Baltic
Dry Index. 2180 + 26
Brent Crude 67.75
Spot Gold 3654 US 2 Year Yield 3.52 +0.01
US Federal Debt. 37.494 trillion
US GDP 30.273 trillion.
Consider the average intelligence of the common man, then realize 50% are even stupider.
Mark Twain
As expected, the US central bank lowered its key interest rate by a quarter of one percent and suggested that there might be two more rate cuts to come. The stock casinos had already priced in the interest rate cut.
Today it’s the Bank of England’s turn to fiddle with interest rate, but with yesterday’s August inflation figure coming in at 3.6 percent and a key interest rate of only 4 percent, the BOE should be raising interest rates rather than cutting. The BOE will likely do nothing.
Elsewhere in UK-US State visit news, King C hosted King D at Windsor C, with a cast of over 1000 Redcoats. Today it’s on to Prime Minister Starmer’s turn to host President Trump in the safety of his country home of Chequers. An awkward late afternoon press conference is expected to follow.
Japan stocks hit fresh record amid mixed trading
in Asia after Fed cut rates as expected
Published Wed, Sep 17 2025 7:51 PM EDT
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 1.13% to
a fresh record Thursday, led by gains in the real estate and technology
sectors. The top movers were led by chemical company Resonac Holdings, which
jumped more than 10%, semiconductor manufacturer Screen Holdings, which added
nearly 4.3%, and beverage giant Kirin Holdings, which gained
4.3%.
Other Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed
after the Federal
Reserve lowered its benchmark rate as expected on Wednesday, with Fed
Chairman Jerome Powell framing the move as a “risk management cut,” rather than
something more directed at shoring up a weak economy.
The Fed also indicated two more rate cuts
could be made by the year’s end, another in 2026, one more in 2027, and no cuts
in 2028.
South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.96%, while
Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 slid 0.51%.
Shares of Australian gas producer Santos
fell over 11% to A$6.78 after a consortium led by Abu Dhabi National Oil
Company (ADNOC) aborted its $18.7 billion acquisition bid following protracted disputes over price and conditions.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slipped 0.17%,
while the mainland CSI 300 lost 0.23%.
Asian chip stocks rose after a report
claimed that China has banned Nvidia’s artificial
intelligence chips.
Shares of South Korea’s SK Hynix, which
supplies memory chips to Nvidia, gained 5.5%. TSMC, which manufactures Nvidia’s
high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language
models, saw a smaller rise of 0.79%.
Samsung Electronics inched 2%
higher. Advantest gained
3.54%, and Tokyo Electron jumped
4.54%
The Bank of Japan is kick-starting its
two-day policy meeting, where it is expected by most economists to keep policy
rates steady.
HSBC expects policy rates to remain
unchanged in the upcoming meeting, but sees a 25 basis point hike this year at
the October meeting, which will raise the policy rate to 0.75%.
“Bank of Japan officials are looking for
signs of economic resilience, and we believe that the second quarter GDP print,
which outperformed market expectations, certainly delivered,” HSBC’s economists
wrote. “With its U.S. trade deal finalized, Japan’s exporters received some
relief from potentially even higher tariffs, but they could still be impacted
by a future slowdown in global trade.”
U.S. stock futures rose slightly on
Wednesday stateside as investors continued to digest the latest rate cut
decision from the Federal Reserve.
Overnight in the U.S., the major averages
closed mixed after a volatile day of trading. While the rate reduction was no
surprise, markets weren’t sure what to make of it all.
An initial rally on the Dow Jones
Industrial Average lost a little steam, but the blue-chip index still closed up
260.42 points, or 0.6%, at 46,018.32, after earlier hitting an all-time high.
However, the S&P 500 settled down 0.1% at 6,600.35, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped
0.3% to 22,261.33.
“In addition to the political jabs aimed
at them, the Fed is in a tough spot. They expect stagflation, or higher
inflation and a weaker labor market. That is not a great environment for
financial assets,” said Jack McIntyre, Portfolio Manager at Brandywine Global.
Asia
markets: Nikkei 225, Kospi, Fed
Fed Cuts Rates by a Quarter Point, Signals Labor
Market Concerns
September 17, 2025 at 10:30 PM GMT+1
Federal Reserve officials lowered
their benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point and
penciled in two more reductions this year following months of intense pressure
from the White House to slash borrowing costs. Chair Jerome
Powell pointed to growing signs of weakness in the labor market to explain
why officials decided it was time to cut rates after holding them steady since
December amid concerns over tariff-driven inflation. “Labor demand has
softened, and the recent pace of job creation appears to be running below the
break-even rate needed to hold the unemployment rate constant,” Powell told
reporters in his post-meeting press conference. He added, “I can no longer say”
the labor market is “very solid.” —Natasha
Solo-Lyons
Fed
Cuts Rates by a Quarter Point, Signals Labor Market Concerns - Bloomberg
Gold falls after scaling record peak as markets
digest Fed Chair Powell's comments
September 17, 2025 8:26 PM GMT+1
Sept 17 (Reuters) - Gold prices fell
nearly 1% on Wednesday, retreating from a record high scaled earlier in the
session, as market participants parsed remarks from Federal Reserve Chair
Jerome Powell.
Spot gold was down 0.9% at $3,658.25 per
ounce, as of 3:11 pm EDT (1911 GMT), after hitting a record high of $3,707.40.
Prices have risen nearly 6% so far this month.
The Fed cut interest rates by a quarter of
a percentage point and indicated it will steadily lower borrowing costs for the
rest of the year. Meanwhile, Powell said the Fed is in a
"meeting-by-meeting situation" regarding the outlook for interest
rates.
"The Fed is signalling uncertainty
with Powell calling this a 'risk-management' cut which has triggered some quite
understandable profit-taking," said Tai Wong, an independent metals
trader.
"A retracement or at least a
consolidation is healthy; I don't expect an unusually deep pullback. Unless we
get below major technical support at $3,550, the short-term uptrend should
remain intact," he added.
This marks the Fed's first rate cut of the
year, following a pause in policy changes since December after lowering
interest rates three
times in 2024.
Gold often gains appeal when interest
rates fall, as lower yields reduce the opportunity cost of holding the
non-yielding asset.
Analysts say gold's record run this year
has been underpinned by sustained central bank purchases, diversification away
from the U.S. dollar, resilient safe-haven demand amid geopolitical and trade
frictions, and broad dollar weakness. Bullion, considered a hedge against
uncertainties, has surged 39% so far this year.
Deutsche
Bank raised its gold price forecast for next year to an average of
$4,000 per ounce, up from $3,700.
Spot silver slipped 2.4% to $41.51 per
ounce, platinum dropped 2.2% at $1,360 and palladium fell 2.6% to $1,145.44.
Gold
falls after scaling record peak as markets digest Fed Chair Powell's comments |
Reuters
In other news.
Nvidia bets £11bn on UK AI with GPU deal, amid
Trump state visit
17 September 2025
Nvidia is pumping up to £11bn into
Britain’s AI ecosystem in a move that will see the UK host Europe’s largest GPU
cluster by 2026, with 120,000 of its latest Blackwell Ultra chips deployed
across new data centres.
The investment, unveiled late on
Tuesday and timed to coincide with President Donald Trump’s state visit to the
UK, is set to strengthen Britain’s position in the global AI arms race.
The leading chip giant will work with
partners including Microsoft, CoreWeave and UK-based Nscale to build out the
country’s sovereign compute capacity, a resource increasingly viewed as
critical to national competitiveness.
“This is the biggest single investment by
a technology organisation in the UK”, David Hogan, Nvidia’s vice president for
enterprise EMEA, told reporters on Tuesday.
“We’re enabling our partners to deploy
300,000 GPUs globally, and 60,000 of those will be in the UK. Together with
CoreWeave, that totals 120,000 GPUs deployed here by the end of 2026.”
Hogan framed the buildout as part of a
broader redefinition of AI as essential national infrastructure, on par with
energy or telecoms.
He said: “AI is now an essential form of
national infrastructure, just like energy, telecommunication and the Internet.
“Every country needs sovereign AI – the
ability to produce AI with its own infrastructure, data, language and culture.”
He described Nvidia not simply as a chip
designer but as a ‘full stack’ provider of what the company calls ‘AI
factories’, which are systems spanning hardware, networking and software,
designed to power the new industrial revolution.
“These AI factories will provide
infrastructure for the world’s most widely adopted models to run locally,
empowering a new generation of UK researchers, developers and entrepreneurs to
do groundbreaking research,” Hogan added.
A ‘Goldilocks opportunity’
The announcement follows Sir Keir
Starmer’s collaboration pledge with Nvidia chief Jensen Huang at London Tech
Week in June, where Huang warned that while the UK had immense AI potential,
it lacked
sovereign compute to
capitalise on the generative AI boom.
Trump’s visit has provided political
theatre around the latest wave of investment, with Nvidia’s Huang and OpenAI
chief Sam Altman both expected to appear at high-profile events.
Nscale will deploy 60,000 of Nvidia’s
Grace Blackwell GPUs in Britain as part of a global rollout of 300,000 units
across the US, Portugal and Norway.
Its partnership with OpenAI will create
‘Stargate UK’, a data centre cluster expected to support models including
GPT-5.
Microsoft, meanwhile, will work with
Nscale to build what they describe as the UK’s most powerful supercomputer in
Loughton, running on 24,000 GPUs to power Azure services.
Hogan stressed the scale of the UK’s
opportunity if it can combine capital, policy and infrastructure.
“The UK has a true Goldilocks
opportunity,” he said.
“We have the right conditions for rapid AI
growth and innovation in the country. The only thing that’s been missing is
infrastructure. Today, we’re announcing that Nvidia is building new AI
infrastructure to support strong, secure and sustainable economic growth across
the UK.”
The £11bn figure, Hogan explained,
includes not only chip orders but the land, power and operations required for
new data centres.
More
Nvidia bets £11bn
on UK AI with GPU deal, amid Trump state visit
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.
Sales
of heavy trucks are falling like the U.S. is headed for a recession
Published
Wed, Sep 17 2025 12:43 PM EDT Updated Wed, Sep 17 2025 4:05 PM EDT
Data
tracking the sales volume of large trucks in the U.S. is flashing a warning
sign about the state of the economy.
Heavy
trucks sales — or those exceeding 14,000 pounds in gross vehicle weight — have
dropped to levels not seen in four years, according to the U.S. Bureau of
Economic Analysis. The volume is down more than 15% in August compared with a
year ago and 21% compared with the same month in 2023.
Economists
and investors have historically tracked how much of these vehicles — think
tractor-trailers — are being sold in the U.S. as a leading indicator for the
economy. That’s because these trucks are considered vital to American
manufacturing and building.
When
truck sales are rising, that can be a sign of growing industrial action. On the
other hand, sliding volume can indicate contractions in the U.S. economy — and
has historically preceded recessions.
“The
recent downturn in heavy truck sales, which started in 2023, should be a
concern for policymakers,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, wrote to
clients in a note explaining the connection between collapsing sales and
recessions.
The
period around the Global Financial Crisis in the 2000s offers a prime example
of this trend. Sales volumes plunged more than 67% from a high in 2006 to mid
2009.
Looking
back further, sales dropped around 50% from a peak in late 1999 to a trough in
late 2002 as the dot-com bubble rocked the national economy.
But
economists noted that it hasn’t always been a perfect indicator of forthcoming
recessions. As artificial intelligence reshapes the workforce, some are
wondering if the current volume decline can instead underscore the ongoing
shift in the economy.
“The
weakness certainly reflects a slowdown in the manufacturing sector,” Paul
Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, wrote to CNBC. But, “the fact
that the overall economy continues to grow is a further signal of the evolving
nature of the economy more towards services and digital activity as opposed to
manufacturing.”
More
Sales
of heavy trucks are falling like the U.S. is headed for a recession
Inflation
hits 3.8 per cent in August
Wednesday
17 September 2025 7:22 am
Inflation
hit 3.8 per cent in the year to August, according to official data, sending a
warning to Bank of England officials ahead of a crucial interest rate vote on
Thursday.
The
previous reading for inflation in July was 3.8 per cent, with the August figure
likely to confirm Bank of England rate-setters will vote to hold interest rates
at its next decision on Thursday.
Economists
are also likely to pay close attention to the impacts of high food
price inflation
and services inflation, given their respective impacts on Britons’ views of the
cost of living and wage pressures.
The
Office for National Statistics (ONS) said services inflation was 4.7 per cent,
which was slightly lower than the five per cent level the previous month.
Core
food price inflation was 5.1 per cent over the 12-month period, higher than the
previous month. It was the fifth consecutive rise for the figure.
Price
growth could still get worse, with the Bank’s forecast last
month predicting it would be double its two per cent target rate in
September.
Its monetary
policy report said
inflation would only fall back to two per cent in 2027, with JP Morgan Asset
Management analyst Zara Nokes saying price growth in the UK has become
“increasingly ugly”.
Nokes
said it was “imperative” that the Bank of England doubled down on efforts to
“stamp out inflation”.
Stubborn
inflation poses a challenge to policymakers
Chancellor
Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering plans to ease the cost of living for
households by reducing energy bills, which she believes could be achieved by
exempting them from VAT.
Responding
to the new release, said she was “determined” to get costs down and help people
dealing with higher bills.
More
Inflation hits 3.8 per cent in August
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.
Proximity screening pushes graphene electronic quality to record
levels
16 September 2025
In a new Nature study,
researchers at the University of Manchester have achieved unprecedented electronic quality in graphene by
developing a proximity screening technique that places conducting gates just
one nanometer away from the carbon lattice.
For decades, semiconductor
heterostructures based on gallium arsenide have dominated the field of
high-quality two-dimensional electron systems, achieving transport mobilities
of up to 5.7 × 107 cm2 V-1 s-1.
Despite graphene's theoretical superiority and unique physics of massless Dirac
electrons, practical devices have consistently underperformed.
Phys.org spoke with the lead author of
the study, Daniil Domaretskiy, a Research Associate at the University of
Manchester.
"For physicists working with
two-dimensional materials, semiconductor systems like gallium arsenide have
been the reigning champions of electronic quality for decades," he said.
"Graphene, with its unique Dirac
electrons and incredible theoretical potential, has always been a fascinating
material, but in practice, its performance has been held back by unavoidable
disorder and electrical 'puddles' that disrupt the flow of electrons."
The proximity screening solution
The team's approach centers on proximity
screening. This technique exploits basic electrostatic principles to
significantly reduce charge inhomogeneity.
By placing an atomically flat graphite
crystal extremely close to the graphene layer, separated by just three to four
atomic layers of hexagonal boron nitride (approximately one nanometer), the
researchers created an environment where electrical disturbances are
effectively canceled out.
"The mechanism is based on a
classic electrostatic principle: image charges," Domaretskiy explained.
"Our graphite gate works in exactly
the same way, but with extreme efficiency because it's so close to the
graphene. The main source of disorder in high-quality graphene devices is
believed to be a random background of charged impurities in the surrounding
environment, which creates a bumpy electrical landscape of electron-hole
puddles."
---- The closer the gate, the more effective this
screening becomes. At the one-nanometer separation achieved by the team, this
screening reduces charge inhomogeneity by two orders of magnitude. This
represents a reduction from typical values of approximately 2 × 109 cm-2 down
to around 3 × 107 cm-2.
Superior performance
---- The enhanced quality enabled quantum phenomena at
magnetic fields as low as one millitesla, which is comparable to Earth's
magnetic field. Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations, signatures of Landau
quantization, became visible at these ultra-low fields, compared to the
hundreds of millitesla typically required in conventional graphene devices.
"This result is significant because
it fundamentally changes graphene's position in the hierarchy of quantum
materials," noted Domaretskiy. "State-of-the-art encapsulated
graphene typically requires magnetic fields of a few hundred millitesla to
begin showing clear signs of Landau quantization."
More
Proximity screening pushes graphene electronic quality to record levels
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
Repeat: Consider the average intelligence of the common man, then
realize 50% are even stupider.
Mark Twain
No comments:
Post a Comment