Baltic
Dry Index. 2978 -56 Brent Crude 105.62
Spot Gold 4686 Spot Silver 81.16
US 2 Year Yield 3.90 -0.02
US Federal Debt. 39.227 trillion
US GDP 32.108 trillion.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
Milton Friedman
A big week ahead. President Trump didn’t like Iran’s reply to his one page so called “peace plan” for ending his Iran war.
Tomorrow we get the latest US inflation figures for April, probably starting to be impacted by Trump’s Persian Gulf war.
Mid-week, the summit in Beijing between Presidents Xi and Trump.
On Friday, it’s Chairman Powell’s last day as Chairman of the US central bank.
South Korea’s Kospi hits fresh record as Asia
markets trade mixed amid oil surge, Iran risks
Published Sun, May 10 2026 7:46 PM EDT
South Korea’s Kospi opened at a fresh
record Monday, leading gains in Asia-Pacific markets amid rising oil prices and
escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
President Donald Trump’s rejection of
Tehran’s latest proposal to end the war, however, stoked worries over an
elongated Middle East conflict.
Iran submitted a new proposal to U.S.
negotiators focused on ending the Middle East conflict. Iran’s
semi-official Tasnim
news agency said that the counteroffer called for an end to the war on
all fronts and the lifting of sanctions on Tehran, citing an informed source.
However, Trump said he did not like Iran’s response and called it “TOTALLY
UNACCEPTABLE!” in a Truth Social Post.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
Sunday that the war with Iran was
“not over,” as the U.S. and Israel still aim to curb Tehran’s nuclear
ambitions.
Netanyahu’s comments come ahead of Trump’s trip to China later this
week, where he’s expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The war and the
subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran have spiked global energy
costs and sharply raised gas prices in the U.S.
The West Texas Intermediate futures
for June was 3.94% higher at $99.18 per barrel as of 9:32 p.m. ET. Brent crude futures for
July rose 3.49% to $104.83 per barrel.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 4.70% after
opening to a fresh record, while the small-cap Kosdaq was 0.30% lower. Index
heavyweight SK Hynix rose 10.74%, tracking U.S. chip-related equities which
surged Friday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was in choppy
trade and was marginally lower, while the Topix gained 0.19%. Nintendo shares
fell 5.54%, as investors digested news that the game developer will hike Switch
2 prices while expecting a decline in console sales.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was 0.83%
lower.
China’s CSI 300 added 0.58%, while Hong
Kong’s Hang Seng index declined
0.48%. Investors were also assessing data showing that China’s consumer and
producer inflation rose more
than expected in April, driven by higher commodity costs linked to the
Middle East conflict.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average slid 143 points, or 0.3%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures each also
lost 0.3%.
Sunday’s moves come after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rallied
more than 2% and 4%, respectively, last week. Both indexes recorded their
sixth-straight winning weeks — a first for each since 2024.
The Dow rose 0.2% for the week,
notching its fifth week of gains out of the last six.
Asia
markets today: Nikkei, Kospi, Hang Seng, Sensex, CSI 300
Global week ahead: Crude diplomacy casts shadow
over Trump-Xi summit
Published Sun, May 10 2026 5:07 AM EDT
China has quietly amassed the world’s
largest stockpile of crude oil.
This is no mean feat for a country that is
also the globe’s biggest importer of energy.
It brings a fresh dynamic to Beijing’s
relations with the United States, as Premier Xi Jinping prepares to
host President Donald
Trump for
a high-stakes state visit on May 14 and 15.
The “Teapot” Party
There is already controversy. China’s
Commerce Ministry banned Chinese companies from complying with U.S. sanctions on
small refineries that purchase Iranian crude. The so-called “teapot refineries”
have been encouraged by Chinese authorities to import Iranian oil because they
are seen as immune to foreign sanctions, according to Teneo. The research house
warns that China’s non-compliance with the sanctions could prompt Washington to
launch a second round of restrictions to clamp down on the Sino-Iranian trade.
Stockpiles
Oil markets are no longer dealing with a
flow disruption, but with a rapidly compounding stock shock, according to
Kpler. The analytics group says that most Middle East cargoes loaded before the
war have now been discharged, meaning the inventory drawdown will accelerate
and local refining will slow.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA) estimates that China added an average of 1.1 million barrels per day of
crude oil to strategic reserves in 2025, with “preliminary government data
indicating that China has continued to build inventories in 2026” ahead of the
Iran conflict.
This means that government and commercial
oil stockpiles in China averaged around 360 million barrels in December 2025,
which compares to America’s strategic reserves of nearly 414 million barrels
over the same period.
China’s crude buying binge has helped to
prevent even higher spikes in oil prices amid the Strait of Hormuz deadlock. It
has also provided a lifeline to Asian importers that have been most directly
impacted by the halt in Middle East energy deliveries.
Crude Diplomacy
For China, heightened tensions with the
U.S. and sanctions-related disruption mean strategic petroleum reserves are
acting as a hedge against supply constraints, price volatility and currency
volatility, according to the Oxford Energy Institute.
The war in Iran is expected to
dominate the
meeting between President Trump and Premier Xi Jinping, potentially at the cost
of other agenda items like tariffs, rare earths and AI. Beijing’s quiet power
play to build strategic oil reserves shifts the energy dynamic between China
and the U.S., adding another layer of complexity to this critical meeting.
More to watch this week:
Monday: EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting
Tuesday: German inflation data, U.S.
inflation data
Wednesday: OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report,
IEA Oil Market Report
Thursday: U.K. GDP data, BRICS Foreign
Ministers meeting
Friday: Credit rating reviews: Germany,
Italy and Ukraine
Global week ahead:
Crude diplomacy casts shadow over Trump-Xi summit
Gold falls on oil-driven inflation worries as
U.S.–Iran peace talks falter
Published Sun, May 10 202611:01 PM EDT
Gold prices fell on Monday, as a lack
of progress in U.S.–Iran peace negotiations pushed oil prices higher, fueling
concerns that elevated inflation could keep interest rates higher for longer.
Spot gold fell
0.6% at $4,684.32 per ounce, as of 0223 GMT. U.S. gold futures for
June delivery lost 0.8% at $4,692.70.
The dollar firmed, making greenback-priced
bullion more expensive for holders of other currencies.
U.S. President Donald Trump on
Sunday rejected Iran’s response to a U.S. proposal for peace talks,
dashing hopes for an imminent end to the 10-week-old conflict that has caused
widespread damage in Iran and Lebanon, paralyzed maritime traffic in the Strait
of Hormuz, and driven up global energy prices.
“We’re essentially seeing an unwinding of
hopes for an imminent (peace) deal, and gold is feeling the pinch
from the renewed rise in crude prices,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst
at KCM Trade.
Oil prices jumped as the Strait of Hormuz
remained largely closed, keeping global energy supplies tight.
Rising crude oil prices risk pushing
inflation higher, increasing the prospects of elevated interest rates.
While gold is traditionally seen as a hedge against inflation, high
interest rates tend to weigh on the non-yielding asset.
The ongoing war with Iran and its shock to
oil prices and supplies have rocketed to the top of the list
of concerns for financial stability, according to a semi-annual Federal Reserve report
released on Friday.
Investors are now looking out for April’s
U.S. Consumer Price Index data, due later this week, for further clues on the
Fed’s monetary policy direction.
Meanwhile,
China’s gold production fell in the first quarter of 2026 from a
year earlier, the China Gold Association said on Saturday, as safety
inspections led some smelters to suspend production for maintenance.
“In the near-to-medium term, the $4,400 to
$4,800 range still looks firmly in play while we remain in this
ceasefire-without-a-peace-deal stalemate,” Waterer added.
More
Gold
falls on oil-driven inflation worries as U.S.–Iran peace talks falter
In other commodities news, worrying times.
Price rationing in wheat will be partially mitigated by last year’s excellent
wheat harvest, but will the high cost of fertiliser and diesel impact the rest
of the world’s wheat crops?
‘The worst time for wheat’: US farmers face losses
to extreme heat and drought
Temperature swings have left crops across
the Plains in terrible conditions, with some farmers opting not to harvest
Fri 8 May 2026 11.00 BST
Merrill Nielsen’s wheat crop looked healthy after he planted it in the fall on
his 2,500-acre farm in north-central Kansas, about 50 miles west of Salina,
the plants benefiting from higher-than-normal November rainfall.
But an abnormally warm and dry winter,
followed by extreme temperature variability, stressed the developing wheat. In
the winter-to-spring transition, temperatures fluctuated from 70 to 80F on some
days and lows in the teens or low 20s on other days.
He jokes that the wheat “wasn’t sure
whether or not to have its Bermuda shorts and sunglasses on and bake in the sun
… or to have its winter coat on”.
But the volatile weather destroyed his
crop. This week, a crop insurance adjuster told Nielsen that, at best, his
fields would yield two bushels per acre, compared with the normal upper-40s to
mid-50s bushels per acre. “Crop will be terminated,” he texted a reporter,
deciding not to harvest what little wheat grew.
Nielsen has farmed for about 50 years, and
grows wheat, grain sorghum, soya beans and alfalfa on the farm his
great-grandfather established in 1871. He says this year’s season was one of
his worst in years. He’s not alone.
Farmers in the central and southern Great
Plains grow much of the country’s bread-type wheat, hard red winter. It’s sown
in the fall to establish roots ahead of winter so it can start growing before
the summer heat sets in. Kansas is the largest US producer, with Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado
and Nebraska big growers as well.
Numbers bear out Nielsen’s observations,
as Kansas and Oklahoma had their second-warmest year from March 2025 to March
2026. In March, temperatures were 10 to 11F above normal, says Shel Winkley, a Texas-based
meteorologist at Climate Central, a non-profit research organization. It was
the third-warmest March on record for Kansas, with record warmth for Oklahoma,
allowing drought conditions to set in further.
This year’s winter wheat crop condition in
the Plains is one of the poorest in recent history, rivaling 2023, another
drought year. The weekly crop
condition report issued
by an arm of the US Department of Agriculture rates the 44% of Kansas’s and 49%
of Oklahoma’s wheat in very poor to poor condition, with similar ratings
elsewhere.
The extreme March heat has the
fingerprints of the climate crisis, Winkley says, because of the drought and
prolonged heat the area was already experiencing.
“It wasn’t just a weird, wonky March. We
understand there’s something bigger here,” he says. “Especially at the peak of
the heat in March, we know that those temperatures would be rare or almost
virtually impossible at that time of the year in the central Plains, without an
influence of climate change.”
Farmers in north-central and north-west
Kansas were hit hard this season, and Romulo Lollato, the wheat and
forages production professor at Kansas State University, expects affected
producers in this area may follow Nielsen’s decision not to harvest.
Other Kansas farmers are doing slightly
better but will also see some yield loss. Ben Palen, a fifth-generation farmer
in north-east Kansas, near Lawrence, farms 15,000 acres of corn, sunflowers,
millet, grain sorghum and organic wheat. He may only yield 30% of his normal
crop. He’s waiting on an estimate of how much he might be able to harvest this
year.
Vance Ehmke, who farms 11,000 acres in
Lane county, in south-west Kansas, saw 90F temperatures in early January, with
freezing weather after. In late April, rainfall of less than an inch fell on
his parched crops, which perked up the plants.
“That helped a whole bunch, but we’re so
far behind that it’s not even funny now,” says Ehmke, who has farmed for more
than 50 years.
There’s still some time for crops to
benefit from moisture before harvest starts in early June, but longer-range
forecasts between May and July call for below-average rainfall in Kansas and
Nebraska, Winkley says.
Wheat is a resilient crop and can improve
even with modest amounts of rain, so estimating yields and crop size before
final harvest is tricky. But wheat experts say with a combination of reduced
planted acres and potential abandonment, US total wheat production will fall.
Earlier this year, the USDA estimated that US
wheat acreage will be the lowest since 1919.
US wheat seedings have trended lower in
recent years because planting corn and soya beans was more lucrative, at least
until recently. Now, no crops are
profitable as
costs outweigh current grain prices. That will factor into wheat farmers’
decisions whether to salvage some production.
More
In other news, starting wars is easy, ending
them not so, as President Trump found out. Nor are wars cheap, when you mess up
the world’s supply chains of oil, LNG, LPG, fertiliser, aluminium, urea, sulphur,
and shipping, to name just a few, (fiat dollar demand?)
Trump Is ‘Bored’ With the War He Started
He wants out, but Iran could likely keep
going for months.
By Jonathan Lemire May 8, 2026,
12:28 PM ET
resident Trump really, really wants
the war with Iran to end. He has declared victory many times, including about
three weeks ago, when Iran briefly reopened the Strait of Hormuz. He has
repeatedly extended his cease-fire deadlines instead of following through on
his (sometimes-apocalyptic) threats to resume hostilities. This week, his
administration abruptly abandoned an effort to escort ships through the strait
in part because of a fear that it could provoke violent, escalating
confrontations.
Trump is tired of the war, which has
proved far more difficult and lasted far longer than he had expected. His party
is warily watching rising gas prices and falling poll numbers. He doesn’t want
to be bogged down in a Middle East conflict like some of his predecessors were.
He doesn’t want it to upend his high-stakes summit next week in China. He is
ready to move on.
But Iran, it seems, does not want the war
to come to a close. Or at least not with any sort of outcome that could be
acceptable to American negotiators. Trump is now in a bind. The president, five
aides and outside advisers told me, is convinced that he can sell any sort of
agreement as
a win. But at least for now, the man who wrote The Art of
the Deal can’t even get Iran to the negotiating table. Today,
Washington is still waiting for Iran to respond to the latest offering, a
one-page memorandum of understanding that is far more of an extension of the
cease-fire than a treaty to end the conflict.
Trump is left with a vexing question: How
do you end a war when your opponent won’t budge? And while Trump grasps for an
exit, the hard-liners in Tehran have used the war to tighten their grip on
power. Iran seems hell-bent on pulling off something it’s historically done
well: humiliating an American president.
Trump never thought it would turn out
like this. After the impressive military operation to snatch Nicolás
Maduro from
Caracas, the president set his eyes on Iran, telling confidants that it would
“be another Venezuela,” a pair of outside advisers told me. They, like others,
spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. Trump
believed that the U.S. military was unstoppable, and that he had a chance to
topple Tehran’s theocracy, a prize that had eluded his predecessors. He was
redrawing the world’s maps and expected a victory to come in days, a week or
two at most. The initial U.S.-Israel onslaught killed Iran’s supreme leader and
included waves of bombings that reportedly obliterated much of the country’s
missile capabilities. But Tehran did not capitulate, and instead attacked its
Persian Gulf neighbors and seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, through
which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. With a mix of mines, small attack
boats, and drones, Iran effectively closed
the waterway.
Energy prices soared. The conflict settled into a stalemate and then a fragile
cease-fire. One high-profile, official round of negotiations failed. No more
are scheduled.
Outwardly Trump has expressed nothing but
confidence. Sometimes, he downplays the war, calling it a “little excursion” or
“detour” or “mini war.” He has proclaimed imminent victory nearly every day, a
braggadocio that’s matched by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at his Pentagon
briefings. Behind closed doors, the volume is lower, but U.S. officials do
believe a naval blockade of Iran’s ports, installed last month, is working and
squeezing the country’s economy. Facing collapse, two officials predicted, Iran
will be forced to negotiate.
But the real question is the timing: A
number of experts have forecast that Iran can withstand pressure from the
blockade for months, not weeks. A U.S. intelligence
assessment delivered
to policy makers this week agrees, suggesting that Iran could make it at least
three or four more months. If so, and Iran continues to keep the strait closed,
then prices will continue to rise in the West, including in the United States during
a midterm-election year. It then becomes a matter of pain: Which side can
withstand the most economic hardship?
More
Trump Is ‘Bored’
With the War He Started - The Atlantic
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
Iran war is crushing Asia’s farmers, threatening global food supply
Prices of fuel and
fertilizer are pushing farmers to make irreversible cuts as they enter key
planting seasons.
9 May 2026
SUPHAN BURI, Thailand — Saithong
Jamjai has just finished harvesting the rice on the 19 hectares of farmland she
owns in central Thailand and now is the time to sow again. But she won’t, she
said, because of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
She has gone over the
math for weeks. Because of surging prices, driven by the war, of fuel,
fertilizer, plastics and other necessities, planting and harvesting will cost
her at least $33,000, she said. The grain that she’ll produce, she estimates,
will sell in August for only $22,000.
“A confirmed loss,”
Saithong, 53, concluded. She’d rather let her land bake under the yellowing
husks from last season. “We’re not going to sink the resources,” she said. “Not
in this situation.”
The standoff between
President Donald Trump and Iran that has brought shipping to a virtual halt in
the Persian Gulf has set off supply chain shocks that are upending lives
thousands of miles away in Asia, raising costs for farmers at the start of key
planting seasons that will sharply reduce crop yields in the second half of the
year and beyond, according to government officials, economists and farming
groups.
Addressing world leaders
in Rome on Thursday, Dongyu Qu, the director general of the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization, said the war had created not only a geopolitical
crisis but “a disruption at the core of the global agrifood system.”
Iran’s destruction of gas
infrastructure in the Gulf and the dueling U.S.-Iran efforts to choke the Strait of Hormuz have prevented
crucial supplies of fuel and its derivatives like urea — a potent source of
nitrogen that enhances harvests — from leaving the Middle East. Because fuel
infrastructure takes years to build, there is no ready replacement for these
supplies.
In effect, 30 percent of
the world’s urea has been “wiped out,” said Pranshi Goyal, senior analyst at
the market intelligence firm CRU Group. China, a major fertilizer producer, has
restricted exports to ensure its farmers have enough. Russia, another big
manufacturer, is seeing demand soar, potentially boosting its economy and
aiding its war in Ukraine. On what is known as the spot market, urea prices are
up 40 percent since February.
On Monday, Trump said the United States would guide stranded ships through the Strait of
Hormuz but then quickly reversed himself after reports that two U.S. destroyers
had come under attack while transiting the strait. Even if ship traffic resumes, however,
it would take at least a month or two for cargo to arrive at destinations and
for markets to stabilize, Goyal said.
The longer the production
plants in the Middle East stay closed, the longer they will take to restart.
“This problem builds in a nonlinear fashion,” Goyal said.
So do its repercussions.
In Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Australia, which are the first since the war to enter key sowing periods, farmers
are choosing to skip or reduce planting, or cut fertilizer use, which will
lower yield.
As the war stretches
deeper into the crop calendar, farmers from more countries will be forced to
make similar choices, said Maximo Torero, chief economist for the FAO. “Right
now, the impacts are more severe in Asia,” Torero said. “But clearly, this is moving
east to west and south to north.”
In June, India and
Brazil, two of the world’s biggest agricultural producers, will ramp up orders
for urea. If, by then, vessels carrying urea are not sailing, there will be
“significant yield loss” across many countries, Torero said. Commodity prices
will climb, stoking inflation. The hit to economic growth, he said, will be
“very close to what happened in covid-19.”
More
Iran war is crushing Asia’s farmers, threatening global food supply - The
Washington Post
FAO head: Strait of Hormuz crisis will affect 2026, 2027 crops
May 8, 2026
Director-General of the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Qu Dongyu today
told a group of ministers from Mediterranean countries that the global
fertilizer scarcity caused by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz will lead to
lower yields and tightening food supplies in the latter half of 2026 and into
2027.
The director general
spoke at the ministerial meeting of the MED9++ Countries on “Supporting Food
Security and Access to Fertilizers” co-chaired by FAO, Italy and Croatia.”We
meet at a moment of profound strain,” the director-general said. “This is not only
a geopolitical crisis, but also a disruption at the core of the global agrifood
system.
“Agriculture operates within a crop calendar that cannot be postponed,” he
said. “Fertilizers must be applied at specific moments in the crop cycle. If
they do not arrive on time, yields are reduced, regardless of what happens
later.”
More
FAO head: Strait of Hormuz crisis will affect 2026, 2027 crops | TSLN.com
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.
‘A share in
the delight’: the people investing in the UK’s first community-owned solar
battery
Oxfordshire’s
Ray Valley Solar already generates clean energy for 7,000 homes, and is now
crowdfunding storage to marry daylight with evening demand
Fri 8 May 2026 10.00 BST
Tucked away among hedgerows on a large
field between a motorway and the River Ray, one of the UK’s largest
community-owned solar parks is hard to spot from the surrounding country lanes.
But the nearly 36,000 solar panels
installed on the site are literally a shining example of what can be achieved
when a renewable energy project is co-owned by local people.
Ray Valley Solar, south of Bicester
in Oxfordshire, generates enough clean electricity to
power about 7,000 homes for a year, and uses its profits to provide
grants to community initiatives that help reduce carbon emissions and make
homes, schools and businesses across Oxfordshire more energy efficient.
Now, plans to install battery storage at
the site with investment from members of the public – the first community-owned
battery at a renewable energy project in the UK – will, it is hoped, give the
project a big boost.
On very sunny days, Ray Valley Solar –
which uses efficient double-sided solar panels that can capture sunlight that
bounces back from the ground at the rear of the panels – produces more clean
electricity than the local grid can take, resulting in some energy being
wasted.
Storage is a critical challenge for the
young technology around renewable energy. But plans to install a battery here
mean the project will capture surplus solar power during the day and store it
until it can be released during the peaks of demand in the evening, when the
grid is more carbon intensive and electricity more expensive.
“This will allow the community solar
park to generate more power and therefore to earn more money, which is
reinvested into local sustainability and emission-cutting projects,” said
Barbara Hammond, the chief executive of the Low Carbon Hub, one of the biggest community energy
organisations in the country, which set up the solar park in 2022.
With capacity to store 12 megawatt hours
of electricity every day, the battery is expected to save enough electricity to
power an additional 300 homes a year. By selling the electricity for a higher
price during the evening peak, Low Carbon Hub estimates it can increase its
community benefit contribution to £1m over the battery’s 15-year lifetime.
Batteries, however, are still extremely
expensive, although the race is on globally to find cheaper ways to produce
them. In order to finance the installation of this particular lithium-ion
battery, planned for October, the Low Carbon Hub is seeking to raise between
£500,000 and £1.3m. People and organisations can buy shares between £100 and
£100,000 in the hub’s Community Energy Fund via the investing platform Ethex until
late June, with investors forecast to receive up to 5% return on their
investment.
The hub, which has more than 2,000
shareholders in its fund so far, has successfully raised large amounts of money
to fund community energy projects before, including £3m to establish Ray Valley Solar.
More
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the
welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion
of credit. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect
savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold
stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of
property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the
statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Alan Greenspan
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