Spot Gold 3984 US 2 Year Yield 3.60 +0.02
US Federal Debt. 37.846 trillion
US GDP 30.320 trillion.
Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
George Orwell
More AI hype, but is First Brands the real stock casino future? There’s never just one cockroach. Does anyone remember Greensill?
Shares of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics hit
record highs on AI boost
Published Thu, Oct 9 2025 7:37 PM EDT
Shares of South Korean chipmakers SK Hynix
and Samsung Electronics hit record highs Friday, after a near-weeklong holiday,
boosted by a series of artificial intelligence deals.
SK Hynix shares jumped 10% while Samsung
Electronics rose nearly 6% to hit fresh records, according to data from
FactSet.
The two companies are set to benefit from
an OpenAI and Advanced Micro Devices deal that could see Sam Altman’s company
take a 10% stake in
AMD. Shares of AMD rallied on the news and are up more than 40% so far this
week.
Nvidia shares are also up 2.6% this week,
after CEO Jensen Huang told
CNBC that demand has risen in recent months. Huang also confirmed the
company’s involvement in funding Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup,
xAI, and said that he’s “super excited about the financing opportunity they’re
doing.”
Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Friday,
tracking Wall Street declines as investors assessed the state of the economy.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 0.33% while
the Topix declined 0.92%. South Korea’s Kospi added 0.66% after coming back
from a holiday. The small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.37%.
Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 lost 0.26%.
The Hang Seng Index slid 1%, while
mainland China’s CSI 300 lost 1.01%.
Overnight, the three major averages
declined. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite pulled back
from fresh all-time intraday highs on Thursday, with both indexes taking a
breather from their gains in the previous session as the U.S. government
shutdown continues.
The broad market index dropped 0.28% to
close at 6,735.11, while the tech-heavy index slid 0.08% to finish at
23,024.63. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average, meanwhile, declined 243.36 points, or 0.52%, to close
at 46,358.42.
Asia-Pacific
markets: Nikkei 225, Kospi
Stocks close lower as S&P 500, Nasdaq retreat
from record highs
Updated Thu, Oct 9 2025 4:21 PM EDT
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite pulled back
from fresh all-time intraday highs on Thursday, with both indexes taking a
breather from their gains in the previous session as the U.S. government
shutdown continues on.
The broad market index dropped 0.28% to
close at 6,735.11, while the tech-heavy index slid 0.08% to finish at
23,024.63. At their highs of the day, the S&P 500 added 0.2%, and the
Nasdaq was up 0.1%. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, declined 243.36 points, or 0.52%, to
close at 46,358.42.
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were
coming off a record-setting session Wednesday, with the former notching its
eighth winning day of the last nine and the latter ending above the 23,000 mark
for the first time ever. The Dow,
on the other hand, finished slightly below flat Wednesday as blue-chip stocks
lagged. But Nvidia helped
the 30-stock index restrict losses, rising more than 2% in the prior trading
day after CEO Jensen Huang told
CNBC that computing demand has “gone up substantially” this year.
“Obviously the market has had a relentless
surge from the April meltdowns that keep showing signs that some people believe
that the stock market is overheated, making calls for some type of breather at
a time when the classic dip buying strategy continues to remain firmly in
place,” said David Wagner, head of equities at Aptus Capital Advisors. “This
market just continues to grind up. It’s just some under-the-hood rotation going
on that can cause some intraday volatility or effect.”
Software vender Oracle was a bright spot
Thursday, along with fellow AI play Nvidia, which secured a new all-time high.
The two names moved 3% and almost 2% higher, respectively. The pair had
suffered losses earlier this week after a report said that Oracle’s cloud business
is suffering
from thinner margins as it faces challenges with renting out Nvidia
chips.
“The market is trying to dissect or
decipher which partnerships are going to see the best return on invested
capital, and you’re seeing a rotation amongst some of those players that seem
to have that circularity theme,” Wagner also said.
Investors were eyeing the latest
developments with the current government shutdown, which moved into its ninth
day Thursday. The Senate failed
for a seventh time to pass dueling funding proposals, with little sign
that Republicans and Democrats are making progress on negotiations. Those on
Wall Street are watching to see if the stoppage will hit the U.S. economy, and
some impacts may have already started to materialize.
On Wednesday, the IRS said that it
was going
to furlough nearly half of its workforce as a result of the shutdown.
On top of that, a shortage
of air traffic controllers has led the Federal Aviation Administration
to delay U.S. flights.
More
Stock
market news for Oct. 9, 2025
IMF chief warns of economic uncertainty and offers
this advice: 'Buckle up'
8 October 2025
The global economy is holding up better
than expected despite major shocks such as President Donald Trump's tariffs, but
the head of the International Monetary Fund says that resilience may not last.
“Buckle up,” Managing Director Kristalina
Georgieva says
in prepared remarks to a think tank Wednesday. “Uncertainty is the new normal
and it is here to stay.”
Her comments at the Milken Institute come
on a day when gold prices hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time as investors
seek safe haven from a weaker dollar and geopolitical uncertainty and before
the IMF and World Bank hold their
annual meetings next week in Washington. Trump's trade
penalties are expected to be in sharp focus when global finance leaders and
central bankers gather.
The worldwide economy is forecast to grow
by 3% this year, and Georgieva is citing a number of factors for why it may not
slip below that: Countries have put in place decisive economic policies, the
private sector has adapted and the tariffs have proved less severe than
originally feared.
“But before anyone heaves a big sigh of
relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested. And
there are worrying signs the test may come. Just look at the surging global
demand for gold,” she says in her prepared remarks.
On Trump's tariffs, she says “the full
effect is still to unfold. In the U.S., margin compression could give way to
more price pass-through, raising inflation with implications for monetary
policy and growth."
The Republican administration imposed
import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, including Canada,
Mexico, Brazil, China and even the tiny African nation of Lesotho. “We’re the
king of being screwed by tariffs,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office during
a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
While the U.S. has announced some trade
frameworks with nations such as the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the tariffs
have created uncertainty worldwide.
More
IMF chief warns of
economic uncertainty and offers this advice: 'Buckle up'
JP Morgan boss joins dire warnings from BoE and
IMF about looming stock market crunch
October 9, 2025
The boss of JP Morgan has joined warnings
that an AI-driven stock market bubble could
be about to burst.
Jamie Dimon said he was 'far more worried
than others' about the risk of a serious correction - suggesting it could even
happen in the next six months.
The grim message, in an interview with
the BBC, came after
the Bank
of England and IMF both raised
concerns about inflated valuations.
They made comparisons to the Dotcom
bubble, suggesting any sudden shift in sentiment could hammer global
growth.
Mr Dimon, who runs the US's biggest bank,
said a 'lot of things' were creating an atmosphere of uncertainty.
He pointed to risk factors including
geopolitical volatility, fiscal strains on governments, and a remilitarisation
drive.
'All these things cause a lot of issues
that we don't know how to answer,' he said.
'So I say the level of uncertainty should
be higher in most people's minds than what I would call normal.'
He suggested a correction could happen
within the next six months to two years. 'I am far more worried about that than
others,' he said.
Much of the surge in tech stock values has
been driven by expectations that AI will revolutionise the economy and society.
But Mr Dimon said it was 'probable' that
some investors would lose money.
'The way I look at it is AI is real, AI in
total will pay off,' he said.
'Just like cars in total paid off, and TVs
in total paid off, but most people involved in them didn't do well.'
He added some of the money being invested
in AI would 'probably be lost'.
Yesterday the Bank of England's
Financial Policy Committee (FPC) drew comparisons between the current stock
market and the mania for so-called 'Dotcom' stocks 25 years ago.
And they said share valuations 'appear
stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial
intelligence'.
More
JP Morgan boss
joins dire warnings from BoE and IMF about looming stock market crunch
First Brands Collapse Blindsides Wall Street,
Exposing Cracks in a Hot Corner of Finance
October 9, 2025
(Bloomberg) -- In hindsight, the telltale
signs of trouble were piling up: the Zoom calls where the owner kept his camera
off; the angry pushback from his brother when investors asked for invoices to
back up their loans; the frequent late payments to suppliers; and the whispers
of large off-the-books financing arrangements.
That so few outside of First Brands had a
full view of all the red flags around the auto-parts supplier before it
imploded spectacularly late last month, stands as a stark example of the
growing risks of money flooding into the opaque world of private financing. How
it operated, where it got its money and even the people running it were largely
a mystery.
By the time it all came crashing down, the
company’s sprawling network of auto-parts factories and distribution centers
was on the hook for over $10 billion to some of the biggest firms on Wall
Street: Jefferies, UBS and Millennium, among others.
While the full extent of the damage — and
what exactly went wrong — remains unclear 11 days after First Brands declared
bankruptcy, the stakes were raised on Wednesday night when one of First Brands’
financial partners made an emergency court filing calling for an independent
investigation into $2.3 billion tied to the company it said had “simply
vanished.” Federal prosecutors are now looking into the circumstances around
the bankruptcy, though the inquiry is in the early stages, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
In the meantime, the repercussions are
rippling through the financial industry and beyond.
Raistone, the company that called for the
investigation, and that had facilitated First Brands’ short-term borrowing,
derived 80% of its revenue from First Brands and has already cut roughly half of its employees. The O’Connor hedge
fund unit owned by UBS is facing such significant losses that Cantor Fitzgerald
is now trying to renegotiate the terms of its acquisition of the
business.
Jefferies is facing redemption requests
from investors who had money in a hedge fund arm of the bank, Point Bonita
Capital, which had a quarter of one of its portfolios — some $715 million —
tied to First Brands. The situation is a particular threat to Jefferies’ reputation because the bank also
helped First Brands sell a significant chunk of its long-term loans over the
past decade.
These firms are hardly blameless, industry
observers say. Platforms like Raistone have come under scrutiny for giving risky companies such easy access
to short-term funding, and asset managers have faced criticism for sending money through these platforms
with too little oversight.
“There has been so much demand for these
assets that people have lost sight of doing diligence before they invest,” said
Joseph Sarachek, a bankruptcy lawyer who teaches at NYU Stern business school.
“But diligence is perhaps more important than ever when the company is
privately held.”
This article is based on interviews with
more than a dozen investors, vendors and former employees who declined to be
identified because many of the details are confidential. First Brands and
Raistone did not respond to requests for comment. Jefferies, UBS, Millennium
and Cantor declined to comment.
---- ‘Black Box’
As more details come to light, investors
are grappling with their role in a web of opaque financial transactions that
suddenly fell apart once it became clear that the company’s liabilities were
larger than disclosed. The “black box” as creditors have called First Brands,
reveals the increasingly important world of closely-held companies that have
grown up as investors shifted money away from public markets and into private
deals that offer only scant details to regulators, credit ratings agencies and
even their own investors. The rushed bankruptcy is the latest sign that cracks may
be developing in the facade of this rapidly expanding corner of the financial
industry.
These risks are no longer confined to Wall
Street. First Brands got hundreds of millions in short-term funds through
Yieldstreet, a firm that packages exotic, alternative assets into products for
individual investors. Even curious customers who dug into the Yieldstreet documents only learned that their money was going to a
“global conglomerate” nicknamed Mango. Yieldstreet said it stopped funding
First Brands last year, and said their customers did not lose money.
“Counterparty confidentiality is standard
in our offerings, and many similarly structured offerings from other firms, and
commercial borrowers often require it as a financing condition,” the company
said in an email.
More
First
Brands Collapse Blindsides Wall Street, Exposing Cracks in a Hot Corner of
Finance
In other news, more sparring between the USA
and China.
Trade War Monitor
8 October 2025
The latest salvo from the U.S. Commerce
Department closes a significant loophole, extending strict export controls to
any majority-owned subsidiary of a blacklisted firm. This move widens the net
of U.S. restrictions, making it vastly more difficult for designated Chinese
tech giants to operate through corporate affiliates.
At the same time, top Trump administration
officials have declared a new industrial policy goal: to slash the nation’s
reliance on advanced semiconductors from Taiwan by half, a monumental effort to
decouple America’s most sensitive supply chain from a geopolitical flashpoint.
But this is not a one-sided affair. China
is mounting a sophisticated counter-strategy focused on attracting talent and
rerouting capital. As the U.S. makes it more expensive to hire high-skilled
foreign workers, Beijing is rolling out a new “K-visa” tailored specifically
for young, foreign STEM professionals.
And as U.S. tariffs bite, Chinese firms
aren’t just weathering the storm — they’re creating a new one. A surge of
investment is flowing into Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, as companies
pivot to build new manufacturing hubs outside the direct line of fire,
fundamentally redrawing the map of global production.
---- Closing the subsidiary loophole
The U.S. government is tightening its
export controls, extending restrictions on blacklisted companies to any
subsidiaries in which they hold a majority stake.
Any company that is 50% or more owned by
one or more of the entities on the U.S.' "Entity List" will be
subject to the same export restrictions, according to a new rule issued on
Sept. 29 by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security
(BIS).
The change, which closes what the BIS
called a “significant loophole,” also applies to firms majority-owned by
entities on the “Military End-User List” and certain sanctioned entities.
Previously, a company was not subject to the controls unless it was specifically
named on a list, regardless of its affiliation with a restricted entity.
U.S.’ chip reshoring
Top Trump administration officials have
declared a push to dramatically reduce U.S. reliance on advanced semiconductors
from Taiwan, with a target of producing up to half of the nation’s supply
domestically or in allied countries.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnick said the
goal is for 50% of the advanced chips America needs to be made within its own
borders. His comments, made in an interview with News Nation this weekend,
echoed U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s remarks last week that 30% to
50% of the U.S. supply must be shifted to the U.S. or to allies such as Japan
and countries in the Middle East.
The policy drive represents a significant
effort by the new administration to reconfigure the global semiconductor supply
chain, motivated by national security concerns over Taiwan’s near-monopoly on
production. Taiwan currently makes 95% of the world’s most advanced chips.
More
Trade War Monitor:
U.S. Tariffs Drive Chinese Companies to Malaysia
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.
The
Unofficial Jobs Numbers Are In and It’s Rough Out There
In
a federal data blackout, Wall Street numbers and surveys are filling the void
Oct.
8, 2025 5:30 am ET
A
host of alternative jobs data from Wall Street are pointing in the same
direction: The U.S. labor market is losing steam.
These
numbers are getting more attention while the federal government shutdown keeps
the lights off at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, delaying new data in an unsettled
time for the jobs market.
In
the federal data void, Bank of America this week
said it is seeing signs of rising unemployment and slowing job growth in its
customers’ data. Private-equity company Carlyle Group, extrapolating
from companies in which it owns stakes, said Tuesday that it thinks overall
U.S. jobs growth slid in September from an already weak official reading in
August. Goldman
Sachs said
its measure of labor-market tightness fell last month back to levels seen in
2015, indicating a tough landscape for job seekers.
These
follow a report from payroll processor ADP
last week that
said U.S. employers shed private-sector jobs last month.
These
and other alternative
data sources have
their drawbacks—they often only cover a small share of the labor force and
using them to estimate the state of the broader job market can be tricky. These
numbers don’t always match with government data, though the government numbers
themselves have seen some steep revisions lately as the BLS
struggles with falling response rates to its surveys.
Still,
the nongovernment numbers are telling the same basic story about a job market
that has cooled since the spring: Few companies are hiring.
“The
employment numbers have clearly deteriorated,” said Jake Oubina, senior
economist at Piper
Sandler.
Profit margins are down because of tariffs, and that makes companies less
likely to hire, he said.
Economists
and investors are closely watching nongovernment data while the federal
shutdown delays important federal data releases, including a September jobs
report that was supposed to come out last Friday. That report, one of the key
U.S. economic indicators, helps set the course for the Federal Reserve’s
interest rate policy. The Fed last month lowered
interest rates by
a quarter percentage point and indicated more cuts are coming while citing weak
hiring.
The
good news is that few people are getting laid off while the U.S. unemployment
rate, last released for August, remained low. Piper Sandler tallied state-level
unemployment claims and found they remained low last week. Outplacement firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas said job-cut announcements fell in
September.
Lower
immigration means fewer jobs need to be added to keep unemployment steady,
said Jason Thomas, Carlyle Group’s head of global research and investment
strategy. Considering this, the labor market is “probably pretty healthy,” he
said.
Still,
Carlyle’s own data suggest hiring has slowed significantly. The firm estimated
that U.S. employers added 17,000 jobs in September, down from an already
weak 22,000
in August.
Carlyle draws its estimates from head-count and business volumes data among the
firms where it has some ownership, which it weights based on how they
correlated with the BLS jobs report in the past.
Bank
of America parses its customers’ bank and credit card accounts to see who is
receiving wages or unemployment benefits to gauge the state of the labor
market. The bank found a “further softening” in job growth in September and a
10% rise in unemployment payments in October compared with a year ago, although
wages also rose.
Elsewhere,
the Institute for Supply Management, a professional organization that polls
supply-chain executives, found that services employment shrank in September.
That marked the fourth straight month of declines.
Other
surveys show signs of a worsening climate for job seekers. In a survey of
consumers by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, respondents put the odds of
finding a job in the next three months at 47.4% last month, up slightly from
August but also well below the trailing 12-month average of 51%.
The
think tank Conference Board’s labor differential, the share of survey
respondents who say jobs are plentiful minus the share who say jobs are hard to
get, fell in September.
The Unofficial
Jobs Numbers Are In and It’s Rough Out There - WSJ
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.
Bamboo-derived
biodegradable plastic is as durable as the real thing
October
07, 2025
Bamboo
plastic sounds like a compelling eco-friendly material for a variety of
applications, but its questionable
durability and recyclability leave a lot to be desired.
Researchers at Northeast Forestry University in Harbin,
China have a solution: their new method for producing bamboo-based plastic
results in a stronger material that can compete with traditional plastics, and
can also degrade in soil in less than two months.
That's a big step up over bamboo plastic composites
used to make household items like serveware and cutlery that you might have
seen in a local store.
These usually feature a bamboo fiber-based filler
surrounded by an epoxy resin or similar polymer matrix. Those may look like
more sustainable options over regular plastic, but the use of plastic matrices
make them hard to recycle.
The scientists' new solvent-mediated molecular
engineering strategy uses a two-step process to create a better bamboo
molecular plastic. First, bamboo cellulose is dissolved using a non-toxic
alcohol solvent. Then it's treated to trigger the cellulose chains to pack
tightly together, producing a strong and stable plastic that can be shaped and
formed in many different ways for use in automotive and infrastructure
applications.
Indeed, the team's study, which appeared in Nature Communications this week, notes the bamboo plastic displays a tensile strength and work of fracture
(force required to fracture a material) higher than that of traditional
plastics. Plus, it fully breaks down in soil, and can alternatively be recycled
in a closed loop so you get a material with 90% of the strength of the
original. How's that for a sustainable alternative to oil-based plastics?
Source:
Northeast Forestry University via Scimex
New bamboo plastic
offers eco-friendly durability
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
Another
weekend and finally an end to the 2 year atrocity in the Gaza Ghetto? If so,
will President Trump finally get his long coveted Nobel Peace Prize? If not this year, next year? Have a great
weekend everyone.
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good,
and not quite all the time.
George Orwell
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