Baltic
Dry Index. 2052 +22 Brent
Crude 69.28
Spot
Gold 3350 U S 2
Year Yield 3.88 -0.03
US
Federal Debt. 37.121 trillion
US
GDP 30.144 trillion
“The
intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from
pessimists.”
Benjamin
Graham
In the stock casinos,
more tariff disconnect. President Trump reportedly wants at least a minimum EU
tariff of fifteen percent.
Next week, in the US
stock casinos, the first of the “Magnificent Seven” start reporting their most
recent results. What happens if the Mag 7 disappoints?
Don’t even think of
such unthinkable things!
Dow
closes more than 100 points lower after report says Trump seeks at least 15%
tariff on EU imports: Live updates
Updated
Fri, Jul 18 2025 4:19 PM EDT
The Dow
Jones Industrial Average slid Friday after President Donald Trump
reportedly pushed for greater tariffs on the European Union.
The 30-stock Dow fell 142.30 points, or 0.32%,
settling at 44,342.19. The S&P
500 lost 0.01% after hitting a record high earlier in the day,
ultimately closing at 6,296.79. The Nasdaq Composite added
0.05%, ending at 20,895.66.
Trump is demanding a minimum tariff of between 15%
and 20% in any deal with the EU, the Financial Times reported, citing three people briefed on the talks. The EU
is attempting to reach a trade deal with the U.S. ahead of Trump’s Aug. 1
deadline, when Trump has vowed
to begin implementing 30% tariffs on the bloc.
Traders also pored through the latest earnings
reports and new U.S. economic data.
Data released Friday reflected a drop in consumers’
fears about tariff-induced inflation down
to their lowest levels since February. The University of Michigan’s
Survey of Consumers for July reflected overall consumer sentiment rose 1.8%
from June to 61.8, coming out exactly in line with the estimate and at the
highest level since February.
On the earnings front, Netflix slid 5% after the
company said its operating margin in the second half of this year will be lower
than the first. Shares of 3M fell
more than 3% after the company revised its organic sales growth forecast to
reflect a gain of 2%. It previously gave a growth range of the “lower end of 2%
to 3%.” A 2% post-earnings slide in American Express dragged the
Dow lower.
Despite the mixed reaction to the latest corporate
report, the season is off to a strong start.
With 12% of S&P 500 companies reporting results
so far, 83% have beaten estimates. On Thursday, PepsiCo and United Airlines shares both
popped after the respective companies beat
analyst estimates on earnings. Those follow solid results from big banks
like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs earlier in the
week.
Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted weekly gains,
rising 0.6% and 1.5%, respectively. The Dow was marginally lower on the week.
“It’s a risk-on environment, and while there’s
chatter about Fed cuts, the reality is more nuanced,” said Ken Mahoney, CEO at
Mahoney Asset Management. “Historically, bull cycles tend to perform better
without rate cuts and the first cut is often a bearish signal, though there’s a
valid case to be made this time around, especially with inflation cooling and
GDP growth projections still intact after we got through the threat of massive
tariffs.”
---- Mag 7 tech stocks
to begin reporting next week
Magnificent Seven earnings are kicking off next
week, with Alphabet and Tesla the first of the
megacaps to report this earnings season. Their results will come at a time when
the S&P 500 is
approaching all-time highs, powered by ongoing enthusiasm in the AI trade
alongside a strong corporate earnings season so far.
Together, the megacap companies are projected to
post earnings growth of over 14% in the second quarter, while the other 493
S&P 500 companies that are set to grow just 3.4%, according to FactSet’s
John Butters.
For more on analysts’ expectations and the week
ahead, read here.
Stock
market news for July 18, 2025
Warren
Buffett has set alarm bells ringing on Wall Street
18 July 2025
Wall Street banks are coining it in Donald Trump’s
America. Goldman Sachs this week reported a 22pc jump in profits, driven by
record trading revenues as tariffs roiled stock markets.
Citigroup’s profits jumped by 25pc, beating
analysts’ expectations. The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index is close to an all-time high.
But not everyone is convinced that the good times
are going to last.
Warren Buffett, the so-called Sage of Omaha, has
been shedding his US bank holdings. At the start of the year, Buffett’s
Berkshire Hathaway sold about $3.2bn (£2.4bn) of shares in American banks and
financial companies.
Buffett sold about a $1bn stake in Citigroup,
ditched shares worth more than $2bn in Bank of America and dropped some of its
holdings in Capital One.
“Berkshire has clearly been reducing its exposure to
US bank stocks,” Larry Cunningham, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for
Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, says.
“That activity signals a cautious or even bearish
outlook on banking.”
Moves of this size are not unusual for Berkshire
Hathaway. But Buffett, arguably the most successful investor of all time, has a
reputation for being preternaturally gifted at foreseeing market trends.
The 94-year-old, who will retire as Berkshire
Hathaway chief at the end of this year, built a record cash pile of $350bn before markets
slumped earlier this year, leading analysts to say he
had seen the crash coming. Millions of loyal followers watch his every move.
Could his decision to ditch banking stocks signal a
slump is on the cards?
Policy
roller-coaster
Buffett is not alone in selling. Jamie Dimon, JP
Morgan’s chief executive, sold around $31.5m of his holdings in the investment
bank in April, his first sale since he took the top job in 2005.
Analysts believe Trump’s economic policy
roller-coaster is going to finally hit the American economy in the second half
of the year.
US inflation rose to 2.7pc in June, with economists
saying this is a sign of things to come. Banks will be the canary in the coal
mine for any economic issues.
The president’s recent threats to sack Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will only add to concerns that economic policy is going off the
rails.
Buffett may have made a bet that America’s banks
have peaked.
More
Warren Buffett has set alarm bells ringing on Wall Street
In other news, the Electric
Fire Engine. Second in uselessness to the Electric Army Tank. “Please don’t shoot
at our Tank's battery pack due to the fire risk.”
Canberra's
issue-plagued $1.6 million hybrid electric fire truck is out of action again
17 July 2025
A $1.6 million hybrid electric fire truck, delivered
to ACT emergency services two years ago, has been taken off the road again due
to battery issues.
Meanwhile a fully electric truck which arrived in
late 2023 is yet to enter service.
Costing about $700,000 more than a diesel truck and
touted as an Australian-first when the agreement with manufacturer Rosenbauer
was signed in 2021, the plug-in hybrid electric fire truck did not go into
operation until late last year.
Even then, for several months it had to be
accompanied by another fire truck when it attended emergencies, in case it did
not work as intended.
The truck was taken off the road in January due to a
problem with its main water hose pump.
Now, an ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA)
spokesperson has confirmed it is again offline, this time over a
"mechanical issue involving its battery packs".
"Our teams are working closely with the
manufacturer to resolve the issue and return the vehicle to service as soon as
possible," the ESA said in a statement.
Value
for money?
An ACT Auditor-General's report has slammed the
process used for procuring the truck, saying it failed to adequately assess the
vehicle's value for money.
The United Firefighters Union says it was
negotiating an enterprise agreement with ESA, at the same time as the deal with
Rosenbauer was being signed which mandated the deployment of an additional
pumper and crew to a new fire station in Acton by the end of 2021.
The Rosenbauer hybrid electric fire truck was to be
based at the Acton station.
The station was not completed until last month and
became operational this week.
The union's ACT secretary Greg McConville said the
absence of the hybrid electric fire truck was a source of "great
frustration".
"We're using conventional pumpers and the
reason for that is that despite all the work our members have done trying to
get [the hybrid electric truck] on the road, it keeps being beset with
problems," Mr McConville said.
"A conscious decision was made to get that
truck, instead of two other conventional trucks which were tried and proven.
"And the result of that is that we are three
years late in getting additional resources on the road to protect the Canberra
community.
"The Canberra community expects fire
protection; it doesn't expect trinkets and unfortunately that's what this seems
to be turning out to be," he said.
More
Canberra's issue-plagued $1.6 million hybrid electric fire truck is out
of action again
Global
Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given our Magic Money
Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation/recession now needs an entire
section of its own.
Is
America Breaking the Global Economy?
What
an Age of Economic Uncertainty Will Mean for the World
Mohamed A. El-Erian July 14, 2025
The global economy is, to put it mildly, in a state
of flux. Before the most recent U.S. elections, it was already being buffeted
by geopolitical shocks and the prospect of transformative technological
innovations. But now, it also has to endure an unusually high amount of policy
volatility from the world’s most powerful country. The result has been a roller
coaster not just for bonds and equities but also for economic forecasters and
policymakers.
At a deeper level, this turmoil has called into
question consensus narratives about the United States. Long-standing
assumptions that underpin the choices households, companies, and investors make
have gone away. Rules of thumb have become far less helpful. Measures of
consumer and producer confidence fell off a cliff. Expectations of inflation,
meanwhile, surged to levels last seen in 1981.
Amid this deep uncertainty, forecasters have
struggled to predict where the U.S. economy will ultimately end up. But two
main visions bookend a dispersed and unstable set of individual projections. In
the first, the United States is on a bumpy journey that will culminate in an
economic restructuring resembling the ones that took place under U.S. President
Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, where it will
emerge with less debt and a more efficient private sector and where it will trade
in a fairer international system. In the second scenario, the country is slowly
slipping into the stagflation and, as happened under U.S. President Jimmy
Carter, could end up in a deep recession, perhaps with pronounced financial
instability.
Whatever the outcome proves to be, it will have
international ramifications. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. economy
and financial system have been at the center of global markets. Washington
carries great influence in multilateral institutions. The United States has
long been the only reliable driver of world economic growth, and it leads in
the development and adoption of most productivity-enhancing innovations, such
as artificial intelligence, life sciences, and robotics. Many foreign investors
have outsourced the management of their savings and wealth to American
financial markets, thanks to their deep liquidity and strong architecture. The
dollar is the world’s reserve currency. If the United States slips into
stagflation, other parts of the planet are at risk of doing so as well.
Most governments seem to know this. That is why
countries around the world are seeking to insulate themselves from the policy
volatility emanating from Washington. Europe, for example, is striving to
improve its regional standing while forging new and more robust economic
relationships with Africa, Asia, and Latin America. China, meanwhile, sees an
opportunity to position itself as the more reliable economic superpower. Yet so
far, these efforts are running into headwinds. There is simply no other country
that is as wealthy or powerful enough to step into the United States’ shoes.
With little prospect for stability, governments,
companies, and investors will need to do more to insure themselves against
potential damage. They must be agile and flexible. They need capital and human
resilience, so they can absorb setbacks and fund new initiatives. And they need
to be open to fresh ways of thinking and behaving. If these actors can become
more nimble, they will survive the volatility—and perhaps emerge better for it.
But if they freeze up, they will undermine the well-being of both the world’s
current generations and its future ones.
A PAUSE ON EXEPTIONALISM
The United States is still the most powerful and
prosperous country in the world, and it has mature institutions. But in
economic and financial terms, the country now sometimes resembles a developing
nation. Like countries with immature tax systems that desperately need revenue,
Washington erected sudden, high tariffs on most external goods. It then slipped
into a Swiss cheese approach to concessions—exempting products and sectors in a
seemingly arbitrary manner. It did all this as its deficit continued to increase.
Indeed, at times, it looks as if U.S. officials have adopted an approach to
policymaking more akin to what happened in parts of Latin America than to what
one would expect from the most powerful economy in the world.
More
Is America Breaking the Global Economy? | Foreign Affairs
Technology
Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
HIGH FLYER
Solar-powered 236-foot ‘Skydweller’ aircraft flies for
mind-boggling 90 DAYS without stopping
The carbon
fiber drone is set to fly for up to 90 days straight - far longer than existing
aircrafts, according to its creators
Millie Turner,
Senior Technology & Science Reporter
Published: 16:46, 17 Jul 2025 Updated: 16:46, 17 Jul 2025
AEROSPACE boffins have unveiled a solar-powered surveillance drone
that can fly for several months at a time - achieving near-constant eyes in the
sky.
US tech startup Skydweller Aero has
partnered with French defence systems specialist Thales to build a new type of
maritime surveillance drone.
As tech on the ground gets smarter, so
too must the machines in the sky.
The carbon fibre drone is set to fly for
up to 90 days straight - far longer than existing aircraft, according to its
creators.
While its initial flight milestone will
be three months, the aircraft has the potential to fly almost continuously.
It takes it power directly from the sun,
so there's no need to land and refuel.
In May, British jet Zephyr broke the world record for the
longest continuous flight - spending
67 days in the sky.
That's the equivalent of 1,608 hours.
The Skydweller has over 17,000
individual solar cells across its approximately 2,900 square feet (270 square
meters) wing surface to capture the sun's rays and convert it into power.
Its wingspan is 236ft - longer than a
Boeing 747.
Despite its similar wingspan, it weighs
a whopping 160 times less than a traditional 'jumbo jet'.
The surveillance drone doesn't really
have capacity for much cargo either - sporting just 2.5 metric tons at maximum
capacity in comparison to 400 tons for the 747 at full payload.
In ideal conditions with minimal cloud
cover, the solar cells can generate up to 100 kilowatts of power for the
aircraft.
The drone can only refuel when the sun
is out, which means it relies on over 1,400 pounds (635 kilograms) of batteries
to power it through the night.
Skydweller flies slightly lower than the
average commercial carrier, at an altitude of between 24,600 and 34,400ft, on
average.
However, it can fly as high as 44,600ft
during the day, before dropping by between 4,900 and 9,800ft at night to
minimise power consumption.
More
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
Exponent
Calculator
Enter
values into any two of the input fields to solve for the third.
This
weekend’s music diversion. Beethoven again. Approx. 7 minutes.
Beethoven “Tempest” piano sonata 17, opus.31
No. 2 III “Allegretto” GALINA EFIMOVA PIANO
Beethoven
“Tempest” piano sonata 17, opus.31 No. 2 III “Allegretto” GALINA EFIMOVA PIANO
In Trump tariff war news. Approx. 16 minutes.
Trump Tariffs and Falling Numbers from China
Impact Container Imports into the United States
Container Update
Mid-2025 | June Record in the Port of Los Angeles | China Container Volumes
Down
Finally, more on the AI 171 crash. Approx.20 minutes.
AIR INDIA CRASH - ALL IS NOT WHAT IT
SEEMS #airindiacrash
AIR INDIA CRASH - ALL IS NOT
WHAT IT SEEMS #airindiacrash
Air India Crash Update: Pilot Claims Plane
Was Already Plagued by Electrical and Digital Failures Before Flight
18 July 2025
Fresh revelations into the tragic crash of
Air India Flight 171 have uncovered a series of electrical and digital
malfunctions in the weeks leading up to the accident, prompting questions over
whether technical faults may have played a role in the fatal sequence of
events.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed less than a
minute after take-off from Ahmedabad on June 12, killing all but one of the 242
people onboard, including all passengers and crew on board, and 19 people on
the ground.
Last week, a preliminary investigation report
suggested that there was a sudden fuel shut-off to both engines shortly after
lift-off, as the cockpit audio revealed the conversation between the two pilots
over the fuel switch. However, investigators are now also examining whether a
broader pattern of technical issues contributed to the disaster.
Mechanical Concerns Prior to Crash
It has since emerged that just hours before
the fatal flight, the aircraft was flagged for a technical issue by a different
pilot. According to reports from Indian media, the entry in the technical log
identified a fault with the 'stabiliser position transducer', a sensor that
controls the aircraft's nose movement and relays critical pitch data to the
flight control system.
Although engineers reportedly followed
Boeing's troubleshooting guidance, the issue was considered serious. One
official told The Indian Express, 'The malfunction is a critical issue as
it can trigger incorrect responses in flight control, including unintended fuel
cut-off signal.'
More
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who
understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.”
Albert Einstein
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