Baltic
Dry Index. 2560 +80
Brent Crude 63.54
Spot Gold 4258 US 2 Year Yield 3.47 +0.02
US Federal Debt. 38.352 trillion
US GDP 31.611 trillion.
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
Otto von Bismarck
December, the final month of the Great Disconnect of 2025 between AI stocks and a faltering real global economy.
A very troubled 2026 lies ahead whether the US central bank cuts its key interest rate on December 10th or not.
2026 threatens to bring in the start of the global tsunami of AI layoffs, just as the AI 2025 bubble pops.
In 2026 politics, the US mid-term election, UK higher taxes, a German recession; France in political and economic stalemate; China’s economy in rising distress and commodity inflation surging.
Toss in rising EV battery fires and the collapse of EV auto sales, and much of the global consumer public will probably wish they could miss out on 2026.
Asia markets open December mixed as China factory
activity weakens unexpectedly
Published Sun, Nov 30 2025 7:07 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets opened December mixed
Monday as traders parsed fresh manufacturing data from China and rising
expectations of a U.S. Federal Reserve rate cut this month.
Traders are pricing in an 87.4% chance of
a quarter-point rate cut for the upcoming Fed meeting on Dec. 10, according to
the CME FedWatch Tool.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index added 0.81%,
while the mainland CSI 300 was up 0.75%.
China’s
factory activity unexpectedly contracted in November, according to
a private survey released Monday, as soft domestic demand
continued to cast a pall over the world’s second-largest economy.
The RatingDog China General Manufacturing
PMI, conducted by S&P Global, dropped to 49.9 in November, missing
analysts’ expectations of 50.5 in a Reuters poll. A reading above the 50
benchmark level suggests an expansion, while one below that indicates
contraction.
The gauge follows official data released
Sunday showing China’s factory activity improving slightly to 49.2 in
November, but remained in contraction for the eighth consecutive month.
Services weakened as the lift from earlier holidays faded.
Hong Kong-listed firms with exposure to
digital assets plunged after the People’s Bank of China warned of illegal activities tied to digital
currencies and the resurgence of speculation, according to a statement released
by the central bank Saturday.
Stocks of Jack Ma-backed Yunfeng Financial and Bright Smart Securities
& Commodities Group tumbled more than 7%, while Guotai Junan fell as much
as 3%.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 1.82%,
and the Topix index retreated 1.08%. Among the bottom movers on the Nikkei 225
index were electrical equipment company Fujikura, down 8.11%, Sumitomo Pharma, which fell
5.82% and Advantest,
which declined 4.74%.
South Korea’s Kospi index was up 0.11%,
while the small-cap Kosdaq advanced 1.46%.
Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 declined
0.45%.
India’s Nifty 50 added 0.33%, and the
Sensex index was 0.38% higher.
U.S. equity futures were little changed in
early Asian hours after a winning week.
On Friday stateside, Wall Street came back
from the Thanksgiving holiday for a shortened trading session. The Nasdaq Composite advanced
0.65% to end the day at 23,365.69, scoring its fifth straight day of gains.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 gained 0.54% to
settle at 6,849.09. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average grew 289.30 points, or 0.61%, to finish at
47,716.42.
Asia-Pacific
markets: China PMI RatingDog data, Fed rate cut
Wall Street Week Ahead: Investors on watch for AI,
economic updates as US stocks steady
29 November 2025
Investors will look in the coming week for
signals about profitability for artificial intelligence companies, as well as
the broader economy's health, to steady the U.S. equity market.
Stocks rebounded this week from their
biggest pullback since April, helped by a firming conviction that the U.S.
Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December. But some of the market's
heavyweight shares remained volatile. Big moves in Nvidia and Alphabet, for
instance, were driven by developments in AI.
Equities are poised to maintain this
sensitivity, investors said, after concerns about overheated valuations took
some of the steam out of a trade that has propelled markets higher this year.
"The narrative surrounding the
profitability of AI is coming under question," said Matthew Maley, chief
market strategist at Miller Tabak. "If that becomes a bigger issue as we
move through December, that's going to be a big problem for the market."
WATCHING FOR SIGNS OF RISK APPETITE WANING
The benchmark S&P 500 is up about 16% in 2025, heading into a year-end
period that tends to be strong. December ranks as the index's
third-best-performing month, with a 1.43% average gain since 1950, according to
the Stock Trader's Almanac. However, investors are wary of signs of waning risk
appetite. Among them is the slide in bitcoin, which in recent days has dropped
below $90,000 from over $125,000 in early October.
----Wall Street was also watching fallout
from a rush of debt issuance by major tech companies to fund their AI
expansions.
"Investors are starting to rethink
how quickly some of this ... is going to have an impact on bottom lines,"
said Paul Nolte, senior wealth adviser and market strategist at Murphy &
Sylvest Wealth Management. Investors' spotlight this week fell particularly on
Alphabet, which had been seen as an AI laggard but whose shares have soared in
recent months, pushing its market value up to around $4 trillion. The Google
parent has won strong early reviews for its new Gemini 3 AI model. A report this
week that Meta Platforms was in talks to spend billions of dollars on Google's
chips rattled shares of semiconductor giant Nvidia, which has been the darling
of the AI trade.
ECONOMY IN FOCUS
Economic releases in the coming week cover
manufacturing and services activity, and consumer sentiment. Earnings reports
are also due from cloud software provider Salesforce and retailers including
Kroger and Dollar Tree as a generally strong third-quarter reporting season for
U.S. companies comes to a close.
Investors will be eager for any clues
about the economic backdrop from those reports, as well as from early
indications about holiday consumer spending following Black Friday and Cyber
Monday retail sales events.
Many of the data releases that investors
rely on to gauge the economy's health have been delayed or canceled due to the
43-day U.S. government shutdown that ended this month.
It may not be until releases arrive in January that investors get a more complete view of the economy, said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial.
"Investors are going to have to deal
with this fog ... through year-end," Saglimbene said. Despite the cloudy
economic picture, traders have increased bets the Federal Reserve will cut
rates at its December 9-10 meeting following comments from several central bank
officials indicating willingness to ease policy.
More
Wall Street Week
Ahead: Investors on watch for AI, economic updates as US stocks steady
In other news, commodity news.
Goldman Sachs polled institutional investors on
gold, and found many expect it to hit $5K next year
Published Fri, Nov 28 2025 10:46 AM EST Updated
Fri, Nov 28 20251 0:57 AM EST
Gold has been on a tear this year, and now
a Goldman Sachs survey shows
many investors think the precious metal will hit a new all-time high of $5,000
by the end of 2026.
Gold prices have rallied 58.6%
year-to-date, and broke through the landmark $4,000 level for the first time on
Oct. 8.
In a survey of more than 900 institutional
investor clients on Goldman Sachs’ Marquee platform, 36% of respondents — the
largest cohort — expect gold to maintain its momentum and exceed $5,000 per
troy ounce by the end of next year.
A further 33% expect the commodity to
reach between $4,500 and $5,000, according to the poll, which was conducted
between Nov. 12-14.
More than 70% of institutional investors
see gold rising next year, Goldman Sachs said. In contrast, just over 5% of
those polled see prices pulling back to between $3,500 and $4,000 over the next
12 months.
Gold prices advanced to a
two-week high
on Friday, boosted by hopes of a Federal Reserve rate cut, with spot prices rising 0.45% to
$4,175.50. Gold futures were trading
up 0.53% at $4,187.40.
In the survey, 38% of respondents
highlighted central bank buying of gold as the main driver of its price rise,
while 27% said it was fiscal concerns.
More
Goldman Sachs
investor poll shows many expect Gold to top $5k in 2026
Silver hit record highs in 2025 – here’s why the
‘Devil’s metal’ has further to run
Published Sat, Nov 29 2025 1:05 AM EST
Silver, often nicknamed the ‘Devil’s
metal’ because of its volatility, has reached record highs this year and still
has further to run despite a supply crunch, according to experts.
The metal’s growth value has been running
alongside gold’s, which has seen its own rally with the price surging past $4,000 an
ounce this year.
Silver prices reached a historic peak of
$54.47 per troy ounce in mid October, marking a 71% rise
year-on-year. They’ve
since pared back gains somewhat, but are now growing again, despite low supply
levels.
“Some people were having to transport
silver by plane rather than on cargo ships to meet delivery demand,” Paul Syms,
head of EMEA ETF Fixed Income and commodity product management at Invesco, told
CNBC.
“While we’ve seen the spike up, we’ve seen
the price come down a little bit. Longer term, there’s a different dynamic this
time that could keep silver at reasonably high prices and maybe continuing to
go up for some time to come,” he added.
October was only the third
time in
the past 50 years where silver prices peaked. Other silver price highs include
January 1980, when the Hunt
brothers amassed a third of the world’s supply as they
attempted to corner the market, as well as 2011, following the U.S. debt
ceiling crisis when silver and gold were embraced as safe haven assets.
“Silver is only about a tenth the size of
the gold market, and that short squeeze, obviously, sort of caught a few
investors by surprise,” said Syms.
Unlike the previous investment waves,
silver’s boom in 2025 relied on a mix of low supply and high demand from India
as well as industrial needs and tariffs.
“After Liberation Day, the gold price
spiked, but silver actually went down a little bit. And the gold-silver ratio
spiked to above 100,” said Syms, referring to the gold-silver ratio which
reflects how many ounces of silver are needed to buy one ounce of gold.
A low ratio means gold is relatively
cheap, while a high ratio indicates silver is undervalued and likely to rise.
In April, the ratio reached a historic
high.
“The risk managers in financial and
industrial entities did not want to let any metal go out of the States for fear
that it might come back in at 35% higher for example,” said Rhona O’Connell,
head of market analysis EMEA and Asia at Stone X.
Fast forward to the Autumn and silver
entered its peak demand, especially as India’s monsoon and harvest seasons came
to an end.
“Farmers don’t really like the banks very
much, so gold and latterly, silver, tend to be the first port of call when
they’ve got the harvest in,” said O’Connell.
India is also the world’s
largest consumer of silver, with about 4,000 metric tons used every year, mostly
for jewelry, utensils and ornaments.
The silver appeal this Autumn also
coincided with Diwali, a five-day ‘Festival of Lights’ celebrating prosperity
and good fortune and also India’s biggest public holiday.
Supply crunch
While gold is traditionally a favorite,
this year silver — an affordable investment option in a country where about 55%
of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood — outshined other
metals.
On Oct. 17, the price of silver in India
rose sharply, reaching a record high of 170,415 rupees a kilogram — an 85%
rise since the start of the year.
However, 80% of India’s silver supply is
imported. The UAE and China are increasingly supporting that demand, but the
U.K. is traditionally India’s largest silver supplier.
Yet, London’s vaults have been emptying
rapidly for the past few years. In June 2022, the London Bullion Market
Association held 31,023 metric tons of silver. By March 2025, volumes had
fallen by around a third to 22,126 metric tons — its lowest point in years.
“What isn’t necessarily so visible to
people is what’s happening in the vaults,” said O’Connell. “And that had
reached a point where there was basically there was no available metal left in
London.”
More
Silver hit record
highs in 2025 and still has further to run
Copper price in London hits new high amid bullish
calls
November 28, 2025 | 9:42 am
Copper prices in London hit a fresh high
on Friday in the wake of bullish calls by participants of this week’s industry
gathering in Asia.
Three-month LME futures rose as much as
2.5% to a record $11,210.50 a ton, before pulling back below the $11,000 level.
The surge comes after miners, smelters and
traders met in Shanghai this week, with discussions focused on a tightening
market.
The jump also came after Kostas Bintas,
the high-profile head of metals at Mercuria, renewed his
bullish prediction for
prices, warning that a rush to ship metal to the US risks draining the rest of
the world’s inventories.
“This is the big one,” he said in an
interview at the end of an industry conference in Shanghai. “If the world keeps
going like this, we will be left without copper cathodes in the rest of the
world.”
Natalie Scott-Gray, a senior metals
analyst at StoneX Financial, said Bintas’ bullish call comes “against a
backdrop in which we already, for year-end, have a perfect storm bull
narrative,” citing the impact of tariffs, an improving macroeconomic outlook
and supply disruptions.
Meanwhile, US copper futures also rose 2%
to as much as $5.3095 per lb., as the Comex resumed trading after suffering
from one of its longest outages in years. Earlier this year, copper prices on
the exchange surged to a record $5.9585 per lb. in anticipation of US tariffs
on the metal.
Copper price in
London hits new high amid bullish calls - MINING.COM
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.
Bessent
sees no 2026 recession but warns on weak sectors
November
28, 2025
The
Biden-era fear that the United States was drifting toward a downturn in 2026
has given way to a very different message from the current economic team.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is signaling that he sees solid growth ahead,
even as he cautions that parts of the economy are still struggling with the
legacy of high rates and uneven demand. His argument is simple but
consequential: the country can avoid a broad recession in 2026, yet households
and investors should not mistake that for a painless expansion.
That
mix of optimism and warning is shaping expectations on Wall Street and Main
Street alike. I see Bessent's outlook as a bet that fiscal and monetary shifts
will keep the overall economy afloat, while pockets of weakness in housing,
rate‑sensitive industries and services could define how Americans actually
experience the year.
The
case for no recession in 2026
Scott
Bessent has been explicit that he does not expect the United States to fall
into recession in 2026, framing the coming year as one of continued growth
rather than contraction. In interviews and public comments, he has argued that
the expansion remains intact and that the economy is not at risk of entering a
downturn in 2026, a view he has tied to the resilience of consumers and the
labor market. On Nov 22, 2025, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S.
was not at risk of entering a recession in 2026 and that Americans would
continue to see an improving backdrop, a stance reflected in coverage that
described him as confident the country would avoid a slump in
2026.
That
message has been consistent across platforms. In remarks highlighted on social
media, Bessent was quoted as saying there would be "no recession in
2026," pairing that forecast with support for a bigger SALT deduction and
other policies aimed at easing the cost of living for working families. The Nov
22, 2025 comments, shared in a clip that emphasized his upbeat tone,
underscored that he sees tax and cost‑of‑living relief as part of the toolkit
that keeps growth on track, with Nov and SALT cited as key markers of the
policy debate BESSENT:
"NO RECESSION IN 2026".
Optimism
rooted in policy and growth drivers
Bessent's
confidence is not just rhetorical, it is grounded in a specific view of how
policy will shape the next year. He has pointed to tax cuts, monetary easing
and targeted investments as the main engines of 2026 growth, arguing that these
forces will more than offset the drag from earlier disruptions. Reporting on
the administration's outlook has described 2026 growth as being driven by tax
cuts, easing and investments despite $11 billion in shutdown losses, with
officials quoted as saying these moves will have a positive impact on price
stability and the broader expansion, a view captured in a piece published By
Kwak Chang that cited Nov 22, 2025 as the moment this forecast was laid
out Published
2025.11.24.
Monetary
policy is central to that story. As rate cuts begin to filter through to
borrowing costs, Bessent has argued that the combination of cheaper credit and
targeted fiscal relief will support both business investment and household
spending. He has also stressed that the administration's approach is meant to
give working families more breathing room, tying the push for a larger state
and local tax deduction to a broader effort to ease the cost of living. In his
Nov comments, he framed these measures as part of a mix of policies aimed at
helping Americans manage inflation and benefit from the recovery, a stance that
aligns with his broader claim that there is no recession risk for the U.S.
economy as a whole after an $11 billion hit from a shutdown no
recession risk for US economy as a whole.
More
Bessent sees no
2026 recession but warns on weak sectors
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.
Balancing
battery safety and sustainability: Why it’s a non-negotiable priority for data
centers
Battery
safety is a cornerstone of data center reliability and resilience. The time to
act is now
November 29, 2025
Data centers are the backbone of modern
digital infrastructure, powering everything from cloud computing to
mission-critical enterprise applications, and now artificial intelligence
learning and inference. Beyond the computing and data storage lies the heart of
these facilities: UPS + batteries – silent yet essential components that
ensure continuity during power outages and stabilize energy and power delivery.
Despite their importance, battery safety
sometimes receives less attention than other more attention-grabbing headlines
like cooling systems or cybersecurity. Having this level of oversight can lead
to catastrophic consequences and costly downtime. Batteries serve as the
foundation of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, stepping in when the
primary power source fails. They maintain uptime during outages, support energy
efficiency initiatives, and increasingly integrate with renewable energy solutions.
Both lead-acid and lithium-ion are the primary chemistries used, each with its
specific pros and cons.
As I have talked before, no single
chemistry is a perfect solve-all-problems solution. Lithium-ion batteries are
gaining in popularity, favored for their high energy density and compact
footprint. However, their widespread adoption introduces new safety challenges
that operators must address proactively.
As data centers scale and adopt advanced
energy storage technologies, prioritizing battery safety is no longer optional
– it’s a strategic imperative. As you will see below, relying on experts
is critical, so I turned to my network of battery professionals to help shed
some light on this growing topic.
As we have seen over the last few years,
these safety incidents at data centers are recurring, with the latest examples
below:
- South Korea Government Data Center Fire (2025): A lithium-ion
battery fire event during UPS maintenance triggered thermal runaway,
destroying 384 batteries and crippling 647 government systems for nearly a
week. Recovery took almost a month, with damages exceeding ₩22.4 billion
(approx. $17 million USD).
- Hillsboro, Oregon Data Center Fire (2025): A fire involving
lithium-ion batteries burned for five hours, producing toxic smoke and
resisting traditional suppression methods. Fire crews had to let the
battery bank burn out, exposing gaps in emergency response protocols for
large-scale battery fires.
- Digital Realty Singapore Fire (2024): A lithium-ion battery
malfunction caused a two-day fire, disrupting operations for major
clients. The incident highlighted the risks of inadequate fire prevention
in battery rooms.
Dawn New, SVP of Strategy at CellBlock
FCS and a long-time battery safety subject matter expert, says:
“These incidents are part of a
documented pattern – the 2022 SK C&C fire that brought down KakaoTalk
in South Korea, the 2023 Maxnod facility fire in France, and now these 2025
disasters. Lithium-ion batteries are projected to account for between 40-50
percent of the data center battery market by 2025, up from 15 percent in 2020,
yet our safety infrastructure hasn't kept pace.”
In summary, battery systems can pose
significant risks if not properly managed. Thermal runaway conditions
– where battery cells overheat uncontrollably – can lead to fires or
explosions. Damaged batteries may leak chemicals, creating environmental
hazards and health risks for personnel. Dawn also goes on to say:
“Fire authorities reported the only
effective methods involved dousing batteries with large volumes of water or
submerging them in tanks, approaches incompatible with data center operations.”
More
Approx
16 minutes.
Changan's "No Fire" LIE! Dealership Turns to Ash, EVs
Melt to Skeletons & "Safe" Batteries Fail
Changan's "No Fire" LIE! Dealership Turns to Ash, EVs Melt to
Skeletons & "Safe" Batteries Fail
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.
Otto von Bismarck
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