Baltic Dry Index. 2148 +146 Brent Crude 65.48
Spot Gold 4634 Spot Silver 75.90
US 2 Year Yield 3.52 -0.01
US Federal Debt. 38.684 trillion US GDP 31.117 trillion.
"Liquidation sometimes is orderly, but more frequently degenerates into panic as the realization spreads that there is only so much money, not enough to enable everyone to sell out at the top."
Charles P. Kindleberger, author Manias, panics and crashes.
After Friday’s rout in precious metals and cryptocurrencies, will the commodities selloff broaden out into a stock casinos selloff this week?
Are the stock casinos heading into a Black Monday?
It’s too early to tell yet, but the early action in Asia suggests great caution. A general stock casinos selloff has much more severe consequences than a rout in the much smaller commodities markets.
In the USA, a stock casino selloff risks bursting the Great AI Bubble.
Today’s stock casinos close in Europe and the USA will likely determine the stock casinos direction for the rest of the week.
South Korea stocks fall more than 4%, triggering
temporary halt on Kospi index
Published Sun, Feb 1 2026 6:55 PM EST
South Korean benchmarks tumbled Monday,
leading wider declines in the region.
The Kospi index fell more than 4%, while
the Kospi 200 futures dropped as much as 5%, prompting authorities to
temporarily halt trading, according to an official note. Index heavyweights SK Hynix
and Samsung Electronics were down 6.66% and 5.55%, respectively.
The small-cap Kosdaq lost 4.45%.
Asia-Pacific markets fell Monday as
investors assessed private data for China’s
factory activity in January, while gold extended losses from Friday.
China’s factory activity gathered speed in
January, according to a private survey released Monday, as manufacturers
accelerated production and loaded cargoes ahead of the extended Lunar New Year
holiday.
The RatingDog China General Manufacturing
PMI, conducted by S&P Global, rose to 50.3 in January from 50.1 the
previous month, in line with analysts’ expectations of 50.3 in a Reuters poll.
A reading above the 50 benchmark indicates an expansion, while one below that
suggests contraction.
That marked the strongest level since
October, when the private-surveyed PMI
came in at 50.6.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.13%,
while the Topix added 0.52%.
Hong Kong Hang Seng index declined 1.64%,
while the mainland CSI 300 is down 0.68%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 1%.
Gold and silver are in focus after
Friday’s sharp declines.
Spot gold was trading 5% lower at $4,612 per ounce, while silver slid around 4%
to $81.189 per ounce.
Silver prices, which had more than doubled
over the past 12 months, plunged around 30% last Friday, marking the metal’s
worst one-day performance since 1980. Gold also dropped around 9%.
Futures tied to the main U.S. benchmarks
fell during early Asia hours as Wall Street begins a new month of trading, with
traders keeping an eye on bitcoin after a weekend sell-off.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost
143 points, or 0.3%. S&P
500 futures dipped 0.6%, while Nasdaq-100 futures shed
nearly 1%.
Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 for the
first time since April, a sign investors were taking more risk off the table
following the sharp declines
in gold and silver.
Bitcoin last traded around $76,700.
Last Friday, U.S. stocks retreated as
technology shares remained in a funk, even as investors largely approved of
U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick of Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve.
Still, the S&P 500 squeaked out a
January gain, despite Friday’s losses and volatile trading this month. The
broad index fell 0.43% to finish at 6,939.03, its third straight down day.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average pulled
back 0.36%, to settle at 48,892.47. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite underperformed,
dropping 0.94%, to end the day at 23,461.82. All three indexes fell more than
1% at session lows.
Asia-Pacific
markets: Hang Seng Index, CSI 300, gold, silver
Stock futures fall after silver, bitcoin sell off;
questions loom over AI trade: Live updates
Updated Sun, Feb 1 2026 6:30 PM EST
Stock futures fell on Sunday night as Wall
Street begins a new month of trading, with traders keeping an eye on bitcoin
after a weekend sell-off.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost
143 points, or 0.3%. S&P
500 futures dipped 0.6%, while Nasdaq-100 futures shed
nearly 1%.
Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 for the
first time since April, a sign investors were taking more risk off the table
following Friday’s sharp declines
in gold and silver. Silver, which has more than doubled over the past 12
months, plunged around 30% on Friday. That marked the metal’s worst one-day
performance since 1980. Gold also dropped around 9%.
Bitcoin last traded near $76,000.
Wall Street also turned its attention to
Nvidia as questions over the artificial intelligence loomed.
The
Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that
Nvidia’s plans to pour $100 billion into OpenAI had stalled, with chipmaker
execs expressing doubt about the deal.
Big earnings, jobs week
More than 100 S&P 500 companies are
due to report this week, including Amazon, Alphabet and Disney. The overall
reporting season has been strong thus far, but there have been some
high-profile post-earnings sell-offs, including Microsoft.
Nonetheless, Deutsche Bank strategists
noted this weekend that earnings growth is on track to be the strongest in four
years.
Wall Street is also awaiting the release
of the January U.S. jobs report, due Friday morning. Economists polled by Dow
Jones expect 55,000 jobs were added last month.
Stocks are coming off a losing session,
with the major benchmarks falling after President Donald Trump named Kevin
Warsh as his nominee for Federal Reserve chairman. If confirmed, Warsh
would replace Jerome Powell later this year.
Stock
market today: Live updates
Gold dives 5% and silver crashes 10%, extending
sell-off in precious metals after historic plunge
Published Sun, Feb 1 2026 8:47 PM EST
Gold and silver extended their sell-off
Monday, deepening losses from last Friday’s rout as a firmer dollar and
profit-taking drains momentum from a rally that had propelled the precious
metals to record highs just days earlier.
Spot
gold lost around 5% to $4,611.4 per ounce, having crashed nearly 10%
on Friday, when prices plunged below $5,000 an ounce.
Silver, which had surged alongside gold on
safe haven demand and speculative inflows, also remained under pressure after
last Friday’s 30% nosedive that saw the metal log its worst day since March
1980.
Spot
prices of the white metal were down more than 10% at $76.1138 per
ounce as of 11.03 p.m. ET Wednesday.
According to analysts, the pullback
followed a violent reversal on Friday, when optimism around U.S. interest-rate
cuts collided with a sudden reassessment of Federal Reserve leadership after
President Donald Trump nominated former
Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to succeed Chair Jerome Powell after his term ends in
May.
“The ‘Buy America’ trade is back as a
result, and the independence bid that drove gold and silver to nosebleed record
heights right below $5,600 and $122 per ounce early Thursday morning is
unraveling,” José Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers, said in a
note on Monday.
Christopher Forbes, head of Asia and the
Middle East at CMC Markets, said gold’s sharp retreat reflects a classic
correction after an extraordinary rally rather than a breakdown in the
longer-term bullish thesis.
Gold’s retreat is a “classic air-pocket
after an extraordinary run,” Forbes said. “Profit-taking, a firmer dollar, and
fresh geopolitical headlines from Washington have knocked froth off a crowded
trade.”
The dollar index, which measures the
strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, has strengthened
about 0.8% since Thursday.
More
Gold
dives 5% and silver crashes 10%, extending sell-off in precious metals after
historic plunge
Wall St Week Ahead Heavy earnings week, jobs data
to test US stocks after Microsoft swoon
January 30, 2026 11:06 AM GMT
NEW YORK, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Another huge
batch of corporate earnings including from megacaps Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens
new tab and
Amazon (AMZN.O),
opens new tab will
test the U.S. stock market in the coming week after a disappointing report
from heavyweight Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens
new tab weighed
on equity indexes.
Wall Street also will focus on the monthly
U.S. jobs report due on February 6. This week, the Federal Reserve pointed to
signs of stabilization in the labor market as the U.S. central bank paused its
interest rate-cutting cycle.
With the stock market entering the fourth
year of a bull market, investors have been wary of rising valuations,
particularly for high-flying names benefiting from optimism over
artificial-intelligence-driven profits.
Microsoft, which has spent
massively on infrastructure to support AI applications, saw its shares
battered on
Thursday after its cloud business failed to impress, while software shares were broadly
punished amid further disappointment elsewhere in the industry.
"For those companies where
expectations have become very, very lofty, the onus is going to be on them to
deliver," said Jim Baird, chief investment officer with Plante Moran
Financial Advisors. "Even if they show growth, if it is growth that is
not up to the expectations of the market, there is a risk there that their
stock price could be punished."
Despite declining at the end of the week,
the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new
tab remained
up over 1% for the year and not far from record-high levels. The index earlier
in the week broke above the 7,000 level for the first time, before pulling
back.
Investors in the coming days will continue
to digest a series of developments on Friday, including President Donald
Trump's nomination of
former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to be the central bank's next
chair. Stunning declines
in prices of gold and silver on Friday, following huge climbs for
the precious metals, also kept markets on edge.
BIG EARNINGS WEEK ON TAP
About one quarter of the S&P 500 is
set to report quarterly results in the coming week, with strong expected U.S.
profit growth a key source of optimism underpinning bullish outlooks
for equities in 2026.
Of 166 S&P 500 companies that reported
results as of Friday, 76.5% posted earnings above analysts' expectations,
nearly in line with the 78% rate over the prior four quarters, according to
LSEG IBES. Fourth-quarter earnings are expected to have climbed 10.9% from a year
earlier.
In contrast to Microsoft, Meta Platforms (META.O), opens
new tab --
another megacap company and major AI spender -- posted strong sales in its
quarterly report that boosted its shares on Thursday.
Investors will now focus on results and
capital spending plans from Google parent Alphabet and Amazon, two other
AI-focused "hyperscalers."
"Although investor reaction to
earnings announcements from a couple of the hyperscalers was mixed, it did
confirm that capex spending on building out AI infrastructure will not see any
letup," said Sid Vaidya, chief investment strategist at TD Wealth.
Other companies set to report next week
include weight-loss drugmaker Eli Lilly (LLY.N), opens new
tab,
chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new
tab and
media giant Walt Disney (DIS.N), opens new
tab.
S&P 500 companies overall are expected to increase earnings by 15% in
2026, putting their financial outlooks under the microscope.
Wall St Week Ahead
Heavy earnings week, jobs data to test US stocks after Microsoft swoon |
Reuters
What Trump Fed chair pick Kevin Warsh may mean for
consumers
Published Fri, Jan 30 2026 12:44 PM EST
President Donald Trump has
picked Kevin Warsh to
succeed Jerome Powell as chair of
the Federal Reserve. In keeping with
the president’s push for lower interest rates, Warsh is expected to be more
supportive of cutting the Fed’s key benchmark rate later this year.
“I have known Kevin for a long period of
time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen,
maybe the best,” said Trump in a Truth Social post on Friday.
Fed board members are nominated by the
president but must be approved by the Senate. If confirmed, Warsh will
take over for Powell when his term ends in May, opening the door to a potential
change in the direction of monetary policy over the second half of 2026.
Warsh, a former Fed governor with a Wall
Street background, has been critical of the central bank’s handling of inflation in the past
and told CNBC in July that its
hesitancy to cut interest rates undermined
its credibility.
“Based on his past statements and actions
in his previous stint as a Fed Governor, Warsh was by far the most hawkish of
the four final candidates for Fed Chair,” said Brett House, an economics
professor at Columbia Business School.
----The Fed’s benchmark sets the
rate that banks charge each other for overnight lending, but also affects almost
all consumer borrowing and savings rates.
Generally, short-term rates, like credit card rates, are closely
pegged to the Fed’s benchmark. Longer-term rates, like mortgage rates, are more
influenced by inflation and other economic factors.
“There was no person who was going to get
this job who wasn’t going to be cutting rates in the short term,” David
Bahnsen, chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
In the 1970s, then-President Richard
Nixon, pressured Fed
Chair Arthur Burns to keep interest rates low — and give the economy some
gas — in the run-up to the 1972 presidential election.
That set
the stage for
runaway inflation, economists now say. Consumer prices surged in the decade
that followed and the inflation rate peaked at around
15% in
1980, which remains the highest rate since the post-World War II period.
The Fed ultimately, under new
leadership, raised
interest rates to
punishing levels to rein in inflation, leading to surging borrowing costs in
the ’80s.
“The message to households is
uncomfortable but important,” Higgins said. “Accepting shorter, more acute
economic pain now is preferable to prolonged inflation that continues to erode
purchasing power. History is unambiguous on this point.”
Trump Fed chair
pick Kevin Warsh: What the change means for consumers
In other news.
More than 200 killed in coltan mine collapse in
east Congo, official says
January 30, 2026 9:06 PM GMT
Jan 30 (Reuters) - More than 200 people
were killed this week in a collapse at the Rubaya coltan mine in eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo, Lumumba Kambere Muyisa, spokesperson for the
rebel-appointed governor of the province where the mine is located, told
Reuters on Friday.
Rubaya produces around 15% of the world's
coltan, which is processed into tantalum, a heat-resistant metal that is in
high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas
turbines. The site, where locals dig manually for a few dollars per day, has
been under the control of the AFC/M23 rebel group since 2024.
The United Nations says AFC/M23 has
plundered Rubaya's riches to help fund its insurgency, backed by the government
of neighboring Rwanda, an allegation Kigali denies.
The heavily-armed rebels, whose stated aim
is to overthrow the government in Kinshasa and ensure the safety of the
Congolese Tutsi minority, captured even more mineral-rich territory in eastern
Congo during a lightning advance last year.
More than 200
killed in coltan mine collapse in east Congo, official says | Reuters
Vietnam police seize tons of fake coffee products
made from soybeans
January 30, 2026 1:23 AM GMT
HANOI, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Police in
Vietnam have launched a criminal investigation into a warehouse accused of
producing fake coffee made from soybeans following a raid earlier this week,
the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.
The police seized 4.1 tons of fake coffee
products and 3 tons of raw materials during the raid, which took place in the
Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, the ministry said in a statement.
Vietnam is the world's largest producer of
Robusta coffee, which has a bitter taste and is used mainly in instant coffee.
The Central Highlands is the country's key coffee growing area.
Luong Viet Kiem, the owner of the
warehouse, admitted to the police that his firm mixed soybeans and flavourings
with coffee beans to produce ground coffee for the local market, according to
the statement.
Reuters couldn't immediately reach Kiem
for comment.
The police said the warehouse raid came
following a search on Tuesday of a truck carrying 1,056 bags of ground coffee
weighing 528 kilograms, which had no accompanying documentation.
Further investigations are underway, they
said.
"Fake coffee products are not rare,
and they can be made from soybean or corn, or even both," said Nguyen
Quang Tho, a coffee trader based in the neighbouring province of Dak Lak.
"Soybeans and corn are edible and a
lot cheaper than real coffee beans, but who knows if it's safe for the health
to drink these fake coffee products," Tho trader.
Farmers in the Central Highlands are
selling coffee beans at 100,500-100,100 dong ($3.86) per kg, around three times
higher than the price for soybeans.
In 2018, police in the Central Highlands
arrested five people suspected of using battery
chemicals to dye waste coffee beans and sell the mixture as black
pepper.
Vietnam exported 1.6 million tons of
coffee valued at $8.9 billion last year, up 18.3% in volume and 58.8% in value,
according to the government's customs data.
Vietnam police
seize tons of fake coffee products made from soybeans | Reuters
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.
Surprise
inflation rise triggers panic over future of UK interest rates
1
February 2025
The Bank
of England is widely expected to maintain the current base
interest rate at 3.75% in its first Monetary Policy
Committee (MPC) decision of the year, following a recent
uptick in inflation. The announcement, due Thursday, comes amid
cautious optimism about economic momentum and growing concerns about persistent
price pressures.
Recent
official data has shown that Consumer Prices Index(CPI) inflation
edged up in December, interrupting a five-month decline. The
rebound has added weight to predictions that the MPC will
pause any further reductions in borrowing costs for the time being.
Modest
Growth and Sticky Prices Challenge Further Easing
According
to Investec economist Philip Shaw, the main argument for maintaining rates lies
in the inflation figures for December, which stood at 3.4%, up
from 3.2% the month prior. This places inflation notably above
the Bank’s 2% target, even if it falls slightly below the November
forecast of 3.5%.
The
rise was driven in part by increased tobacco duties and airfare costs, as
confirmed by official statistics. While not a dramatic surge, the change
appears to have been enough to make back-to-back rate cuts unlikely.
“The principal reason to hold off from easing again is that at 3.4% in
December, inflation remains well above the 2% target,” Shaw noted.
Further
complicating the picture, wage growth continues to trouble policymakers.
According to several economists, including Matt Swannell of the EY
ITEM Club, there are lingering concerns among MPC members about sticky
wage inflation, which may help sustain broader price pressures in the
coming months. “Although the data over the last few weeks has tilted in a
slightly dovish direction, this does not appear to be anywhere near enough to
prompt a majority of the MPC to favour back-to-back cuts,” Swannell said.
More
Surprise inflation
rise triggers panic over future of UK interest rates
China
January official manufacturing PMI drops to 49.3
January
31, 2026
SHENZHEN,
China, Jan 31 (Reuters) - China's factory activity faltered in January as weak
domestic demand dragged down production at the start of the new year, an
official survey showed on Saturday.
The
official purchasing managers' index (PMI) dropped to 49.3 in January, from 50.1
in December, below the 50-mark separating growth from contraction.
It
missed a forecast of 50.0 in a Reuters poll of analysts.
Sub-indexes
of new orders and new export orders also saw declines, respectively down to
49.2 from 50.8 in December and 47.8 from 49.0 in December.
More
China January
official manufacturing PMI drops to 49.3 | Reuters
US producer prices
post biggest gain in five months, businesses passing on tariffs
January 30, 2026 1:55 PM
GMT
WASHINGTON, Jan 30
(Reuters) - U.S. producer prices increased by the most in five months in
December amid some pass-through from import tariffs, suggesting inflation could
pick up in the months ahead and allow the Federal Reserve to keep interest
rates steady for a while.
The larger-than-expected
rise in the Producer Price Index last month reported by the Labor Department on
Friday was driven by a surge in services, mostly trade services, which measure
changes in margins received by wholesalers and retailers. There were also
strong increases in the prices of hotel and motel rooms as well as airline
fares. But goods prices were unchanged.
The U.S. central bank on
Wednesday left its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell attributed the overshoot in inflation to tariffs,
adding "but there's an expectation that sometime in the middle quarters of
the year we'll see tariff inflation topping out."
"This report
validates the pivot of the Fed away from labor market risks back toward price
stability," said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency
Economics.
The PPI for final demand
jumped 0.5% last month, the biggest rise since July, after an unrevised 0.2%
gain in November, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the PPI climbing 0.2%.
In the 12 months through
December, the PPI increased 3.0% after rising by the same margin in November.
The PPI advanced 3.0% in 2025 after rising 3.5% in 2024.
The BLS is now caught up
on the PPI and Consumer Price Index releases that were delayed by the 43-day
shutdown of the federal government. Another shutdown is looming at
midnight, though it could be brief. U.S. Senate Democrats and President Donald
Trump reached a deal on Thursday that would allow Congress to pass a spending
bill that covers a wide swath of government operations, including at the Labor
Department, while they negotiate new limits on Trump's immigration crackdown.
Even if the Senate passes
the deal, it would also have to win approval from the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives, which is out of session this week. The BLS' closely
watched employment report for January is scheduled for release next Friday,
with the CPI report due a week after.
More
US producer prices post biggest gain in five months, businesses passing
on tariffs | Reuters
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.
If this works in the real world, not
just the lab, a lot more silver will be needed.
Thin layer of silver could save Li batteries from failure
Researchers at Stanford
University have developed an extremely thin silver layer for solid
electrolytes that enhances resistance to cracking.
If successfully scaled, the technology
could advance both the safety and durability of lithium metal batteries. The
study was published in Nature Materials.
A solid electrolyte, situated between
the opposing electrodes of a battery, should, in theory, facilitate a
rechargeable lithium metal battery that is safer with significantly greater
energy density and a much faster charge rate than the lithium-ion batteries
currently available on the market.
For many years, researchers and
engineers have investigated various approaches to unlock the substantial
potential of lithium metal batteries. A persistent challenge with solid,
crystalline electrolytes is the formation of tiny fissures that expand during
operation, ultimately leading to battery failure.
In this study, the researchers,
expanding on their three-year-old findings that detailed the formation and
growth of these minute imperfections, have found that annealing a very thin
layer of silver on the surface of the solid electrolyte significantly addresses
the issue.
The silver coating enhances the
electrolyte's surface strength fivefold against fractures caused by mechanical
stress. It reduces the susceptibility of existing imperfections to lithium
infiltration, particularly during rapid recharging, which transforms the nano
fissures into nano crevices, eventually leading to battery failure.
The solid electrolyte that we and others
are working on improving is a kind of ceramic that allows the lithium-ions to
shuttle back and forth easily, but it’s brittle. On an incredibly small scale,
it’s not unlike ceramic plates or bowls you have at home that have tiny cracks
on their surfaces.
Wendy Gu, Associate Professor and Study
Senior Author, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
Related Stories
“A real-world solid-state battery is
made of layers of stacked cathode-electrolyte-anode sheets. Manufacturing these
without even the tiniest imperfections would be nearly impossible and very
expensive. We decided a protective surface may be more realistic, and just a
little bit of silver seems to do a pretty good job,” said Gu.
Silver-Lithium Switch
Previous investigations conducted by
various scientists explored the application of metallic silver coatings on the
identical solid electrolyte material, referred to as "LLZO" due to
its composition of lithium, lanthanum, and zirconium atoms, along with oxygen,
which is the focus of the current study.
While prior research used metallic
silver to enhance battery efficiency, the present study employed a dissolved
form of silver that has lost an electron (Ag+). This dissolved, charged form of
silver – in contrast to metallic, solid silver – plays a direct role in
reinforcing the ceramics against the formation of cracks.
The researchers applied a
3-nanometer-thick layer of silver onto the surfaces of LLZO, subsequently
heating the samples to a temperature of 300 °C (572 °F). During the
heating process, the silver atoms infiltrated the surface of the electrolyte,
swapping positions with significantly smaller lithium atoms to a depth ranging
from 20 to 50 nm.
The silver remained in the form of
positively charged ions rather than reverting to metallic silver, which the
scientists believe is crucial in mitigating crack formation. In areas where
imperfections are present, the existence of some positive silver ions also
inhibits lithium from penetrating and developing harmful branches within the
electrolyte.
Our study shows that nanoscale silver
doping can fundamentally alter how cracks initiate and propagate at the
electrolyte surface, producing durable, failure-resistant solid electrolytes
for next-generation energy storage technologies.
Xin Xu, Assistant Professor,
Engineering, Arizona State University
Xu led the research as a postdoctoral
scholar at Stanford.
“This method may be extended to a
broad class of ceramics. It demonstrates ultrathin surface coatings can make
the electrolyte less brittle and more stable under extreme electrochemical and
mechanical conditions, like fast charging and pressure,” said Xu, one of
the researchers at Stanford working under Professor William Chueh, senior
author of the study and director of the Precourt Institute for Energy.
More
Thin layer of silver could save Li batteries from failure
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
"I know but one sure tip from a broker.... your margin
call."
Jesse Livermore, stock manipulator.
