Baltic
Dry Index. 2480 +79
Brent Crude 63.66
Spot Gold 4226 US 2 Year Yield 3.45 +0.02
US Federal Debt. 38.339 trillion
US GDP 31.604 trillion.
“The most terrifying words in
the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
Ronald Reagan
It is the last trading day of the month in the stock casinos, an easy day to dress up stocks for the coming end to stocks gambling year end 2025.
Shame about the rapidly deteriorating real
economy though and the tsunami of AI generated firings ahead in 2026.
Asia-Pacific stocks trade mixed as Tokyo inflation
runs hotter than expected
Published Thu, Nov 27 2025 7:04 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Friday
as U.S. stock futures stayed flat over Thanksgiving Day, leaving the Nasdaq
Composite on track to end a seven-month winning streak.
Traders in Asia will parse fresh economic
data, including Tokyo’s inflation print, a leading indicator of Japan’s broader
price trends.
Headline inflation in Japan’s capital
eased to 2.7% in October from 2.8% the month before. Core inflation, which
strips out prices of fresh food but includes energy prices, came in at 2.8%,
slightly higher than the 2.7% expected by economists polled by Reuters. This
was above the central bank’s 2% target, boosting the case for a near-term rate
hike.
Investors will also watch India’s GDP for
its fiscal second quarter through September, later in the day.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.15%, while
the broad-based Topix was 0.1% higher.
South Korea’s Kospi was down 1.41%, and
the small-cap Kosdaq gained 3.4%.
Enchem, a battery materials maker listed
on the Kosdaq, surged by about 13% after South Korean media reported it had won an order from
Chinese battery maker Contemporary
Amperex Technology Limited, or CATL.
LG Energy Solution slipped over 6.2%,
making it the largest loser on the Kospi after parent LG Chem said it would pare its stake to about 70% from
its current level of almost 80%, in order to improve shareholder returns.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was marginally lower.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 0.24%,
while the mainland Chinese CSI 300 rose 0.23%.
Shares of property developer China Vanke gained 1.68%
in Hong Kong after falling to an all-time low.
India’s Nifty 50 added 0.11%, and
the BSE Sensex index climbed 0.14%.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major
indexes were little changed. Dow
Jones Industrial Average futures rose just 10 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq-100 futures traded
just above the flatline.
Stocks are on pace for a losing month when
trading resumes on Friday. A pullback in tech stocks has weighed on the major
averages in November, as doubt swirled around the future profitability of AI
companies.
Yet some investors are hopeful that this
month’s slide will signal a year-end rally for the major averages, as they step
in to buy stocks that have been unduly punished at more attractive valuations.
U.S. markets were closed Thursday for
Thanksgiving Day. The stock market will close early at 1 p.m. ET on Friday.
Asia-Pacific
stocks trade mixed as Tokyo inflation runs hotter than expected
SEC investigates Jefferies over First
Brands collapse, report says
Published Thu, Nov 27 2025 11:40 AM EST Updated
Thu, Nov 27 2025 1:02 PM EST
The U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission is investigating Jefferies’ relationship into bankrupt auto parts
maker First Brands Group, The Financial Times reported Thursday.
The newspaper, citing people with
knowledge of the matter, said the regulator is looking into whether Jefferies
gave investors enough information on its Point Bonita fund’s exposure to the
failed auto business.
The inquiry into internal controls and
potential conflicts within the bank is at an early stage, the report said. It’s
not clear whether it will result in any allegations of wrongdoing.
Jefferies came under pressure last month
after its exposure to First Brands — which collapsed under a series of complex
debt agreements — raised fears of other bad loans on Wall Street.
Shares of Jefferies are down more than 12%
this quarter and 27% this year.
When asked for comment, an SEC
spokesperson said the agency “does not comment on the existence or nonexistence
of a possible investigation.”
Jefferies did not respond to CNBC’s
request for comment.
SEC
investigates Jefferies over First Brands collapse, report says
William Hill and 888 owner Evoke to slash
thousands of jobs after budget raid
26 November 2025
The owner of William Hill and 888 warned
of thousands of job cuts after a £1.1billion raid on the gambling industry,
writes Ella Manning.
Rachel Reeves raised remote gaming duty,
levied on online casinos, from 21 per cent to 40 per cent from April.
And she lifted the levy on online sports betting from 15 per cent to
25 per cent – though horseracing was spared.
Evoke, which owns William Hill and 888,
said the raid was ‘ill-thought-through, counter-productive, and highly
damaging’.
Chief executive Per Widerstrom said: ‘It
is clear these changes will significantly harm businesses, employees and
customers.
‘We will begin immediately on executing
mitigation plans, which involve a significant reduction in investment into the
UK and, very regrettably, the likely need for thousands of jobs to be cut up
and down the country.
‘These tax changes will reduce the overall
level of tax the regulated industry pays in the UK.’
William Hill and
888 owner Evoke to slash thousands of jobs after budget raid
In other news. Invasion next?
GPS Interference Snarls Venezuela as US Warns of
Hazardous Skies
By Krishna
Karra
November 26, 2025
An invisible wall of electromagnetic noise
has descended over the Caribbean, forcing commercial flights to divert
and cancel
routes over
Venezuela since late last week. For a smartphone user on the ground in Caracas,
this interference might just mean a slow map load or a jumping blue dot. For an
aircraft cruising at 30,000 feet, the implications are far more severe.
The disruptions are increasing amid a US
military buildup in the Caribbean that’s included attacks on alleged
drug-running boats,
killing more than 80 people. The arrival this month of the world’s largest
aircraft carrier deepened uncertainty about US President Donald Trump’s
ultimate goal. And the threat of potential land strikes has prompted socialist
leader Nicolás Maduro to put Venezuela’s military on high alert.
As a result, the skies over the country
have become more and more of a no-go zone for commercial aircraft. The US
Federal Aviation Administration issued a critical warning to pilots on Nov. 20,
citing “heightened interference.” But data analyzed by Bloomberg show the
electronic disruption began surging weeks earlier, coinciding with Trump’s
naval buildup. The interference has rendered the airspace effectively
impassable to standard satellite navigation that countless systems rely upon.
GPS Jamming Surges to Levels Disrupting
Flights
The maximum amount of GNSS noise observed
weekly, compared to the same week in 2024, shows that noise has reached levels
that interfere with aircraft and satellites
Most navigation relies on the Global
Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), colloquially known as the global
positioning system. This overarching term covers American GPS, Europe’s Galileo
and Russia’s GLONASS — the invisible tethers that guide everything from modern
airliners to the smartphone in your pocket.
The scope of the disruption is visible
from space. Data from NASA’s CYGNSS constellation, which measures the
reflections of GNSS signals that bounce off Earth’s surface, capture the
pattern of jamming over the past few months compared to the same period in
2024.
Since the FAA’s warning, international
carriers including Colombia’s Avianca, Spain’s Iberia and Brazil’s Gol have
suspended flights into Venezuela. But local airlines, which are under tighter
government control, have kept flying while the domestic civil aviation
authority pressures foreign companies to restore service or risk losing landing
rights.
According to FlightAware’s live
map,
commercial aircraft have been mostly avoiding the area above Venezuela since
Friday.
“High levels of GPS interference are often
associated with military conflict zones,” said Dana Goward, president of the
Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates
for protection of critical infrastructure by promoting the security of GPS
signals.
Reports of jamming have proliferated in
eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Planes carrying top
officials have faced navigational outages, including the UK defense chief last
year and the European Commission president at the end of August.
The impact in the skies above Venezuela’s
coast right now is quantifiable. Data from Spire Global show a sharp uptick in
aircraft reporting “degraded” navigation integrity in a protocol known as
ADS-B. This system is the modern standard for air traffic surveillance,
automatically broadcasting a satellite-derived position to ground controllers
and other pilots to ensure safe distance between aircraft.
The data indicate that prior to the FAA’s
warning, more than 10% of all air traffic in the sector were flying with
compromised navigation systems.
Most commercial aviation receivers still
rely on the decades old F1 GPS signal that’s relatively weak and notoriously
easy to jam. While newer L5 signals are stronger and designed with aviation
safety in mind, the vast majority of the global fleet has yet to be upgraded.
More
Venezuela Sees
Surge in GPS Jamming Amid US Military Buildup, Forcing Flight Cancellation
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.
Is Canada in a recession? Some
answers are coming this Friday
Posted November 26, 2025
5:59 am. Last Updated November 26, 2025 11:31 am.
Canadians will gain a
better understanding of the country’s financial health later this week with
the scheduled
release of economic data from
Statistics Canada.
Several key gross domestic
product (GDP) reports are expected to be released on Friday, Nov. 28, including
figures for September and the third quarter of 2025.
The Bank
of Canada and some of the
country’s top
financial institutions are
projecting moderate GDP growth of 0.5 per cent, but some economists believe
that forecast is wishful thinking and say figures could be slightly lower.
The central bank currently
defines a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth,
measured by GDP.
In August, the
country reported a -1.6 per cent GDP decline during the second quarter of 2025, which followed a
strong 2 per cent gain in the previous quarter. Economists attribute the
decline to international trade disruptions, which have plummeted Canadian
exports.
If Canada’s GDP growth is
negative for a second quarter in a row, it could indicate that the country is
experiencing a recession.
“It’s been a long time
since we saw a protracted contraction of the economy, but it has happened
before,” economist Armine Yalnizyan told CityNews.
The last time the Canadian
economy experienced two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth was in 2020
during then COVID-19 pandemic which marked a period of business closures and
travel restrictions, along with decreases in household spending, investment and
international trade.
According to economist
Angelo Melino, the central bank’s two-quarter guideline is a general rule of
thumb used to qualify a recession, but it isn’t always a definitive
measurement.
“We rely more on the GDP
numbers in Canada than they do in the United States,” he explained. “But it
depends on how long that decline lasts and how widespread it is before we can
determine if we’re in a recession.”
In addition to teaching
economics at the University of Toronto, Melino is also a research fellow at
C.D. Howe Institute’s Business Cycle Council.
C.D. Howe Institute is a
right-leaning think tank with a stated mission to “raise Canadians’ living
standards by fostering economically sound public policies,” according to its
website. Meanwhile, its Business Cycle Council proposes the start and end dates
of recessions in Canada.
“At C.D. Howe, we look at
the average growth rate over two quarters, before we start thinking about
whether or not we’re in a recession,” Melino said.
“In 2025, it looks like we
had stronger growth in quarter one than we had in quarter two, so the average
over the first two quarters of the year is positive,” he explained. “Even if
quarter three turns out to be negative, unless it’s a steep decline that drops
the average of quarter three and quarter four, we won’t declare that a
recession.”
What to expect from Q3?
Canada’s GDP grew by 0.2
per cent in July following three consecutive months of declines. It fell again
in August by 0.3 per cent, offsetting gains made the month before. Melino
attributes the negative outcome to the Air Canada labour strike which saw more
than 10,000 flight attendants walk off the job during the summer.
When Statistics Canada
releases GDP data for the month of September later this week, Melino expects to
see slightly better figures than the previous month due in part to the end of
the strike.
“I think people expect
September to be a little bit better because of those 10,000 people going back
to work,” he explained. “Think of all those livelihoods and all the people that
were affected.”
Canada’s economy has taken
a major hit over the last year, mostly as a result of U.S. President Donald
Trump’s tariffs on major Canadian exports like autos, steel, aluminum and
lumber.
“The bottom line is the
economy is basically going sideways,” economist Don Drummond explained. “And
it’s going sideways because of the hit to our exports, which are around one
quarter of our economy.”
“And that, in turn, is
causing investment to be even weaker than it was before,” he added. “If the
government actually started to build all the housing starts they claim they’re
wanting to build, that could turn things around, but all the governments, federally
and provincially, seem to be behind their targets, so I’m not sure if that’s
going to do it.”
“I don’t think consumption
is going to take off and be strong, either,” Drummond said. “We’ve still got a
lot of households that are renewing their mortgages from these super low rates
they had in 2020 to 2022, and so far they’re doing that without defaulting on
their mortgages, but I’m sure it’s squeezing them on their discretionary
spending.”
Drummond previously held
senior positions in the federal Department of Finance and was Chief Economist
at TD Bank from 2000 to 2010. He is also an adjunct professor at Queen’s
University.
“I think we’re in for some
rough economic times, whether it’s a traditional recession or it’s a bunch of
quarters of very, very weak growth or flat growth,” he added.
While the forthcoming
Statistics Canada data is expected to provide some insight into Canada’s
economic outlook, it will be missing international trade data which the agency
receives from the U.S. Census Bureau for information on Canadian exports to the
U.S.
That data
has been delayed as a result of
the six-week U.S. government shutdown, which economists warn could lead to
larger-than-normal revisions of GDP data in the future.
Is Canada in a recession? Some answers are coming this
Friday
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.
The
world's most efficient solar cell: Chinese researchers explain how they
designed and built it
26 November 2025
Earlier in 2025, Chinese solar manufacturer Longi
announced it had built the world's most efficient solar cell. The hybrid
interdigitated back-contact (HIBC) cell achieved 27.81% efficiency, which was
verified by Germany's Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH).
Now, in a paper published in the journal Nature, researchers are sharing the
technical details of their breakthrough.
For solar technology to
deliver on its promise, solar cells and panels must convert as much sunlight as
possible into energy. Typically, standard cells achieve up to 26% efficiency,
that is, they convert 26% of the sunlight hitting them into electrical energy.
This new research brings the
technology closer to what physics will allow. For a single-junction silicon
cell, the upper limit is a little under 30%, while the theoretical ceiling,
known as the Shockley-Queisser limit, is 33.7%.
Key challenge
The researchers were able to
overcome one of the biggest obstacles in improving solar cell efficiency, known
as the fill factor (FF). This is the performance score of a solar cell, which
measures how much of the power it could theoretically generate is converted
into usable electricity.
A high FF means electricity
is flowing smoothly and efficiently, while a low FF means it is losing power
internally. This is primarily because the electricity-carrying particles are
encountering too much resistance in the wiring or crashing into each other (a
process called recombination).
Solar cell innovations
The solution to low FF
developed by the researchers was a hybrid cell made with two principal
innovations. The first was a new design for the back contacts, the electrical
terminals that collect current from the cell. The team used a laser to
crystallize the contact material, which had the effect of creating fast,
conductive pathways for the electricity, reducing resistance and improving the
fill factor.
The second innovation was
using an advanced surface treatment and a new technology called iPET (in situ
passivated edge technology), which made the cell more stable and efficient by
suppressing recombination. This included at the edges where electricity is
easily lost.
The new cell was
independently tested and certified by Germany's ISFH under strict
lab-controlled conditions. The result was an energy efficiency of 27.81% and a
fill factor of 87.55%.
"These innovations
provide both experimental and theoretical advances toward scalable,
high-efficiency silicon photovoltaics," commented the researchers in their
paper.
The next steps for the Longi
scientists are to improve the cell's electrical contacts to reduce resistance
further and to optimize the laser process so the technique is scalable for mass
production.
The world's most efficient solar cell: Chinese researchers explain how
they designed and built it
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Another
weekend and a more expensive weekend for most Brits. Poor John Bull. Have a
great weekend everyone.
“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed
enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”
Ronald Reagan
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