Baltic
Dry Index. 2051 + 43 Brent Crude 68.59
Spot
Gold 3398 U S 2
Year Yield 3.76 +0.04
US
Federal Debt. 37.208 trillion
US
GDP 30.189 trillion
Gold is
money. Everything else is credit.
J. P.
Morgan
In the US stock casinos Friday, a Nvidia TACO, plus
Apple, set off a technology boom.
Leaving the real US
economy far behind this latest stocks bubble.
S&P
500 rises, Nasdaq closes at record Friday as Apple shares rally: Live updates
Updated
Fri, Aug 8 2025 4:22 PM EDT
Stocks
rose on Friday, led by the tech sector, as the major averages ended the week
with solid gains.
The Nasdaq Composite jumped
0.98% for a record close of 21,450.02. The tech-heavy index hit a fresh
all-time intraday high earlier in the day. The S&P 500 added 0.78% and
ended at 6,389.45, a hair’s breadth shy of a record close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed
206.97 points, or 0.47%, closing at 44,175.61.
The
major averages posted a winning week, with the 30-stock Dow jumping about 1.4%
and the broad market S&P 500 up 2.4% in the period. The Nasdaq posted a
3.9% climb on the week.
Apple lifted both the S&P
500′s tech sector and the Nasdaq. The iPhone maker surged 13% this week
after announcing
plans to spend about $600 billion over four years in the U.S. in a bid
to appease President Donald Trump. The stock notched its best week since July
2020.
Apple’s
latest surge kicked into high gear as Trump announced earlier this week that he
would impose
a 100% tariff on imported semiconductors and chips, with an exemption
for companies that are “building in the United States.” Shares advanced another
4.2% Friday.
Trump’s
trade policies
Investors
not only appeared to interpret the semiconductor tariff as being less harsh
than anticipated, they also seemed to look past Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs,
which took
effect at midnight on Thursday. Some of the steepest duties include
Syria’s 41% and Laos’ and Myanmar’s 40% rate.
Trump warned
U.S. courts Friday against striking down his tariff policy, writing in
a Truth Social post that if the courts were to do that, “It would be 1929 all
over again, a GREAT DEPRESSION.” He also said that the duties have been having
a “huge positive impact” on the market. Stocks nosedived in the wake of Trump’s
sweeping tariff announcement back in April, with the S&P 500 falling
into correction territory after seeing its biggest single-day loss
since 2020.
“The
market’s reaction to the April 2 announcement kind of shows how markets feel
about tariffs,” Ross Mayfield, Baird investment strategist, said. “Investors
are largely anticipating the administration not following through on hyper
aggressive tariff plans, so it’s kind of like chicken-and-egg, and I think
we’re still kind of in the later stages of figuring that out.”
“If
markets anticipate that but don’t react because they’re waiting for the
capitulation, the administration could possibly take it that the market is
enforcing the policy rather than anticipating a change, so it is kind of a
tricky dynamic,” he continued.
Stock
market news for Aug. 8, 2025
US licenses Nvidia to
export chips to China after CEO meets Trump
Jensen Huang
personally lobbied president after he reversed course on sale of H20 chips
8 August 2025
The US commerce department has started issuing
licences to Nvidia to export H20 chips to China following weeks of inaction,
after chief executive Jensen Huang met President Donald Trump at the White
House.
A US official told the Financial Times the bureau of
industry and security, the arm of the commerce department that oversees export
controls, had begun to issue licences for the H20.
Nvidia designed the chip for the Chinese market
after the Biden administration imposed export controls on more advanced
artificial intelligence chips.
In April, the Trump administration appeared to take
a tougher line by telling Nvidia it could not sell the H20 to China. Trump
reversed course after Huang visited the White House and directly lobbied the
president. But Nvidia was frustrated that three weeks after the decision, the
administration had not started issuing the licences.
Huang visited the White House on Wednesday and held
another meeting with the president. Two days after the meeting, the commerce
department starting issue the licences, according to people familiar with the
decision.
One person familiar with the situation said the
decision to press ahead with the export licenses came after Huang’s meeting
with Trump in the Oval Office.
Nvidia and the commerce department declined to
comment.
The H20 has become the focus of a debate between
security officials who say allowing China to buy the H20 will help its
military. But Nvidia argues that blocking US technology exports forces China to
accelerate innovation.
The Financial Times reported last week that 20
security experts, including Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser in
the first Trump administration, and David Feith, who served at the National
Security Council earlier this year, wrote to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick
to urge him to not to allow H20 sales to China
More
US
licenses Nvidia to export chips to China after CEO meets Trump.
Apple
has its best week since July 2020 after White House visit
Published
Fri, Aug 8 2025 5:02 PM EDT
Apple shares rose 13% this
week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook
appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.
Shares
of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the
company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400
billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.
Apple
is the third-most valuable company, behind Nvidia and Microsoft and ahead of Alphabet and Amazon.
At
the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce
Apple’s plans to
spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four
years.
Apple’s
plans to buy more American chips pleased
Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was
building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double
the price of imported chips.
Investors
had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s
profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff
costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.
“Apple
and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and
months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face
from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an
overweight rating on Apple’s stock.
Cook’s
successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June
quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales
grew by 13%.
Apple
has best week since July 2020 after Tim Cook's White House visit
In gold tariff news, tariff
confusion set off a mild gold rush.
Trump
Tariffs Ignite Gold Rush: Chaos Erupts as Physical Metal Soars, Wall Street
Scrambles for Real Bullion
Global gold chaos
erupts as tariffs detonate supply lines—bullion prices explode, Wall Street
panics, and China eyes control over world's gold markets.
The Silver Academy Aug 08, 2025
In nutshell - Trump's gold tariffs spark safe-haven
demand, trigger global supply shocks, weaken the dollar, and boost inflation
risk—powerfully bullish for gold
In an unprecedented move that threatens to shake the
global bullion market to its core, President Donald Trump has imposed sweeping
tariffs on the import of one-kilogram and 100-ounce gold bars. The decision,
confirmed Thursday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in a letter dated July
31, marks a radical escalation in Trump’s renewed trade war tactics and
immediately sent shockwaves through offshore refineries, most notably
Switzerland — the world’s dominant hub for gold processing.
This is not just a minor skirmish in the
long-running conflict over global trade imbalances. Swiss refiners, accounting
for more than $60B in annual gold exports to the U.S., now face a jaw-dropping
39% levy, an estimated $24B in extra costs virtually overnight. At least two
major facilities have halted or slowed shipments to the U.S. as exporters
scramble to interpret shifting customs codes and brace for a potentially
devastating blow to their bottom line.
But the ripple effects don’t stop in Zurich or
Geneva. With gold demand surging amidst inflation, soaring debt, and a
weakening U.S. dollar, prices have rocketed — spiking over 27% since late 2024,
with spot gold pressing toward $3,500/oz as investors scramble for safety.
Liquidity on the COMEX and LBMA could seize up as U.S. buyers face bottlenecks
and higher costs, breaching the fragile firewall between “paper” gold contracts
and actual physical delivery.
In a twist that may delight bullion hardliners and
provoke geopolitical chess moves, Chinese institutions are rumored to be
accelerating efforts to take a commanding role in the global marketplace —
potentially even seizing the moment to “take over the COMEX and LBMA” and force
a confrontation with the West’s paper gold system. Some analysts warn this
tariff bomb could ultimately drive the world away from dollar-centric gold
trade, finally placing real metal, not contracts, at the center of global reserve
flows.
One thing is crystal clear: with this White House
tariff tsunami, the foundation of the modern gold market is trembling — and
EVERYTHING from portfolio strategy to global power balances is now in play
In other, different
news.
Cognitive Decline Can Be
Slowed Down With Lifestyle Changes, From Diet to Exercise and Social Time, New
Study Suggests
A
2,100-participant clinical trial found that structured and self-guided
lifestyle changes can improve cognitive capabilities in older, at-risk adults
August 6, 2025 1:01 p.m.
A new study of more than 2,000 people offers further
evidence that lifestyle changes can improve cognition and health in older
adults. The results were published in the journal JAMA and
presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in July.
The $50 million U.S. POINTER study, funded by the
Alzheimer’s Association, is the largest randomized clinical trial in the
country to look at how lifestyle can impact thinking and memory. Researchers
compared two methods of combating cognitive decline across 2,100 people at risk
of dementia. Nearly 70 percent of the participants were female, and 31 percent
were from racial or ethnic minority groups. Participants lived in five
locations: North Carolina, Rhode Island, Northern California, Houston and
Chicago.
“These are cognitively healthy people between the
ages of 60 and 79 who, to be in the study, had to be completely sedentary and
at risk for dementia due to health issues such as prediabetes and borderline
high blood pressure,” explains principal investigator Laura Baker, a researcher of gerontology and geriatrics at Wake
Forest University, to Sandee LaMotte at CNN.
From that sedentary baseline, the participants
then made changes to their lifestyles. Half of the participants were prescribed an activity schedule with
aerobic exercise four times per week, cognitive training sessions and adherence
to the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet.
They also attended 38 structured meetings in their neighborhoods over two
years, at which a facilitator taught them the importance of socialization and
spread information about brain health. The participants also received 26
additional phone calls to assess their diet over the course of the study.
The other half of the participants followed a
self-guided program where they chose their own diet and brain health regimen.
They attended six meetings over the course of the study, in which the research
staff offered general encouragement without specific directions. While this
group received education on health, exercise and diet, they were not prescribed
any standardized plan. Both groups were given physical and cognitive tests
every six months.
Ultimately, both programs improved the participants’
cognitive scores, but those in the structured group had slightly better
results. “The structured intervention had an extra benefit over and above the
self-guided,” Baker says to Pam Belluck at the New York Times.
Researchers estimate that, compared to the
self-guided group, participants in the intensive program seemed to delay
cognitive aging by an extra one to almost two years, reports CNN.
“It confirms that paying attention to things like
physical activity and vascular risk factors and diet are all really important
ways to maintain brain health,” Kristine Yaffe, an expert in cognitive aging at the University of
California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, tells the New
York Times.
Still, given that the two groups scored similarly,
the work suggests more research is needed. In an editorial for JAMA, Jonathan M. Schott, a dementia researcher at
University College London, writes that “the more striking finding is perhaps
the similarity of the cognitive benefits across both groups, despite the
self-guided group requiring only a fraction of the engagement and interventions.”
Schott also notes that the clinical trial didn’t
include a control group of participants who got no guidance and made no
lifestyle changes. This makes it hard for researchers to pinpoint which aspect
of the program might have been responsible for the positive effect.
However, Heather M. Snyder, senior
vice president for medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s
Association, tells the New York Times that the organization
thought neglecting to offer an intervention to one group would be unethical.
More
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.
Russia Reshaping Global Gold Market with Strategic
Changes
ByJohn Zadehon July 24, 2025
How Is Russia Reshaping the Global Gold Market?
Russia, the world's second-largest gold producer,
is fundamentally transforming how it manages its precious metals sector, with
far-reaching implications for global markets. These changes represent a
significant shift in how gold is traded, priced, and utilized in international
finance.
Russia's Strategic Gold Position
Russia produces approximately 300 tons of gold
annually, making it second only to China in global production. Despite this
substantial output, Russia exports only 2.37% of global gold exports, keeping
most production within its borders for strategic purposes.
The country's approach to gold has evolved
dramatically since 2022, with several key developments:
- Increased precious metal sales to China (up 80% to $1 billion in
early 2025)
- Nationalization of major mining operations
- Development of a new gold exchange in St. Petersburg
- Creation of a comprehensive precious metals reserve beyond just
gold
Why Is Russia Creating Its Own Gold Exchange?
Breaking Away from Western Price Benchmarks
Russia is establishing its own gold trading
platform on the St. Petersburg Exchange, scheduled to launch by the end of
2025. This move represents a deliberate strategy to free the country from
dependence on London Stock Exchange gold prices.
As Rob K emphasizes, "Russia is building its
own exchange because they don't trust Western gold prices… They know it's
manipulated in the West." This perspective aligns perfectly with Moscow's
public stance on establishing price benchmark independence.
Key Motivations Behind the New Exchange:
- Price Independence: Creating
national price indicators based on domestic supply and demand rather than
international benchmarks
- BRICS Integration: Opening
the exchange to BRICS nations and their traders
- Alternative Market Creation:
Developing a competing system to Western-dominated exchanges
- De-dollarization Support: Reducing
reliance on USD-based trading systems
The St. Petersburg Exchange will complement
Russia's existing gold trading platform at the Moscow Stock Exchange, which
already serves banks and the central bank. The new exchange infrastructure
generates domestic price indicators using real-time supply-demand algorithms,
replacing London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) benchmarks.
More
Russia Reshapes Global Gold Market: Strategic Shifts
Technology
Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Nuclear
Experts Say Mixing AI and Nuclear Weapons Is Inevitable
Human judgement remains central to the launch of nuclear weapons.
But experts say it’s a matter of when, not if, artificial intelligence will get
baked into the world’s most dangerous systems.
Aug 6, 2025 6:30 AM
The people who study nuclear war for
a living are certain that artificial intelligence will soon power the deadly
weapons. None of them are quite sure what, exactly, that means.
In the middle of July, Nobel laureates gathered at the University
of Chicago to listen to nuclear war experts talk about the end of the world. In
closed sessions over two days, scientists, former government officials, and
retired military personnel enlightened the laureates about the most devastating
weapons ever created. The goal was to educate some of the most respected people
in the world about one of the most horrifying weapons ever made and, at the end
of it, have the laureates make policy recommendations to world leaders about
how to avoid nuclear war.
AI was on everyone’s mind. “We’re entering a new world of
artificial intelligence and emerging technologies influencing our daily life,
but also influencing the nuclear world we live in,” Scott Sagan, a
Stanford professor known for his research into nuclear disarmament, said during
a press conference at the end of the talks.
More, subscription required.
Nuclear Experts
Say Mixing AI and Nuclear Weapons Is Inevitable | WIRED
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. That mad drum
symphony, again. Approx. 14 minutes.
Johann
Carl Christian Fischer (c.1733-1800) - Symphonie mit acht obligaten Pauken
(c.1780)
Johann Carl
Christian Fischer (c.1733-1800) - Symphonie mit acht obligaten Pauken (c.1780)
- YouTube
Next, Trump’s universal tariffs start. Approx.
2 minutes.
Trump's higher tariffs on major trading
partners officially kick in | ABC NEWS
Trump's higher
tariffs on major trading partners officially kick in | ABC NEWS - YouTube
USA summer, but where are the tourist?
Peak
Summer Season Is Here, But Where Are The Tourists?
Peak Summer Season
Is Here, But Where Are The Tourists? - YouTube
Finally,
Nagasaki. Why Atom bomb it? Approx. 20 minutes.
Nagasaki:
Before and After the Atomic Bomb
Nagasaki: Before
and After the Atomic Bomb
The main reason people struggle financially is because they have
spent years in school but learned nothing about money. The result is that
people learn to work for money...but never learn to have money work for them.
Robert Kiyosaki
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