Baltic Dry Index. 2023 -48 Brent Crude 61.18
Spot Gold 4440 Spot Silver 68.78
US 2 Year Yield 3.48 +0.02
US Federal Debt. 38.439 trillion US GDP 31.656 trillion.
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It is nearly Christmas and the stock casinos and commodity markets are edgy. Normally in a holiday shortened trading week, in thin trading conditions it’s easy to dress up the stock casinos higher, but supposing President Trump chooses Christmas to invade Venezuela driving oil prices higher?
And what if the AI circular investment scheme unravels?
Look away from soaring gold and silver now.
Asia-Pacific markets trade higher as investors
assess China’s key lending rate decision
Published Sun, Dec 21 2025 6:34 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets climbed Monday as
investors parsed China’s central bank’s decision to keep its loan prime rates
steady.
The People’s Bank of China kept its 1-year
and 5-year loan prime rates unchanged at 3% and 3.5% respectively, holding them
for a seventh straight meeting, in line with a Reuters survey. The one-year
rate influences most new and outstanding loans, while the five-year benchmark
affects mortgages.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.55%,
while the mainland CSI 300 advanced 0.55%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.54%
in early trade.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.58%, while
the Topix was 0.86% higher. The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate by 25
basis points to 0.75% —a three-decade high— last Friday.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.83% and the
small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.99%.
Last Friday in the U.S., stocks rose for a
second winning day, boosted by Oracle,
as the artificial intelligence trade regained its footing after experiencing
volatility.
Oracle shares were up 6.6% after
TikTok agreed
to sell its U.S. operations to a new joint venture that includes the
software giant and private equity investor Silver Lake.
The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.31%,
closing at 23,307.62. The S&P
500 added 0.88% to close at 6,834.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced
183.04 points, or 0.38%, and settled at 48,134.89.
Asia-Pacific
markets: Nifty 50, Hang Seng Index, Nikkei 225, China LPR
Stock futures rise as traders look ahead to
holiday-shortened week: Live updates
Updated Sun, Dec 21 2025 6:16 PM EST
U.S. stock futures rise on Sunday night
ahead of a shortened holiday week, as traders deliberate whether tech can
regain its footing before the year’s end.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose
by 83 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 0.2%
and 0.3%, respectively.
Wall Street is coming off a mixed week for
the major averages. A late-week surge in tech stocks helped lift the S&P
500 and Nasdaq Composite to their third winning week in four, up 0.1% and 0.5%,
respectively. The 30-stock Dow, which has outperformed this month, fell 0.7%,
snapping a three-week winning streak.
Artificial intelligence stocks enjoyed a
resurgence last week after their recent underperformance. Shares of Oracle, a
major laggard, jumped after TikTok agreed to sell its U.S. operations to a
new joint
venture that includes the software giant and private-equity firm
Silver Lake. Nvidia also made a comeback.
However, investors are watching to see
whether AI stocks can retain their leadership heading into the year-end,
especially as investors rotate into cheaper parts of the market amid concerns
about lofty tech valuations. There’s also doubt about whether a “Santa Claus
rally” will materialize, as the S&P 500 struggles to hold a key technical
level.
“My view a couple of weeks ago was an end
of year grind,” said Justin Bergner, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. “And I
think that’s become an end of year churn.”
The New York Stock Exchange will close
early on Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET on Christmas Eve and will be closed Thursday
for Christmas Day.
Stock
market today: Live updates
Oil up on news the US intercepted an oil tanker
off Venezuela
December 22, 2025 4:35 AM GMT
SINGAPORE, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Oil prices
rose on Monday after officials said the U.S. had intercepted an oil tanker in
international waters off the coast of Venezuela, raising fresh supply
uncertainty.
Brent crude futures rose 46 cents, or
0.8%, to $60.93 per barrel by 0400 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate
crude climbed 46 cents, or 0.8%, to $56.98.
"The market is waking up to the fact
that the Trump administration is taking a hardline approach to the Venezuelan
oil trade," said June Goh, senior oil market analyst at Sparta
Commodities.
"Oil prices have thus been supported
by this geopolitical news alongside the simmering Russian-Ukraine tensions in
the background in an otherwise very bearish market fundamentally," said
Goh.
The U.S. Coast Guard is pursuing an
oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela, in what would be the second
such operation over the weekend and the third in less than two weeks if
successful, officials told Reuters on Sunday. The White House did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
A rebound in oil prices has been sparked
by geopolitical developments starting with U.S. President Donald Trump's
announcement of a "total and complete" blockade on sanctioned
Venezuelan oil tankers and subsequent developments there, followed by reports
of a Ukrainian drone strike on
a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, IG analyst Tony
Sycamore said.
"The market is losing hope that the
U.S.-brokered Russia-Ukraine peace talks will reach a lasting agreement any
time soon," he said.
"These developments are helping to
offset ongoing oversupply concerns, and combined with the false break lower
last week which has caught the market on the wrong foot, the balance of risks
is very close to shifting back toward the upside in crude oil."
Brent and WTI fell about 1% last week
after dropping about 4% in the week of December 8.
More
Oil
up on news the US intercepted an oil tanker off Venezuela | Reuters
Data center deals hit record $61 billion in 2025
amid construction frenzy
Published Fri, Dec 19 2025 4:15 AM EST Updated
Fri, Dec 19 2025 5:59 AM EST
Global data centers dealmaking surged to
hit another record high this year, driven by a rush to build out the
infrastructure required for energy-intensive AI workloads.
That surge came even as investors grew
increasingly wary of inflated artificial intelligence valuations and the
financing underpinning the rapid expansion of data centers. Global stocks sold off in November
as worries of an AI-fueled bubble persisted.
But S&P Global reported that more than
$61 billion has flowed into the data center market this year, up slightly from
$60.8 billion last year, amid what it called a “global construction frenzy.”
A surge in debt financing contributed to
the record high as hyperscalers increasingly tap private equity markets rather
than funding the expensive infrastructure themselves.
That trend has sparked concerns from some
investors as they question the value
of the advanced tech that
data centers house.
Shares of cloud company Oracle fell 5% on Wednesday
following a report that Blue Owl Capital was pulling out of
a deal to
back a $10 billion data center in Michigan. Oracle has denied the report,
but Broadcom, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices retreated
after it was published. The Nasdaq Composite lost 1.81%
in its worst day in nearly a month.
Iuri Struta, TMT analyst at S&P
Global Market Intelligence, said his team expects market concerns around AI and
Oracle to be temporary and unlikely to have a “massive impact” on data center
buildout and M&A in the near future.
“The competitive dynamic among frontier AI
model providers, like OpenAI, Alphabet and Anthropic, is changing quickly, and
this can have an impact on investor sentiment in public markets. But overall,
we see demand for AI applications continuing to grow strongly in 2026.”
Despite the recent pullback in AI stocks,
many analysts remain bullish on the sector. ING expects secular trends to point
to healthy investment levels in 2026 driven by AI advancements and growing
public and private support for digital innovation.
More
Data center deals
hit record amid AI funding concerns grip investors
Fed’s Hammack says there’s no need to change
interest rates for months, WSJ reports
Published Sun, Dec 21 2025 8:11 AM EST Updated
Sun, Dec 21 2025 8:22 AM EST
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
President Beth Hammack said she saw no need to change U.S. interest rates for
months ahead after the central bank cut borrowing costs at its last three
meetings, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Hammack opposed recent
rate cuts as she is more worried about elevated inflation than the
potential labor-market fragility that prompted officials to lower rates by a
cumulative 75 basis points over the past few months, the report added.
Hammack told the Journal that the Fed
didn’t need to change its benchmark interest rate, currently in a range between
3.5% and 3.75%, at least until the spring.
By then, Hammack said, it would be able to
better assess whether recent goods price inflation was receding as U.S.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs
are more fully digested through the supply chain, the report said.
Hammack said that November’s
consumer price index of 2.7% probably understated 12-month price
growth due to data distortions, the report added.
“My base case is that we can stay here for
some period of time, until we get clearer evidence that either inflation is
coming back down to target or the employment side is weakening more
materially,” Hammack told the Journal in a podcast interview recorded on
Thursday, citing inflation concerns.
Speaking at an event in Cincinnati earlier
this month, Hammack said she wanted to focus on high inflation and that she
would prefer monetary policy to be tighter.
Hammack said the current policy rate was
right, around a neutral level, but would prefer a slightly more restrictive
stance to help put more pressure on inflation.
Hammack will be a voting member of the
FOMC next year, which oversees important decisions regarding monetary policy
and interest rates.
Fed
Hammack says no reason to change interest rates for months
In other news.
Nine of the largest pharma companies ink deals
with Trump to lower drug prices
Published Fri, Dec 19 2025 2:32 PM EST Updated
Fri, Dec 19 2025 5:14 PM EST
Several of the largest U.S. and
European-based drugmakers inked deals with President Donald Trump on Friday
to voluntarily
sell their medications for less, as his administration pushes to link the nation’s
drug prices to
cheaper ones abroad.
That includes Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Amgen, Gilead, GSK, Sanofi, Roche’s Genentech, privately-held Boehringer
Ingelheim and Novartis. In exchange, the
companies agreed to a three-year grace period during which their products won’t
face Trump’s planned pharmaceutical-specific tariffs — as long as the
drugmakers further invest in U.S. manufacturing.
Among the most notable pledges on Friday
is that Bristol Myers Squibb will offer Eliquis, its blockbuster blood thinner
and top-prescribed product, for free to Medicaid.
The companies make up the majority of the
17 drugmakers Trump sent letters to in July, calling on them to lower prices as
part of his “most favored nation” policy. Trump signed an executive
order in
May to revive that policy, calling for prices to be increased outside of the
U.S. and to “end global freeloading.”
“As of today, 14 out of the 17 largest
pharmaceutical companies ... have now agreed to drastically lower drug prices
for … the American people and the American patients,” Trump said at an event on
Friday. “This represents the greatest victory for patient affordability in the
history of American health care, by far, and every single American will
benefit.”
Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie and Regeneron are the
remaining companies among the largest that haven’t signed drug pricing deals.
But Trump noted that Johnson &
Johnson “will
be here next week.”
How the drug pricing deals will work
The full terms of the deals were not
immediately released, which makes it unclear how broad their impact will be.
The nine drugmakers agreed to take
measures to reduce U.S. drug prices, including selling their existing
treatments to Medicaid patients at the lowest “most favored nation” prices, and
guaranteeing that pricing for new medicines. Trump said the drugmakers also
agreed to list their most popular drugs on his upcoming direct-to-consumer
website, TrumpRx, which is launching in January.
Some companies also launched new or
expanded existing direct-to-consumer offerings for certain drugs. For example,
Gilead said in a release that it will launch a program that will enable
patients to access its hepatitis C treatment and cure, Epclusa, at a discounted
price.
Sanofi said it will offer discounts of
nearly 70% on certain medicines to treat infections and cardiovascular and
diabetic conditions on TrumpRx and other direct-to-consumer platforms.
Merck said it will offer three diabetes
medications, Januvia, Janumet and Janumet XR, at a roughly 70% discount to
cash-paying patients through a direct-to-patient program. That program will be
extended to the company’s experimental daily cholesterol pill if it gets
approved in the U.S., according to the company.
More
Nine pharma
companies ink deals with Trump to lower drug prices
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.
US
coffee drinkers face higher prices even after Trump's tariff reset
December
19, 20252:17 PM GMT
LONDON,
Dec 19 (Reuters) - U.S. coffee lovers hoping President Donald Trump's tariff
rollbacks last month will soon lower the cost of their daily caffeine hit had
better think again.
The
widespread import tariffs imposed by Trump mostly over the summer, which
included top coffee producers such as Brazil, boosted the price of raw coffee
beans. But the added costs are mostly still filtering through supply chains and
have yet to reach consumers, according to brokers, traders and industry
experts.
High
U.S. retail coffee prices have, in other words, been driven mostly by last
year's coffee bean supply shortages, which spurred a doubling in raw bean
prices in the 12 months to March.
"Most
of the (retail) price increases we've seen so far are not in response to
tariffs. (They're) associated with the record high (raw bean) market that we've
been in since last year," said independent coffee analyst Christopher
Feran.
Feran
and other industry experts estimate it takes at least nine months for raw bean
prices to filter through to coffee drinkers, partly due to roasting times and
price negotiations, meaning it could be well into next year before prices
retreat.
Coffee
drinkers in the U.S., the world's biggest coffee consumer, will have to swallow
higher prices for longer. And the White House will have a tricky job trying to
cool food inflation before the U.S. 2026 November midterms.
Trump,
under pressure from Democratic wins in New Jersey, New York and Virginia linked
to voter frustration
over rising food prices, last month rolled back "reciprocal"
tariffs of between 10-41% on over 200 food
items that
cannot easily be grown in America, such as coffee.
He
also exempted non-native food items from an additional 40%
tariff on imports from Brazil, which supplies the U.S. with around a
third of its beans.
'COFFEE
PRICES RISE MORE QUICKLY THAN THEY FALL'
Raw
bean prices account for at least 40% of the cost of producing a bag of roast
and ground coffee. They rose sharply last year as the market was unable to
bounce back from three seasons of production deficit linked to adverse weather.
Most
industry experts expect a coffee production surplus in the current and upcoming
2025/26 and 2026/27 October to September seasons which should, alongside the
tariff removal, soften raw bean prices and eventually feed through to U.S.
consumers.
But
this will take time, analysts say, because U.S. roasters typically hold about
two to three months' worth of bean stocks on average and need another two to
three months to roast and package their products.
They
also tend to negotiate prices with retailers only on a quarterly basis.
In
other words, very little of the 18.8% rise in U.S. retail coffee prices in the
year to November is due to tariffs.
And
the near 35% rise in raw bean prices between August and November when most of
Trump's tariffs were in place, is still to hit coffee on supermarket shelves.
Also, since Trump's tariff reversal, raw bean prices have fallen just 6%.
More
US coffee drinkers face higher
prices even after Trump's tariff reset | Reuters
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.
2025
officially a record year for UK solar power generation
The
amount UK power generated by solar this year has surpassed previous records by
some margin, according to official new figures.
Published 19th December 2025
The new findings show a 30% rise in
energy generation from the sun alongside other records this year, based on data
supplied by the National Energy System Operator (NESO).
An estimated 18,314GWh of solar
electricity was generated in 2025, smashing the previous record of 14,067GWh in
2024, according to NESO’s historic generation mix and carbon intensity
dashboard.
Solar Energy UK (SEUK) says the steady
growth of solar energy in the UK has significantly contributed to the country’s
electricity grid supplies having their second lowest carbon intensity ever this
year – averaging only 125g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour, down from a
peak of 444g recorded 16 years ago.
The surge was also helped by the UK
recording 1,622 hours of sunshine over the 12 months to December – the highest
amount since official Met Office records began in 1910.
The new figure smashes the previous high
of 1,587 hours recorded in 2003. Scotland saw its second sunniest year in 2025,
while Wales recorded its sixth. Meanwhile, sunshine in Northern Ireland was
well above the long-term average.
The leap in solely generation is also
attributed to an 18% surge in capacity in 2025 – jumping from 20.2GW to around
23.8GW by the end of the year.
Approximately 650MW of installed
capacity is projected from distributed small-scale systems on residential
rooftop installations, while an additional 450MW is anticipated from
medium-scale deployments on commercial and industrial building rooftops.
Utility-scale ground-mounted solar farms
are expected to contribute to around 2.5GW of capacity.
Chris Hewett, Chief Executive of Solar
Energy UK, says the market is “now supplying six times more hydropower, more
than half of the output from nuclear, and a quarter of the power generated from
natural gas”.
He added: “With capacity set to rise to
almost 60GW over the coming decade, we are guaranteed to see records tumble
each year, putting the nation on course for cheaper, cleaner power.”
Other 2025 records suggest solar power
is rapidly becoming the cheapest form of energy in the UK. A report, published
by standards body the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), showed the
number of smaller-scale solar rooftop installations surpassed an annual record
of 203,125 that had remained since 2011, based on 250,000 reported
installations.
More
2025 officially a record year for UK solar power generation - edie
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just
the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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