that
Nvidia’s H20 graphics processing units — designed to comply with previous U.S.
restrictions — would now require export licenses, as would additional chips
from AMD. Nvidia says it
has already halted exports of the GPUs, resulting in a quarterly charge of
approximately $5.5 billion.
But the American AI darling’s loss could
be a gain for China’s local AI chip players as Beijing continues to search for
its own Nvidia alternative, semiconductor analysts told CNBC.
“There are several local Chinese companies
that produce chips to compete with Nvidia,” said Brady Wang, associate director
at Counterpoint Research.
Examples of these local AI chipmakers
include tech powerhouse Huawei and the partially state-owned and publicly
listed Cambricon Technologies, which designs GPUs.
Shares of Cambricon were up over 10% in
the past five trading days amid news of the latest Nvidia controls. The stock
is up over 400% in the past 12 months.
These local competitors now have greater
impetus and opportunity to grow and improve their solutions, Wang said, adding
that he expects that demand for their GPUs will increase.
Can China fill the gap?
Analysts pointed to Huawei as a clear
leader in China’s race to find a Nvidia competitor. The U.S.-blacklisted company has
been working on its own “Ascend 910” GPU series, the
latest of which is reportedly the Ascend 910C.
“With NVIDIA’s H20 and other advanced GPUs
restricted, domestic alternatives like Huawei’s Ascend series are gaining
traction,” said Doug O’Laughlin, an industry analyst at independent
semiconductor research company SemiAnalysis.
A recent
report from
SemiAnalysis states that although Huawei remains “a generation behind in
chips,” the company is “making waves” with the hardware that uses them.
“While there are still gaps in software
maturity and overall ecosystem readiness, hardware performance is closing in
fast,” O’Laughlin added.
However, experts note that export controls
have also hindered China’s ability to produce advanced GPUs at the same scale
that Nvidia can through its partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s
largest contract chip maker.
“Huawei has shown to be a competitive
fabless chip designer ... but they struggle to find enough supply from their
foundries,” said Phelix Lee, a semiconductor-focused equity analyst for
Morningstar.
Because TSMC’s chipmaking equipment
includes U.S. technology, the company has complied with U.S. trade restrictions
on Huawei and the shipment of advanced chips to China. That has left Chinese
companies increasingly reliant on domestic foundries like Semiconductor Manufacturing International
Corporation.
Nevertheless, SMIC is under its own export
controls, which prevents it from
accessing some
of the world’s most advanced chipmaking equipment.
Given those conditions, Lee said, he
remains “very skeptical” that Chinese chip foundries would be able to supply
enough H20 GPU alternatives to meet the demand of Chinese tech companies
anytime soon.
Are export controls working?
However, experts say that Chinese chip
makers won’t need to immediately fill this H20 demand thanks to stockpiles and
previous export exemptions and loopholes.
More
U.S. chip controls boon for China Nvidia rivals like Huawei: Analysts
“Your grace, come back, President Don Quixote, I swear to God you're charging sheep!”
With apologies to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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.
Sell
USA? Why Trump's tariffs may be sparking a historic storm on Wall Street
April
21, 2025 5:00 AM ET
For
decades, the U.S. financial system has been regarded as one of the most stable
and powerful in the world. Now, there are fears that something unprecedented
may be happening as a result of President Trump's tariffs: Investors everywhere
may be losing their faith in the United States.
The
concerns come as Wall Street is being convulsed by an extremely rare event:
Stocks, U.S. government bonds, and the dollar are all taking a hit at the same
time — and not everybody can agree on why.
The
most pessimistic fear is that the sell-offs mean that investors around the
world are losing trust in the U.S. as a result of Trump's unpredictable
policies — and they are therefore cutting their investments across the board.
If
true, it would represent a seismic change in the global financial system, in
which the U.S. is no longer considered as a haven.
And
it matters in the U.S. as well. Foreign investors' confidence in the United
States is critical — not only to the trillions of dollars tied up in this
country's financial markets, but to the American way of life.
Here
are five key questions about the financial storm that President Trump may have
unleashed.
What
is happening in the markets?
As
soon as Trump unveiled
his tariffs on
April 2, stock markets plummeted all over the world. That was not a surprise.
Stocks tend to immediately react to big news — good and bad. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average has recovered somewhat after Trump paused
many of his tariffs,
but it's still down more than 7% since his initial announcement.
But
typically, at times of intense turmoil, investors rush to buy U.S. government
bonds and the dollar. And for good reason.
U.S.
Treasury bond, or just Treasuries as they are usually known, are widely
considered among the safest holdings in the world, sold — and backed — by the
economic might of Uncle Sam. And the dollar is the world's biggest currency,
used everywhere from buying gas at your local station to paying for business
transactions around the globe.
A
simultaneous fall in all markets — from a country's stocks to its currency —
happens occasionally in emerging economies, such as when the Asian financial
crisis swept
the region in
the late 1990s.
It
has rarely happened in the U.S., according to many who follow the market.
So
why are stocks, bonds and the dollar all falling at the same time?
That's
what even the smartest minds on Wall Street are debating.
One
explanation is that it has to do with sophisticated investors, both foreign and
domestic, adjusting their portfolios based on tariff news that stunned
most people in
financial markets.
After
all, many investors had believed Trump was just using tariffs as negotiating
ploy. Instead, his tariffs are so sweeping they threaten to kickstart a new
global economic order. Some analysts compare it to when President Nixon delinked
the U.S. dollar from gold, in what became known as the "Nixon Shock."
But
there's another explanation for why all three markets fell: What if the
sell-off represented the moment the U.S. lost the trust of global investors —
and now means that U.S. bonds and the dollar are no longer considered to be
among the world's safest investments?
After
all, in less than 100 days, Trump has also unsettled investors with chaotic
firings across the federal workforce, pushed
to acquire Greenland,
expressed a desire to "take back" the
Panama Canal,
and said Canada should become
the 51st state,
among many other actions.
Taken
all together, it's creating what markets hate most: Unpredictability. — and
Wall Street fears it's making foreign investors lose confidence in the U.S. as
a result.
More
Trump’s tariffs may have upended the global financial system : NPR
Covid-19
Corner
This section will continue only occasionally when something of interest occurs.
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.
New
graphene-based flash memory writes data in 400 picoseconds, shattering all
speed records
"PoX" can execute 25
billion operations every second
By Skye Jacobs April 19,
2025 at 2:09 PM
What just happened? Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai have unveiled a flash
memory device that breaks speed records once thought unreachable. Dubbed
"PoX," the device can program data in just 400 picoseconds, or four
hundred trillionths of a second, making it the fastest semiconductor charge
storage device ever recorded.
To put this achievement into
perspective, PoX can perform 25 billion operations per second – surpassing the previous world
record for similar technology by a factor of 100,000.
The implications are
profound, particularly for the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence. As
AI models continue to grow in complexity and scale, their soaring computational
demands are pushing existing memory technologies to their limits. Traditional
volatile memories like static RAM and dynamic RAM offer impressive speeds –
typically writing data in under a nanosecond – but they lose all stored
information when power is cut.
Non-volatile memories like flash storage retain data
without power and consume significantly less energy than volatile counterparts,
but they've traditionally lagged in speed – often requiring microseconds to
milliseconds for data access.
A research team at Fudan University, led by
Professor Zhou Peng of the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Chips and
Systems, set out to close this performance gap by rethinking the physical
structure of flash memory. Rather than using conventional silicon, the
researchers turned to graphene – a two-dimensional material celebrated for its
remarkable electrical properties – and implemented a Dirac band structure.
By leveraging graphene's
ballistic transport behavior and precisely tuning the Gaussian length of the
memory channel, they developed a mechanism they call
"super-injection." This process enables an almost unrestricted flow
of charge into the storage layer, effectively eliminating the speed bottleneck
that has limited non-volatile memory for decades.
According to Zhou Peng, the
difference is staggering. "This is like the device working 1 billion times
in the blink of an eye, while a typical USB flash drive can only work 1,000
times. The previous world record for similar technology was 2 million."
The potential applications
for PoX reach well beyond faster consumer electronics. In the realm of
artificial intelligence, the speed at which data can be accessed and processed
is a key limiter of overall computing performance. As AI models become increasingly
data-intensive, storage systems capable of keeping pace with processors are
critical. With its unprecedented speed and low power consumption, PoX could
enable real-time processing of massive datasets while also curbing the energy
demands of data movement, one of the major inefficiencies in today's AI
hardware.
New graphene-based flash memory writes data in 400 picoseconds,
shattering all speed records | TechSpot
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
“When
life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too
practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much
sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it
should be!”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote.
No comments:
Post a Comment