Baltic
Dry Index. 2832 +102 Brent Crude 107.96
Spot Gold 4648 Spot Silver 76.18
US 2 Year Yield 3.93 +0.02
US Federal Debt. 39.206 trillion
US GDP 32.092 trillion.
There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of the those who do not have insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Updated May 7, 2026 in the Technology section.
President Trump’s Project Freedom, launched Sunday to free roughly 400 ships trapped in the Persian Gulf unable to sail past the Strait of Hormuz, ended Tuesday. Ships “freed”, two.
Not to worry though, global stocks are bubbling like there’s no tomorrow. What’s not to like and yet?
Look away from that normalising US Treasury yield curve now.
South Korea’s Kospi tops 7,000 to hit a new high
as heavyweight Samsung surges 15%
Published Tue, May 5 2026 7:47 PM EDT
South Korea’s Kospi hit another record
Wednesday as Asia-Pacific markets saw a broad rally, tracking Wall Street gains
overnight after oil prices dropped and strong earnings lifted investor
sentiment.
Signaling diplomatic efforts for resolving
the Middle East crisis were on track, President Donald Trump said the U.S.
bid to guide ships out of Strait of Hormuz had
been paused.
“We have mutually agreed that, while the
Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom will be paused
for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized
and signed,” Trump said in his Truth Social post.
The U.S. military on Monday began guiding
commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz under Project Freedom. U.S.
Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseth on Tuesday said that “two U.S. commercial ships, along with
American destroyers, have already safely transited the strait, showing the lane
is clear.”
West Texas Intermediate futures
for June was 1.78% lower at $100.45 per barrel as of 11:40 p.m. ET. Brent crude futures for
July declined 1.70% to $108.00 per barrel.
South Korea’s Kospi advanced 6.68% to
scale a new peak, topping 7,000 as it builds on its more than 70% gains this
year so far, after markets resumed trading following a holiday. Index
heavyweight Samsung Electronics reached a record high, rising over 15% to
cross $1
trillion in market-cap. SK Hynix also reached an all-time high,
gaining more than 10%. The small-cap Kosdaq index slipped 0.88%.
China’s CSI 300 added 1.62% as it resumed
trading after Labor Day break. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.62%,
while the Hang Seng Tech index gained 1.05%.
India’s Nifty 50 was 0.72% higher.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.87%.
Japan market was closed due to a holiday.
S&P 500 futures added 0.2%,
while Nasdaq 100 futures climbed
0.6%. Futures tied to the Dow
Jones Industrial Average fell by 30 points, or less than 0.1%.
During Tuesday’s regular session,
the S&P 500 rose
0.81%, hitting a new all-time high and closing at a record of 7,259.22.
The Nasdaq Composite gained
1.03%, touching a new high and notching a closing record of 25,326.13.
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average added 356.35 points, or 0.73%, to end at 49,298.25.
Asia-Pacific
markets today: Kospi, Hang Seng, Nifty 50
Samsung crossses $1 trillion valuation as AI
frenzy drives historic rally, lifting shares over 15%
Published Tue, May 5 2026 9:17 PM EDT
Shares of Samsung Electronics surged more
than 15% Wednesday, pushing the chip giant’s market capitalization past the $1
trillion mark as investors continued to pile into artificial
intelligence-linked stocks.
Samsung became the second Asian company to
cross the $1 trillion mark, after TSMC. The company first crossed that $1
trillion market capitalization threshold on Feb. 26, according to FactSet data.
The company’s stock has breached a record
high and is on course for the largest single-day gain on record, data from
FactSet showed.
The rally followed Samsung
Electronics’ record
first-quarter earnings last week. Operating profit surged more than
eightfold to 57.2 trillion won, while revenue climbed to a record 133.9
trillion Korean won.
Samsung’s first-quarter operating profit
also topped its full-year 2025 profit of 43.6 trillion won.
The gains also followed a Bloomberg report that Apple has held exploratory talks
with Samsung and Intel to produce chips for Apple devices in the U.S.,
potentially diversifying beyond longtime supplier TSMC.
Shares of South Korean chip behemoth SK
Hynix also jumped more than 10%, helping push the benchmark index Kospi more
than 5% to top
7,000 for the first time.
Sales of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM
chips, have boosted Samsung’s profitability, but the company continues to face
intense competition after losing its early lead in the HBM market to rival SK
Hynix.
Samsung has been working to narrow the gap
with SK Hynix in the fast-growing AI memory segment. In February, the company
said it had become the world’s first firm to begin mass production of HBM4 chips and start
deliveries to undisclosed customers.
HBM4 represents the sixth and latest
generation of high-bandwidth memory technology. The chips are expected to play
a key role in Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin AI architecture, which aims to power
advanced AI workloads in data centers.
Analysts said the sharp rally in Samsung
Electronics has been driven by booming AI-related memory demand, tightening
supply conditions and improving competitiveness in high-bandwidth memory chips.
“There is a tremendous shortage in DRAM
and NAND memory chips due to torrid AI demand, which is very memory hungry due
to AI’s high bandwidth and storage needs,” said Morningstar’s technology equity
analyst Yu Jing Jie.
DRAM chips are fast, volatile memory chips
that temporarily store data while processors actively use it, while NAND chips
are slower, non-volatile storage chips that retain data even when devices are
powered off.
While memory makers are scrambling to
expand production, Yu also noted that new semiconductor capacity typically
takes two to three years to come online, meaning supply is likely to remain
constrained in the near term. That has fueled expectations for stronger
earnings growth and margins over the next one to two years.
More
Samsung
crossses $1 trillion valuation as AI frenzy drives historic rally, lifting
shares over 15%
Trump pauses U.S. bid to guide ships out of Strait
of Hormuz, cites Iran deal progress
Published Tue, May 5 2026 7:06 PM EDT
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he
is pausing “Project
Freedom,” the U.S. military’s effort to guide commercial ships out of the
Strait of Hormuz, one day after the operation began.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said the decision was based in part on
“the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final
Agreement” with Iran.
Project Freedom “will be paused for a
short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and
signed,” Trump wrote.
Stock
futures rose following Trump’s announcement, which raised hopes for a
peace agreement that would end the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and reopen the
economically vital strait.
It also represented a surprising
about-face from the Trump administration, which just hours earlier had framed
Project Freedom as a matter of life or death for thousands of civilian sailors.
The Trump administration has said that
nearly 23,000 sailors on vessels representing 87 countries have been stranded
in the Persian Gulf because of Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the
White House Tuesday afternoon that the goal of Project Freedom is to “rescue”
those sailors, who have been “left for dead” by the Iranian regime.
“Nations from around the world, the
overwhelming majority of whom are not even engaged in any military hostilities,
are now at risk, not just of losing their cargo, but the lives of their own
citizens because of this blockade,” Rubio said.
“They’re sitting ducks. They’re isolated,
they’re starving, they’re vulnerable, and at least 10 sailors have already died
as a result” of Iran’s blockade, he said.
Trump announced Project Freedom
on Sunday evening, saying the U.S. has assured countries whose vessels are
stuck due to the war that it will “guide their Ships safely out of these
restricted Waterways.”
U.S.
Central Command said Sunday evening that the military would deploy
“guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain
unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members” to support the operation.
Defense and geopolitical experts told CNBC
earlier Tuesday they were skeptical that Project Freedom would achieve its
goals.
Iran, meanwhile, had responded to the U.S.
military moves with renewed hostility, putting further strain on an already
shaky ceasefire with the U.S.
The United Arab Emirates said Monday it
was attacked with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones coming from
Iran, resulting in three injuries.
More
Trump
pauses U.S. bid to guide ships out of Strait of Hormuz, cites Iran deal
progress
The World: Can Trump strong-arm Iran?
May 6, 2026
Good morning, world. President Trump
clearly wants to end the war in Iran. First, he tried scare tactics. But his
ultimatums proved flexible and his threats to wipe out a civilization empty (at
least so far). Now he’s trying to inflict financial pain on the Iranian
leadership. But his blockade isn’t faring much better. And last night, Trump
paused the U.S. operation to escort commercial ships through the Strait of
Hormuz after just one day.
Trump’s inability to force the Islamic
republic to do what he wants, from opening the strait to giving up its nuclear
stockpile, points to a larger truth: Maybe America doesn’t understand Iran.
Today my colleague Steven Erlanger, our chief diplomatic correspondent, writes
about why there may be no easy way to end this war.
The
World: Can Trump strong-arm Iran?
‘Misplaced euphoria’: Markets are sleepwalking
into a recession amid Iran war oil price shock
Published Mon, May 4 2026 8:50 AM EDT
Global economies could be “sleepwalking”
into a “big recession”, as investors continue to underplay the impact of the
oil price shock, Amrita Sen, founder and director, market intelligence at
Energy Aspect, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.
The S&P 500 hit a new all-time
intraday high last week, with the broad market index touching 7,230.12 on May
1. That’s despite a surge in the cost of energy caused by the war in the Middle
East — with oil prices soaring more than 50% since the U.S.-Iran conflict began
on Feb. 28.
“This has been the biggest conundrum for
us — if anything, we think oil should be higher and the equity market should be
a lot, lot weaker,” Sen said.
“I think we’re sleepwalking into
potentially a pretty big recession.”
Sen said there is an “extremely misplaced
euphoria” among many investors, who she believes are continuing to dismiss the
ongoing energy squeeze as an issue affecting mainly Asian economies.
OPEC has pledged to ramp up its oil
production, though Sen cautioned that this increase remains largely symbolic
and falls short of what is needed to replace lost supply.
‘Massive energy crisis’
“The story is really when Hormuz reopens,
and at what capacity and what pace it reopens,” she noted. “If you assume that
the Strait remains disrupted for a longer period of time, you are saying that
we all need to go back to 2013 demand levels, about 10 million barrels per day
less… we’ve added a billion more people. I think that’s the challenge we have
right now — we need oil prices to go up so that we can get the demand
reduction.”
Looking ahead, Sen said she expects $80-90
a barrel to be the new floor going forward, adding that higher-for-longer
prices will reverberate across commodity markets, highlighting the impact on
LNG, chemicals and fertilizers, among other assets.
“Just wait for food prices to start going
up because of what’s going on; the lack of urea transport; and natural gas
prices, or natural gas being curtailed in the fertilizer sector,” she said.
“This is a massive, massive energy crisis.
I have been equally amazed at how the equity market is completely dismissing
it, talking about how great Q1 results are. They are not going to be great
nearly to the same extent in Q2.”
More
Stock market
'euphoria' masks looming Iran war recession risk
California braces for uncertainty as last shipment
of Persian Gulf oil arrives in Long Beach
Sun, May 3, 2026 at 11:00 AM GMT+1
The last California-bound oil tanker to
pass through the Strait of Hormuz since war erupted is at the Port of Long
Beach offloading its valuable cargo — 2 million barrels of crude destined to be
transformed into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
The New Corolla loaded up in Iraq on Feb.
24 — just days before U.S. and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran,
plunging the region into turmoil and sparking a double blockade of commercial
shipping.
In two weeks, the Hong Kong-flagged tanker
will have fully unloaded at the Marathon Petroleum terminal and departed again
for distant waters. After that, California must figure out how to replace some
200,000 barrels of oil a day that will no longer be arriving from the Persian
Gulf.
California's own supply of crude oil has
been declining
since the 1980s,
due to aging fields and a geology that makes drilling particularly costly. The
state's gasoline refining capacity is also
falling off,
increasing reliance on imports and highlighting California's status as an
isolated energy island without gas pipelines to bring in supply from other
states.
Now, with the end of the Middle East
conflict nowhere in sight and the average cost of California gasoline topping $6 per
gallon,
some lawmakers are warning of potential oil and gas shortages.
So far during the Iran war, oil deliveries
to California have remained relatively steady. The state imports about
75% of
its oil from foreign countries and Alaska. Last year it brought
in a mix from
Brazil, Iraq, Guyana, Canada, Ecuador, Argentina and Saudi Arabia as its top
international suppliers, with about 30% coming from the Middle East.
In March and April, that mix didn't change
much, with California receiving about 21% and 14% of its foreign oil from Iraq
and Saudi Arabia, respectively, according to the data analytics firm Kpler.
Shipments that left before Iran blocked
off the Strait of Hormuz in late February have continued to arrive on a
one-to-two-month lag time, about the same time it takes for a tanker to make
the voyage. But if the strait remains closed through May, “all bets are off,”
said Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic
Policymaking.
"Refineries have to source from
elsewhere, and they are scrambling to find where to get that oil," said
Susan Bell, a senior vice president at the consulting firm Rystad Energy.
"They don't have very many options."
More
California braces
for uncertainty as last shipment of Persian Gulf oil arrives in Long Beach
In other news.
HSBC takes $400 million hit from private-credit
alleged fraud
5 May 2026
HSBC set aside $400 million relating to an
alleged fraud in private markets in the U.K., marring its quarterly results.
Shares of the bank fell more than 5% in London.
HSBC gave few details about the incident
in its results Tuesday, beyond saying the provision reflected a “fraud-related,
secondary, securitisation exposure with a financial sponsor in the U.K.”
On calls with journalists and analysts,
Chief Financial Officer Pam Kaur said HSBC had lent to a private-equity
company, which in turn had exposure to underlying private-credit assets that
had been securitized—i.e., sliced up and parceled into securities for investors
to trade.
“We regard this charge as idiosyncratic,”
Kaur said. “We have completed a review of the highest areas of risk in our
portfolio and haven’t identified any comparable fraud concerns.”
Kaur declined to name the company involved
in the alleged fraud. Kaur said HSBC had relied on due diligence by
private-equity companies, and would look to toughen up its procedures to
prevent a repeat.
The private-credit industry has grown
rapidly in recent years, but a series of bankruptcies and alleged frauds over
the past year have raised concerns about the quality of loans made by such
lenders.
Some of the private-credit blowups have
stung banks, raising concerns among investors and regulators about links
between private-credit funds and the banking industry.
After the 2008-09 financial crisis,
tougher regulations encouraged banks to cut back on some riskier forms of
lending. Wall Street investors, often funded by insurers, rushed to fill the
gap. The business came to be known as private credit. HSBC, like many other
large banks, makes loans to the private-credit industry.
HSBC’s first-quarter net profit was
largely flat as higher credit charges amid the Middle East conflict offset the
strength in its Hong Kong, U.K. and wealth businesses.
The London-based bank said Tuesday that it
booked $1.3 billion in expected credit losses and other impairment charges in
the first quarter, partly due to a roughly $300 million increase in allowances
to reflect heightened uncertainty in the economic outlook following the onset
of the war.
The bank, which makes much of its profit
in Asia, has significant operations in Middle Eastern countries such as the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
HSBC said it would continue to target a
return on tangible equity—a key profitability measure for banks—of 17% or
better over the next three years, excluding notable items.
On Monday, the lender agreed to sell its
retail-banking business in Indonesia to Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking
Corp. HSBC said strategic reviews remain under way for its retail businesses in
Australia and Egypt and its life-insurance business in Singapore.
Chief Executive Georges Elhedery has been
pushing the bank to focus on its strengths: retail banking in the U.K. and Hong
Kong, acting as a bridge for large companies to global markets, and helping
wealthy clients with their finances.
Last week, rival Standard Chartered
disclosed $190 million in precautionary credit charges related to the Middle
East conflict.
HSBC said Tuesday that net profit rose
0.1% from a year earlier to $6.94 billion for the three months ended March.
That missed the $7.02 billion estimate in a poll of analysts by data provider
Visible Alpha.
HSBC takes $400
million hit from private-credit alleged fraud
The nuclear option: Atomic energy could offer
Europe hope, say analysts — but it won’t be easy
Published Mon, May 4 2026 1:00 AM EDT
Hefty upfront costs, issues disposing of
radiation and waste, and memories of terrible accidents have all contributed to
Europe’s reluctance to embrace nuclear energy in recent decades.
But the effective closure of the Strait of
Hormuz amid the U.S.-Iran war has exposed the continent’s vulnerability to
disrupted energy imports – and nuclear may offer Europe a lifeline.
IEA chief Fatih Birol previously told CNBC that nuclear
power would get a “boost” from the supply crisis and urged governments to
bolster their resilience with alternative energy sources.
Nuclear energy produces significantly
fewer emissions than fossil fuels, plants take up minimal space on the
landscape, and reactors are extremely reliable in all weather conditions.
“I think nuclear has to play a big role in
solving this problem for Europe,” Chris Seiple, vice chairman of Wood
Mackenzie’s power and renewables division, told CNBC.
The U.S., China and France are all better
placed to deal with the supply shock caused by the war, in part because they
are the three largest producers of nuclear energy worldwide.
“If you don’t have a natural energy
supply, then your energy costs are going to be higher to import it from
somewhere, or you’re going to have to build some degree of nuclear,” Michael
Browne, global investment strategist at Franklin Templeton, told CNBC.
“It’s expensive but very efficient, as
France has shown. French energy prices are significantly lower than German
prices.”
More
Can nuclear energy solve Europe’s energy crisis? Here's why it won’t be easy
All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Australia hikes rates again and warns inflation will stay higher for
longer
Published Tue, May 5 2026 12:33 AM EDT
Australia’s central bank on Tuesday raised its
policy rate to 4.35%, matching its December 2024 peak, as inflation remains
elevated.
The move by the Reserve Bank of Australia was in
line with expectations in a Reuters poll of economists and marked its third
consecutive rate increase.
Eight members of the board voted for the hike,
while one voted to hold rates at 4.1%.
In its statement, the RBA said inflation had picked
up materially in the second half of 2025, with conflict in the Middle East
pushing up fuel and commodity prices.
“As expected, developments in the Middle East are
having an impact on inflation. Higher fuel prices are adding to inflation and
there are indications that this is likely to have second-round effects on
prices for goods and services more broadly,” it added.
The central bank said that inflation is likely to
remain above its 2% to 3% target for some time and that the risks remain
elevated.
The RBA also appeared to signal that more
rate hikes were on the horizon, with its economic forecasts pencilling in a
4.7% policy rate in December 2026, 50 basis points higher than projected in
early February.
Should the policy rate exceed 4.35%, it would be
the highest since December 2011.
Inflation forecasts for the bank were also upgraded
to 4.8% for the June quarter and 4% for the year ending 2026, up from the
previous February forecast of 4.2% and 3.6%, respectively.
Economic growth for 2026 was revised down to 1.3%
from 1.8%.
ANZ Bank said in a note after the meeting that the
RBA’s tone was “more hawkish than we expected,” adding that there was no clear
opening to a pause in June as it expected.
“That does not necessarily mean that another rate
increase is a foregone conclusion but instead signals that the Board’s
preference is to keep its options open,” the bank said.
Australia’s economy grew 2.6% from
a year earlier in the fourth quarter, its fastest pace in two years, beating
expectations.
The decision follows recent inflation
data showing price pressures remain persistent.
Consumer prices rose 4.09% in the first quarter from a year earlier, the
highest in more than two years.
In March, inflation climbed to 4.6%, the highest
since Australia began publishing monthly consumer price index data in 2025.
The RBA had signaled at its March meeting that
further rate increases were likely, though policymakers differed on timing.
“Developments in the Middle East remain highly
uncertain, but under a wide range of possible scenarios could add to global and
domestic inflation,” the RBA said after its
March meeting.
The RBA will hike rates to 4.60% in the third
quarter of this year, according to Abhijit Surya, Senior APAC Economist at
Capital Economics.
“Given the potential for incoming inflation data to surprise to the upside of
the RBA’s expectations, we think further policy tightening remains likely,”
Surya added.
Australia
hikes rates again and warns inflation will stay higher for longer
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.
Update May 7, 2026.
In recently released clearer footage, the plane missed the truck and it was the light pole that hit the truck wind shield.
Today, something different. What’s
going on/wrong at United.
UAL169 Boeing 767 COLLIDES With Light Pole and Truck | Captain
Steeeve
UAL169 Boeing 767 COLLIDES With Light Pole and Truck | Captain Steeeve
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the
opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the
consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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