Baltic Dry Index. 1945 -21 Brent Crude 64.71
Spot Gold 3989 US 2 Year Yield 3.60 unch
US Federal Debt. 38.150 trillion
US GDP 31.552 trillion.
“If
economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent
people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.”
John Maynard Keynes.
Another day, week, month, more AI circular bubble. What could possibly go wrong?
See today’s technology sector for the answer.
South Korea’s Kospi snaps 4-session winning streak
as Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed
Published Mon, Nov 3 2025 6:50 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Tuesday
in the absence of any major triggers, after two key Wall Street indexes rose
overnight on tech optimism.
Amazon shares
rising 4% on a
$38 billion deal with OpenAI, a move that will use hundreds of
thousands of Nvidia’s graphics
processing units. Nvidia also gained about 2% after it secured export licenses
to ship its chips to
the United Arab Emirates.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.7% as
investors awaited the Reserve Bank of Australia’s policy decision.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was 0.25% higher,
and the Topix added 0.52%. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.29% while the
small-cap Kosdaq climbed 0.24%.
Kospi has gained in 12 of the past 15
sessions, hitting
multiple fresh highs this month on the back global AI tailwinds as
well as local structural changes that are steadily eroding the long-standing
“Korea discount.”
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index edged 0.23%
higher, while mainland’s CSI 300 was flat.
Overnight in the U.S., the
tech-heavy Nasdaq advanced
0.46%, while the S&P 500 traded
up 0.17%. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average lagged, falling 0.48%.
South
Korea's Kospi snaps 4-session winning streak as Asia-Pacific markets trade
mixed
CNBC Daily Open: Outside AI, the market isn’t
looking that hot
Published Mon, Nov 3 2025 8:23 PM EST
The “everything
store” might have secured its biggest customer yet.
On Monday, Amazon announced that it had signed a $38 billion deal
with OpenAI, offering the ChatGPT maker access to Amazon Web Services’
infrastructure.
On the one hand, the move isn’t too
surprising — a continuation of OpenAI’s spending spree as it looks to secure
resources to run its power-hungry artificial intelligence models.
On the other, OpenAI’s turn to Amazon shows that the firm is
diversifying from its reliance on Microsoft, which had been its
exclusive cloud services provider until this year. That could suggest OpenAI is
getting ready for an initial public offering as it looks to signal “both
independence and operational maturity,” as CNBC’s
MacKenzie Sigalos writes.
Amazon shares surged on the news to close
at a record high. Nvidia also
had a positive day after Microsoft announced it was granted a license by the
U.S. government to export the AI darling’s chips to the United Arab Emirates.
While Big Tech is attracting investor
interest, the rest of the market has been rather lackluster.
Even as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose on the
back of the tech behemoths, more than 300 stocks in the broad-based index ended
the day lower — a warning sign that only a
narrow segment of the market is faring well.
More
CNBC
Daily Open: Outside AI, the market isn't looking that hot
Amazon-OpenAI Deal Turbocharges Tech Stocks
November 3, 2025 at 10:40 PM GMT
November, traditionally the best month
for stocks, didn’t disappoint on Monday as far as tech giants were
concerned. Amazon’s $38
billion deal with OpenAI added fuel to the artificial-intelligence
fire (or soap to the bubble, depending on your perspective),
pushing the Nasdaq skyward. The maker of ChatGPT will pay Amazon
Web Services for access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics
processing units as part of a seven-year deal. But while Amazon jumped 4%, news
elsewhere was less pleasant as more than 300 firms in the S&P
500 fell. Here’s your
markets wrap. —David
E. Rovella
Amazon-OpenAI
Deal Turbocharges Tech Stocks: Evening Briefing Americas - Bloomberg
German engineering orders plummet in September
3 November 2025
BERLIN (Reuters) -German engineering
orders plummeted in September, with a double-digit percentage decline driven by
a base effect abroad and one-off special effects last year, the VDMA
engineering association said Monday.
Overall orders dropped by 19% year on year
in September, with domestic orders down 5%, while those from abroad fell 24%.
Euro zone orders were down 13% in
September while there was a 27% decrease from non-euro zone partner countries.
The tumble was mainly due to a base effect
abroad, said VDMA chief economist Johannes Gernandt, and there were also
special effects last September due to orders for large-scale plants.
However, those drivers "should not
obscure the fact that the mechanical engineering industry continues to
experience a noticeable slump in demand and underutilisation," said
Gernandt.
This will only fundamentally resolve
itself when the many crises in global trade, such as those surrounding the U.S.
tariffs, are resolved and reforms are implemented in Germany and Europe that
really take the pressure off companies, he said.
In the less-volatile July-to-September
period, orders overall fell 6%, with domestic contracts dipping 3% and foreign
ones down 7%.
German engineering
orders plummet in September
Deutsche Pfandbriefbank Shares See Biggest Drop in
Decade
November 3, 2025 at 5:24 PM GMT
Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, a German
bank, saw its shares slump the most
in 10 years today.
The stock fell as much as 17%, the
steepest drop since July 2015, before paring losses to 11%. That leaves
the stock down about 19% since the start of the year, giving PBB a market value
of about €545 million. A spokesperson for the bank didn’t immediately have
a comment on the reason for the decline.
In June, the bank announced it is
pulling out of the US, a decade after it had embarked on an expansion that
ultimately proved damaging to its balance sheet. At the time, the firm said it
would be focusing on Europe instead as it sought to diversify by opening new
business lines rather than new geographical markets.
The ill-timed expansion into the world’s
largest economy involved amassing a large portfolio of US commercial real
estate loans. But the push backfired when the Covid-19 pandemic reduced demand
for office space. — Jennifer
Duggan
Deutsche
Pfandbriefbank Shares See Biggest Drop in Decade - Bloomberg
In other news.
Where the Nexperia auto chip crisis stands now as
the U.S., China and EU race to contain fallout
Published Sat, Nov 1 2025 11:56 AM EDT Updated Sat, Nov 1 2025 1:58 PM
EDT
Netherlands-based chipmaker Nexperia is at
the heart of a standoff between the
European Union, the U.S. and China that has triggered a near-crisis for global
automakers.
The Dutch government seized control of Nexperia,
owned by the Chinese company Wingtech,
in October, citing national security concerns. The move prompted Beijing to
block Nexperia products from leaving China.
Meetings are underway in Europe Saturday
to attempt to defuse the escalating issue, and Chinese and U.S.
authorities appear to be
opening up a pathway for
Nexperia’s China-based operations to resume exporting critical automotive
chips.
Spokespeople for the White House and
Nexperia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For now, however, the auto industry’s
supply chain still hangs in the balance.
The dispute is threatening
vehicle production worldwide as automakers warn of looming shortages of the
chipmaker’s components, which are critical to basic electrical functions in
cars and challenging to replace on short notice.
The battle has unfolded amid heightened
scrutiny of Chinese-linked tech firms from Western governments, including the
U.S., which recently tightened export-control rules to limit technology
transfers to Chinese-owned entities.
Nexperia’s owner, Wingtech, was put
on a
U.S. blacklist in
December 2024 for its alleged role “in aiding China’s government’s efforts to
acquire entities with sensitive semiconductor manufacturing capability.”
Here’s what to know about where the
dispute stands, and why it matters.
Why are Nexperia chips so important?
Nexperia manufactures billions of
so-called foundation chips — transistors, diodes and power management
components — that are produced in Europe, assembled and tested in China, and
then re-exported to customers in Europe and elsewhere. Around 70% of chips made
in the Netherlands are sent to China to be completed and re-exported to other
countries.
The chips are basic and inexpensive, but
are needed in almost every device that uses electricity. In cars, those chips
are used to connect the battery to motors, for lights and sensors, for braking
systems, airbag controllers, entertainment systems and electric windows.
Nexperia had sales of $2 billion last
year.
In late October, automakers, such as Volkswagen, Nissan Motor and Mercedes-Benz, sounded the alarm about potential
production cuts if
Nexperia’s chip exports are curtailed for long.
While automakers typically have some
stockpiles and alternative suppliers, it is difficult to switch supply sources
overnight.
What happened and where do things stand?
In September, the Dutch government invoked
a Cold War-era law to effectively take control of Nexperia, amid concerns that
its Chinese owner was planning to shift intellectual property to another
company it owned. A Dutch court also suspended Nexperia CEO, Wingtech founder
Zhang Xuezhen, citing mismanagement.
Beijing retaliated weeks later by imposing
export controls on certain Nexperia products made in China, escalating tensions
and fueling fears of a broader supply chain shock. That prompted the company to
tell carmakers it could no longer guarantee supplies.
But signs of a breakthrough have started
to emerge.
On Friday, reports said the U.S.
plans to announce that Nexperia will resume sending chips under a framework
agreement reached during talks between President Donald Trump and Chinese
leader Xi Jinping, citing sources
familiar with the matter. And on Saturday, China said it will exempt some
Nexperia chips from
its export ban. Chinese officials did not specify what those exemptions could
entail.
“We will comprehensively consider the
actual situation of the enterprise and exempt eligible exports,” The Chinese
Commerce Ministry said in a statement.
If finalized, the exemptions could ease
immediate pressure on automakers. But the broader dispute over ownership,
technology control and security oversight remains unresolved.
Where the Nexperia
auto chip crisis stands now
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.
‘Shadow
banking’ could lead us into an apocalypse like 2008
3
November 2025
It
was inevitable really. After all, the banking crash
of 2008 was 17 years ago and many of the main actors have left the stage. The
new generation cannot be expected to pay heed to the lessons from back then.
The world has moved on, live with it.
Many,
but not all. And you might suppose the current banking whizzes would be
required to absorb what unfolded and almost brought the world’s financial
system to its knees, resulting in taxpayer-funded bailouts running into
hundreds of billions and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. You would be
wrong, of course. Even though something that is taught in the City and on Wall
Street, is that everything is cyclical, what comes round comes round, shares
can go down as well as up and if it’s too good to be true that’s because it
usually is. Yeah, yeah. Save it for the old folk. We know best, we’re in charge
now.
So,
here we are less than 20 years later and the governor of the Bank of
England, who was very much around in 2008 as the Bank’s chief cashier, is
worried. Andrew Bailey has told the House of Lords Financial Services
Regulation Committee that he is beginning to see flashing warning signs. In
particular he is observing “what used to be called slicing and dicing and
tranching of loan structures”.
“If
you were involved before the financial crisis or during it, alarm bells start
going off at that point,” he said.
Those
were practices adopted by some bankers to wrap up risky sub-prime loans and
make them sellable to investors. Punters, to use their expression, thought they
were putting their cash into a financial product that was safe and secure and
it was anything but. Once economic conditions changed and borrowers were unable
to meet their repayments, the whole edifice came hurtling down — what appeared
concrete proved to be sand.
This
time the guv’nor is referring to “shadow banking” — the private credit market
where firms of money managers, not regulated banks, lend
money to businesses. The collapse of two US companies, First Brands and
Tricolor, that borrowed billions via this route, has provoked widespread
consternation, certainly among those with, as it happens, relatively short
memories.
More
‘Shadow
banking’ could lead us into an apocalypse like 2008
The
nation’s largest employers are putting their workers on notice
November
2, 2025
Amazon
and Walmart, the nation’s two largest private employers, swelled with hundreds
of thousands of new workers in recent years as they battled for larger slices
of consumer pocketbooks. Amazon said in 2021 that its workforce had grown to
more than 1.6 million people and boasted of being “the largest job-creator in
the U.S.” Walmart said last year that plans for 150 new stores would create
jobs across the United States.
Now
the retail giants are changing tack, laying off workers or keeping headcount
flat as they pledge to become leaner businesses where artificial intelligence
does more of the work.
Amazon
said this week it would cut
14,000 corporate jobs and
saw its stock jump after reporting that sales grew 13 percent in the most
recent quarter compared with last year, to $180 billion. (Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Walmart
CEO Doug McMillon warned at a company event in September that AI is set “to
change literally every job” and that his workers would have to adapt. Walmart
expects to keep its 2.1 million-strong workforce steady for the next three
years as it uses AI to evolve employees’ roles, company spokesperson Jimmy
Carter said.
The
companies are leading examples of a mindset shift across corporate America,
with chief executives presenting freezing or cutting headcount as a sign of
vitality. Some cite new efficiency unlocked by AI, even as economists are still
searching for definitive evidence of how tools such as chatbots are changing
U.S. productivity.
Workforce
contraction or stasis have traditionally been seen as indicators that a
business or economic sector is struggling or stuck but are now touted by some
corporate leaders as signs a venture is on the cutting edge. Other companies
are likely to follow Amazon’s and Walmart’s lead, citing efficiency and AI
disruption as they make layoffs or temper hiring, according to economists and
analysts.
“Sometimes
companies look for leaders, and when they see something happen with them, they
use it as a cue,” said David Smith, a professor of economics at Pepperdine
Graziadio Business School. “As more companies move into the AI space, it will
put more pressure on others to do it.”
Google’s
YouTube this week offered U.S. workers voluntary buyouts, saying it was
restructuring around AI. Last month, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs said they
planned to slow hiring as they integrate the technology, while Nestlé said it
would slash jobs over the next two years as it increased automation.
Companies
of all kinds are under pressure from investors to talk about AI and its
benefits, said Joe Feldman, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group who covers
Amazon and Walmart. “Investors are increasingly interested in how companies are
using AI or planning to use it in the future,” he said. Executives can send
positive signals to the market by showing they have a strategy and are putting
it into action, Feldman said.
But
Smith added that suggestions by some CEOs that AI alone is driving recent
layoffs or hiring freezes are unconvincing. “I see it more as economic
conditions creating pressures to cut costs,” he said, even as some firms may
also be investing more in AI. “It’s a blended narrative.”
U.S.
companies have become skittish over hiring this year as changing
trade policy has
created uncertainty and fears have grown about the strength of consumer
spending, with wealthy Americans splashing
out while
lower-income families cut
back.
The
U.S. economy has continued to grow, in
large part because
of soaring corporate
investment into data
centers that
power AI software. But when the Federal Reserve cut
interest rates this
week, it said risks to employment “rose in recent months.” Many tech firms,
including Amazon, already slashed their workforces over recent years to correct
for overexpansion during the coronavirus pandemic.
More
The nation’s
largest employers are putting their workers on notice
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.
Did China just invent the pin for the
AI circular financing bubble?
China solves 'century-old problem' with new analog chip that is
1,000 times faster than high-end Nvidia GPUs
31 October 2025
Scientists in China have developed a new
chip, with a twist: it's analog, meaning it performs calculations on its own
physical circuits rather than via the binary 1s and 0s of standard digital
processors.
What’s more, its creators say the new
chip is capable of outperforming top-end graphics processing units (GPUs) from
Nvidia and AMD by as much as 1,000 times.
In a new study published Oct. 13 in the
journal Nature Electronics, researchers from Peking University said their device tackled two key
bottlenecks: the energy and data constraints digital chips face in emerging
fields like artificial intelligence (AI) and 6G, and the "century-old
problem" of poor precision and impracticality that has limited analog computing.
When put to work on complex
communications problems — including matrix inversion problems used in massive
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems (a wireless technological system)
— the chip matched the accuracy of standard digital processors while using
about 100 times less energy.
By making adjustments, the researchers
said the device then trounced the performance of top-end GPUs like the Nvidia
H100 and AMD Vega 20 by as much as 1,000 times. Both chips are major players in
AI model training; Nvidia's H100, for instance, is the newer version of the
A100 graphics cards, which OpenAI used to train ChatGPT.
The new device is built from arrays
of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) cells that store and process data by
adjusting how easily electricity flows through each cell.
Unlike digital processors that compute
in binary 1s and 0s, the analog design processes information as continuous
electrical currents across its network of RRAM cells. By processing data
directly within its own hardware, the chip avoids the energy-intensive task of
shuttling information between itself and an external memory source.
"With the rise of applications
using vast amounts of data, this creates a challenge for digital computers,
particularly as traditional device scaling becomes increasingly
challenging," the researchers said in the study. "Benchmarking shows
that our analogue computing approach could offer a 1,000 times higher
throughput and 100 times better energy efficiency than state-of-the-art digital
processors for the same precision."
Old tech, new tricks
Analog computing isn't new — quite the
opposite, in fact. The Antikythera mechanism, discovered
off the coast of Greece in 1901, is estimated to have been built more than
2,000 years ago. It used interlocking gears to perform calculations.
For most of modern computing history, however,
analog technology has been written off as an impractical alternative to digital
processors. This is because analog systems rely on continuous physical signals
to process information — for example, a voltage or electric current. These are much
more difficult to control precisely than the two stable states (1 and 0) that
digital computers have to work with.
Where analog systems excel is in speed
and efficiency. Because they don't need to break calculations down into long
strings of binary code — instead representing them as physical operations on
the chip's circuitry — analog chips can handle large volumes of information
simultaneously while using far less energy.
This becomes particularly significant in
data- and energy-intensive applications like AI, where digital processors face
limitations in how much information they can process sequentially, as well as
in future 6G communications — where networks will have to process huge volumes of overlapping wireless signals in real time.
The researchers said that recent
advances in memory hardware could make analog computing viable once again. The
team configured the chip's RRAM cells into two circuits: one that provided a
fast but approximate calculation, and a second that refined and fine-tuned the
result over subsequent iterations until it landed on a more precise number.
Configuring the chip in this way meant
that the team was able to combine the speed of analog computation with the
accuracy normally associated with digital processing. Crucially, the chip was
manufactured using a commercial production process, meaning it could
potentially be mass-produced.
Future improvements to the chip's
circuitry could boost its performance even more, the researchers said. Their
next goal is to build larger, fully integrated chips capable of handling more
complex problems at faster speeds.
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history
counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent
that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those
who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the
present.
J. K. Galbraith.
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