Baltic
Dry Index. 2633 +66
Brent Crude 94.83
Spot Gold 4790 Spot Silver 79.56
US 2 Year Yield 3.72 +0.01
US Federal Debt. 39.144 trillion
US GDP 31.345 trillion.
This Time it’s different – Stocks.
In the global stock casinos, hopium still rules. In the global economy, rising supply chain disruption.
Later today, US retail sales figures for March. Our first indication of how Trump’s Iran war might be impacting US consumers although the April figures will be more accurate.
Trump’s intended lightning war is turning into Rusia’s lightning war on Ukraine.
Coming soon, the Great Crash of the Global Economy? A Democrat sweep of the House and Senate in November?
South Korea’s Kospi hits record high amid mixed
Asia markets as hopes linger for Mideast peace
Published Mon, Apr 20 2026 7:44 PM EDT
South Korea’s Kospi hit a record high
Tuesday while the broader Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed, amid hopes for a
resolution to the Middle East conflict, even as tensions between Iran and the
U.S. continue to simmer.
“Trump, by imposing a siege and violating
the ceasefire, seeks to turn this negotiating table— in his own imagination—
into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering,” Iran’s
parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a X post.
“We do not accept negotiations under the
shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new
cards on the battlefield,” Ghalibaf, who is also Iran’s top negotiator, added.
This comes after President Donald Trump on Monday said
“lots of bombs [will] start going off” if no deal is reached before a
shaky ceasefire with
Tehran expires Tuesday evening, threatening Iran with
overwhelming military force.
The threats come even as a U.S. delegation
prepared to return to Pakistan for a potential second round of peace talks.
Investors
remain bullish on the broader picture ahead for equities. Ohsung Kwon,
chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo, said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime”
on Monday afternoon. “I think the economy is going to be fine for the next
three months.”
West Texas Intermediate futures
for May delivery was 1.14% lower at $88.59 per barrel as of 11:55 p.m.
ET. Brent crude futures
for June delivery fell 0.59% to $94.92 per barrel.
South Korea’s Kospi hit a an intraday high
of 6,367.46, thanks to strong gains in tech stocks. Index heavyweight Samsung
Electronics rose 1.4%, while semiconductor manufacturer SK Hynix gained 4.46%.
The small-cap Kosdaq index, however, was flat.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 1.21%,
while the Topix was marginally higher. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gave up
early gains and was down 0.28%.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 index was trading
0.35% lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang
Seng index gained 0.12%. Victory Giant, one of Nvidia’s
printed-circuit-board suppliers, debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,
advancing 60% after raising about HK$20.1 billion ($2.57 billion) in the city’s
largest IPO since Zijin
Gold last September.
India’s Nifty 50 was
0.43% higher.
S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures added
0.12% and 0.23%, respectively. Futures
tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 70 points, or 0.11%.
Overnight, the S&P 500 shed 0.24% to
close at 7,109.14, while the Nasdaq
Composite declined 0.26% to finish at 24,404.39, with the latter
snapping its 13-day winning streak — its longest positive streak since 1992.
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average lost 4.87 points, or 0.01%, settling at 49,442.56.
Asia
markets-today-nikkei225-hangseng-sensex-asx-iran-us-trump
Oil Rises, Stocks Fall as Wall Street Doubts Peace
Bid
April 20, 2026 at 11:21 PM GMT+1
The news for the energy industry wasn’t
pleasant Monday. Bloomberg reported that Kuwait declared a further force
majeure on shipments of crude oil and refined products, acknowledging it
would not be immediately able to meet its full obligations to
customers even when the Strait of Hormuz reopens.
State-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. invoked
the legal clause, which allows it not to fulfill contract terms because of
circumstances outside its control, at the start of the US-Israel war with Iran.
With strait traffic at a near-standstill, storage tanks in the region continue
to fill up as global oil
markets enter uncharted territory. The new notice by Kuwait is the
latest dark signpost for a Gulf industry being brought to its knees by a
conflict now approaching the two-month mark.
There were a few hints
of potential progress toward peace today. But amid US and Iranian
attacks on civilian shipping this weekend, the stream of threats and
unconfirmed assertions by Donald Trump and a teetering ceasefire nearing its
end, oil jumped on Monday and stocks fell as optimism for a quick resolution
apparently faded
in markets. Brent oil futures rose 5.6% to settle near $95.50 a barrel,
while European gas climbed
as much as 11%. Meanwhile China, which has become more vociferous in its
call to end the war, again
urged a cessation of hostilities. —David
E. Rovella
Oil
Rises, Stocks Fall on War Fears: Evening Briefing Americas - Bloomberg
Trump threatens Iran again as ceasefire deadline
looms, U.S. gears up for peace talks
Published Mon, Apr 20 2026 12:31 PM EDT Updated
Mon, Apr 20 2026 2:55 PM EDT
President Donald Trump on Monday again
threatened Iran with
overwhelming military force, saying “lots of bombs [will] start going off” if
no deal is reached before a shaky ceasefire with
Tehran expires Tuesday evening.
The latest threat, made in a phone call
with a PBS News reporter, came as the status of additional
U.S.-Iran peace talks, and other key details on the current relationship
between the warring powers, have grown increasingly opaque.
At the same time, Trump has resumed his
saber-rattling rhetoric, which had escalated two weeks ago before the expiring
fragile ceasefire was reached. Trump, in phone calls with reporters over the
past two days, has vacillated between warmongering and offering unclear details
about further negotiations.
Specifics about a potential deal also
remain fuzzy. The Trump administration has stated repeatedly that Iran must
never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, and the president said Friday that
the U.S. would also get what he has referred to as the “Dust” left after last
year’s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites.
He has also demanded that Iran fully
reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic, which has slowed to a trickle
since the war began on Feb. 28. The de facto closure of the key shipping route
has sent global oil prices spiraling,
giving Iran a major source of leverage and spurring the U.S. to impose a
retaliatory naval blockade of Iran’s ports in the middle of the ceasefire.
Trump in a Truth Social post Monday afternoon boasted that the
blockade is “absolutely destroying Iran” and declared that it will not be
lifted until a deal is struck.
In another post, the president insisted
that the deal being made with Iran “will be FAR BETTER” than the Obama-era agreement
known as the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump scrapped during his first term in
office.
Trump, while lashing out at his perceived
critics, also stated he does not feel obligated to cut a deal within six weeks,
his initial prediction for the length of the war. “I’m not going to let them
rush the United States into making a Deal that is not as good as it could have
been,” Trump wrote.
Monday’s threat of more bombing followed a
Sunday morning declaration to a Fox
News reporter that “the whole country is going to get blown up” and
that if Tehran doesn’t sign a deal, Iran’s bridges and power plants will be
targeted in those attacks.
The threats escalate tensions with Iran
even as a U.S. delegation gears up to travel back to Pakistan for a potential
second round of peace talks.
The delegation “plans to travel to
Islamabad soon,” a source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Monday morning
on condition of anonymity to discuss the trip.
The information, which implies the
delegation has yet to depart, came after Trump told a New York Post reporter Monday morning that U.S.
officials are “heading over now.”
A first round of talks in Islamabad
earlier this month, led by Vice President JD Vance and
U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, ended with no
deal after a 21-hour negotiating session.
Trump confirmed to the New York Post that
the same three officials are part of the round two delegation.
It was not immediately clear if Iran has
agreed to participate in further peace talks.
More
Trump
threatens Iran before ceasefire deadline, possible peace talks
Gulf Disruptions Worsen Sulfur Shortage; Copper,
Nickel Costs End Higher
Export bans and rising costs strain miners
as fertilizer demand takes priority
April 20, 2026 14:02 +08
The Iran war has already caused turmoil in
the global aluminium market but now the fallout is spreading to both copper and
nickel supply chains.
The conduit is sulfur, a by-product of the
Gulf's oil and gas industry that has been effectively trapped since the Strait
of Hormuz closed on February 28. The region accounts for around a quarter of
global production, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Sulfuric acid is a key input for copper
miners using solvent-extraction technology on oxide ores and for nickel
production from high-pressure-acid-leach (HPAL) plants.
Supply Squeeze Widens across Metals
Unfortunately for metals producers, sulfur
is also used for fertilizers, a sector that accounts for around two-thirds of
global demand and one which governments will prioritize over everything else.
China, the world's largest sulfuric acid
producer, will ban exports from next month. Turkey has already done so, and
India is considering doing the same. The result is an intensifying sulfur
squeeze with prices rallying to record highs.
Around a fifth of global primary refined
copper production comes from solvent extraction and electrowinning (SX-EW)
operations, which use sulfuric acid as a leaching reagent, according to the
International Copper Study Group.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is
particularly exposed. SX-EW technology accounts for around half of copper
production in the world's second-largest producer, and the country relies on
the Gulf for the majority of its sulfur imports.
Miners are already cutting consumption to
eke out chemical stocks as import prices surge, and some shipments are
cancelled altogether.
Copper and Nickel Face Mounting Pressure
China's export ban threatens similar
problems for Chilean producers. Chile generates around 1.125 million metric
tons of copper through the SX-EW process and relies on China for around 20% of
its sulfuric acid requirements.
The leaching process is slow, which means
there will be a time-lag before any tangible hit to production rates. Chile
also generates its own sulfuric acid as a by-product of copper smelting,
providing some cushion against import disruptions.
More
Gulf
Disruptions Worsen Sulfur Shortage; Copper, Nickel Costs End Higher
Next, what happened before Trump’s Gulf blockade killed
any prospect of a reopened Strait of Hormuz.
More than 20 vessels pass Strait of Hormuz on
Saturday, Kpler data shows
Reuters
Mon, April 20, 2026 at 3:51 AM GMT+1
SINGAPORE, April 20 (Reuters) - More than
20 vessels passed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, data from shipping
analytics firm Kpler showed, the highest number of ships crossing the waterway
since March 1.
• Among the vessels that made it through
on Saturday, five of them last loaded cargoes from Iran ranging from oil
products to metals. Three of them are liquefied petroleum gas carriers with
one each heading to China and India.
• Panama-flagged tanker Crave, carrying
LPG from the United Arab Emirates, is heading to Indonesia.
• Two of three tankers - Akti A and
Athina - carrying refined products loaded from Bahrain and are heading to
Mozambique and Thailand, respectively.
• Liberian-flagged tanker Navig8
Macallister is shipping about 500,000 barrels of UAE's naphtha to Ulsan in
South Korea.
• Two of three tankers - Akti A and
Athina - carrying refined products loaded from Bahrain and are heading to
Mozambique and Thailand, respectively.
• Liberian-flagged tanker Navig8
Macallister is shipping about 500,000 barrels of UAE's naphtha to Ulsan in
South Korea.
• Liberian-flagged Very Large Crude
Carrier Fpmc C Lord is carrying about 2 million barrels of Saudi crude and
heading for Mailiao port in Taiwan.
• Indian-flagged Desh Garima loaded with
about 780,000 barrels of UAE's Das crude is heading to Sri Lanka.
• Vessel Ruby carrying Qatari fertiliser
is heading to the UAE.
• Bulk carrier Merry M is carrying
petroleum coke loaded from Saudi Arabia to Ravenna in Italy.
More than 20
vessels pass Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, Kpler data shows
In other news.
Bank of England to hold urgent crisis talks as new
system could drain Britain's cash machines
19 April 2026
A powerful new artificial intelligence
tool could allow hackers to break into bank systems and even drain cash
machines remotely.
Cybersecurity experts warned this weekend
that the technology poses a serious and growing risk.
The Bank of England is preparing to hold
crisis talks with leading lenders this week as concerns grow about the threat
AI systems pose to the global financial system.
Banks will be given early access to test
their digital security against the new technology, which experts say represents
an unprecedented risk to financial infrastructure.
"Banks need to wake up," said
Radi El Haj, head of payment systems firm RS2.
The technology at the centre of these
concerns is Claude Mythos, a sophisticated AI bot created by Anthropic, a
Silicon Valley startup.
The system sent shockwaves through
cybersecurity circles this month after the company revealed it had
independently discovered previously unknown flaws in all major operating
systems and web browsers.
Anthropic has deemed the tool so potent
that it has limited access to only a select group of technology giants and
international banks, giving them an opportunity to strengthen their defences
before potential threats emerge.
British financial institutions are now set
to stress-test their cyber protections against this powerful new system.
Some of the security flaws uncovered by
the AI date back as far as 27 years, leaving companies exposed to a new
generation of cyberattacks that can be executed at speeds no human hacker could
match.
Banks face particular vulnerability
because many continue to depend on ageing technology for their core operations.
COBOL, a programming language dating from
the 1960s, remains the backbone of modern banking despite its age, processing
trillions of pounds in transactions daily including nearly all cash machine
withdrawals.
"You're reverse-engineering business
logic from systems built when Nixon was president," Anthropic noted in a
recent blog post.
The vulnerabilities within COBOL and
connected systems prove exceptionally difficult to repair because the original
programmers have either died or left the workforce, while documentation remains
scarce.
Only a handful of universities still teach
the language, and Anthropic has warned that locating engineers capable of
reading the code grows more challenging with each passing quarter.
Should this technology reach criminal
hands, experts fear a dramatic rise in "jackpotting" attacks, where
hackers seize control of ATM systems and force them to dispense their entire
cash contents on command.
Unlike traditional theft, jackpotting
drains the machines themselves rather than individual customer accounts.
Bank governor Andrew Bailey stated that
regulators would examine "very carefully" what the latest development
could mean for cybercrime risks.
The Bank of England is coordinating its
response with the Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the National
Cyber Security Centre.
Its Cross Market Operational Resilience
Group will convene this week with major lenders and other financial
institutions to assess the Anthropic developments.
The Government's AI Security Institute has
tested the technology and concluded it represented "a step up over
previous frontier models".
Across the Atlantic, US Treasury secretary
Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell have similarly
cautioned Wall Street banks about the system's capabilities.
Bank of England to
hold urgent crisis talks as new system could drain Britain's cash machines
How private credit’s cracks are threatening to
deepen private equity’s woes
Published Sun, Apr 19 2026 9:32 PM EDT
Private credit’s rapid rise has been key
to global dealmaking for more than a decade. Now, signs of strain in the $3
trillion market are raising a bigger question: how far the fallout from private
credit could spread into private equity.
The two pillars of private markets have
become deeply intertwined over the past decade, with direct lenders stepping in
as a key financing engine for buyouts after banks retreated following the
global financial crisis, according to industry veterans.
“The majority of the PE ecosystem has been
financed from private credit,” said Kyle Walters, a private capital analyst at
PitchBook. “The two sides are structurally entangled when it comes to deal
activity.”
For private equity firms, direct lenders
offer faster execution and more flexible, bespoke financing structures, making
them a preferred partner for leveraged buyouts.
About 80% of all private equity leveraged
buyouts are funded by private credit, said Johns Hopkins Carey Business
School’s senior finance lecturer Professor Jeffrey Hooke.
Private credit
strains will
impact new private equity deals and existing portfolio companies, as lenders
grow more cautious and borrowing costs rise.
A renewed focus on stricter underwriting,
including wider spreads and stronger protections for covenants — contractual
promises — is making financing more expensive and restrictive for buyouts,
according to PitchBook’s Walters.
For companies already owned by private
equity, the impact is quite acute: higher interest burdens, tougher refinancing
conditions and increased covenant pressure are squeezing cash flows,
particularly for highly leveraged borrowers, experts said. That leaves firms
which relied on cheap, abundant credit during the low-rate era of 2010s and
early 2020s more exposed, with weaker companies struggling to roll over debt or
exit investments.
At the same time, declining loan
valuations — markdowns in the value of loans extended by private credit funds —
are signaling stress at the company level, forcing private equity managers to
mark down asset values and accept lower returns, said Hooke.
“That will [also] slow any new private
equity funds,” said Hooke. “The more leveraged private equity deals are most
at-risk. Most investors have no choice but to ride it out.”
Consultancy Greysparks highlighted that
more than 81% of private credit assets under management sit at firms that also
run private equity funds, underscoring how concentrated the market is among
large private capital managers. That intimacy is now amplifying risks.
More
How private
credit's cracks are threatening to deepen private equity's woes
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
Quarter of a million
people could lose job by middle of 2027 as UK ‘flirts with recession’, analysis
says
Twin
reports from top accounting firms underline scale of economic threat as Iran
war shatters business confidence
Mon 20 Apr 2026 06.00 BST
A quarter of a million
people could lose their jobs by the middle of next year as Britain “flirts with
recession”, analysis suggests, after business confidence was shattered by
the US-Israel war on Iran.
As the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, summoned bank chiefs for talks aimed at containing the
fallout, twin reports from top
accounting firms underlined the scale of the economic threat facing the UK.
Iran’s retaliatory
closure of the strait of Hormuz trade route and its strikes on its regional
neighbours, which have sent oil and gas prices soaring, will cause the biggest
economic hit since the pandemic, according to the EY Item Club, an economic
forecast group.
A separate report by
Deloitte found finance chiefs at big UK businesses were already reining in
their spending plans, taking action that was likely to weigh on economic
activity and hiring.
The EY Item Club said it
expected the UK economy to flatline in the second and third quarters of this
year as a result, leaving the country at risk of recession, defined as two
successive quarters of contraction.
Growth is projected to
halve from 1.4% in 2025 to 0.7% this year, choking off the gathering momentum
that had been reflected in February’s better-than-expected rise in gross domestic
product.
The EY Item Club also
expects unemployment to hit 5.8% by the middle of 2027, up from the
current five-year high of 5.2%, with almost 250,000 more people losing their jobs because of the crisis
in the Middle East.
Matt Swannell, the
forecast group’s chief economic adviser, said: “Spiralling energy costs and
disruption to supply chains will push the UK to the brink of a technical
recession in the middle of this year.
“Consumers’ spending
power will be squeezed, while more expensive financing arrangements and a less
certain global economic backdrop will pour cold water on companies’ investment
plans.”
The grim assessment
followed a report from the International Monetary Fund last week that showed
the UK faced the biggest growth downgrade among the G7 group of countries, with 0.8% forecast for
2026, down from the 1.3% the IMF predicted in January.
The Item Club expected
inflation to rise to almost 4% in the second half of 2026 – nearly double the
Bank of England’s 2% target – but also predicted policymakers on Threadneedle
Street’s monetary policy committee would hold off from knee-jerk hikes in interest
rates.
Executives in charge of
the purse strings of British businesses are already more pessimistic than at
any time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a separate
report from Deloitte.
Confidence among chief
financial officers slumped to a net -57% between 16 and 30 March, down from
-13% in the previous quarter, according to its CFO survey.
CFOs reported that
geopolitical developments represented the greatest external risk to their
businesses.
“Finance leaders are
coping with high levels of external uncertainty and their focus is on managing
risks from geopolitics, rising energy prices and higher financing costs,” said
Ian Stewart, the chief economist at Deloitte UK.
When asked about the
consequences of adverse geopolitical developments over the next three years,
the top three concerns among CFOs were energy costs (61%), inflation and
interest rates (61%) and an increase in cyber-attacks (60%).
More
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.
Solar
and wind outpace coal as energy crisis fails to spark fossil fuel revival
20
April 2026
A predicted ‘coal comeback’ due to the Iran war energy
crisis has not materialised, according to a report by the Centre
for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
Analysing countries that disclose near-real-time
electricity data, CREA found that coal-fired generation was flat in March
globally, falling by 3.5 per cent outside of China, where it rose by
a modest two per cent as some plants switched from gas to coal.
Seaborne coal transport volumes, meanwhile, fell by
three per cent globally, bringing them to their lowest level since 2021, the
height of the Covid pandemic.
Total fossil fuel power
generation fell by one per cent compared with the previous year, with gas-fired
generation falling by four per cent.
The analysis covers the world’s largest power markets –
China, the US, the EU and India, among others – which account for around 87 per
cent of global coal power and more than 60 per cent of gas-fired power
generation.
Renewables are helping to buffer the energy crisis
This happened despite a major global energy crisis
caused by the Strait of Hormuz blockade.
The blockade of the key oil and gas shipping route has
disrupted fuel supplies and sent prices skyrocketing. Renewables have played a
significant role in cushioning the impact – with solar alone saving Europe €3 billion in March.
Solar power generation rose by around 14 per cent last
month, while wind energy was up
approximately eight per cent in the countries analysed.
Prior to its closure, the Strait of Hormuz was used for
almost a fifth of global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) transports, which CREA
estimates is enough to produce power equivalent to France's annual electricity
generation.
But the solar and wind
power capacity added globally in 2025 alone is enough to offset this twice
over, according to CREA.
More
Solar and wind
outpace coal as energy crisis fails to spark fossil fuel revival
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara
Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Milton Friedman
No comments:
Post a Comment