By Hideyuki
Sano , Koh Gui Qing
TOKYO/NEW
YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of Asian shares rallied to a near three-year peak
while the dollar stayed sluggish and U.S. bond yields slipped on Friday in
anticipation that a divided U.S. legislature would limit major policy changes
and keep the status quo on economic policies.
Investors expect Democrat Joe Biden to beat President Donald Trump and
the Republicans to retain control of the Senate, allowing them to block the
Democrats’ agenda, such as corporate tax hikes and massive borrowing for large
spending.
“With the prospects of fiscal stimulus constrained by a likely gridlock
in Washington, monetary policy will likely have to do heavy lifting, boosting
risk assets and putting pressure on the dollar,” said Hiroshi Watanabe,
economist at Sony Financial Holdings.
Japan’s Nikkei average rose 0.7% to almost its best level in 30 years
while MSCI’s broadest gauge of Asian Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.3%.
U.S. S&P futures dropped 0.3% in early Asian trade, a day after the
underlying stock index rose 1.95%.
U.S. Treasury yields drifted lower again as investors bet that a divided
U.S. government will cap debt-funded government spending and limit bond supply.
Ten-year Treasury yield edged lower to 0.773%, more than 150 basis
points below the pre-U.S. election level seen on Tuesday. It had struck a
three-week low of 0.7180% on Thursday.
“There will no longer be the massive largesse people were imagining.
After all when it comes to fiscal spending, the Senate really matters,” said
Kazushige Kaida, head of FX sales, at State Street Bank’s Tokyo Branch.
U.S. networks project almost no Democratic gains in the Senate, though
vote-counting is ongoing.
The Federal Reserve on Thursday kept its monetary policy loose and
pledged to do whatever it takes to sustain an unsteady U.S. economic recovery.
With COVID-19 raging in the United States and parts of Europe, many
investors assume more monetary stimulus will be inevitable.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-shares-at-near-three-year-peak-dollar-u-s-yields-head-south-idUKKBN27M03J?il=0
In China news, did Jack Ma talk himself into a deep hole?
How billionaire Jack Ma fell to
earth and took Ant's mega IPO with him November 5, 2020
10:55 AM By Keith Zhai ,
Julie
Zhu , Cheng
Leng
SINGAPORE/HONG
KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - They say talk is cheap. Tell that to Jack Ma.
Corporate China’s shiniest star was just days away from seeing his Ant
Group list on the stock market in a record $37 billion (28.40 billion pounds) deal,
when he chose to launch a blistering public attack on the country’s financial
watchdogs and banks.
The regulatory system was stifling innovation and must be reformed to
fuel growth, billionaire Ma told a summit in Shanghai on Oct. 24 attended by
the great and the good of China’s financial, regulatory and political
establishment.
Chinese banks, he said, operated with a “pawnshop” mentality.
It was this speech that set off a chain of events that ultimately
torpedoed the listing of Ant, the fintech titan Ma founded, according to
interviews with government officials, company executives and investors. They
all requested anonymity to disclose confidential details.
Stung by the attack, Chinese regulators and Communist Party officials
set about reining in Ma’s sprawling financial empire, culminating in the
suspension of the IPO on Tuesday, two days before the eagerly awaited market
debut in Shanghai and Hong Kong, the sources said.
While Ma might not have realised the impact his words would have, people
close to him had been baffled to learn in advance about the tone of the speech
he planned to deliver, according to two sources close to Ma.
They suggested the 56-year-old soften his remarks as some of China’s
most senior financial regulators were due to attend, but he refused to budge,
believing he should be able to say what he wanted, the sources said.
“Jack is Jack. He just wanted to speak his mind,” said one of the
people.
It was a costly miscalculation.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ant-group-ipo-suspension-regulators-i/how-billionaire-jack-ma-fell-to-earth-and-took-ants-mega-ipo-with-him-idUKKBN27L1BB?il=0
Finally, more on that fake gold bars scandal in China.
83 Tons of Fake Gold Bars Backing
$3 Billion Loans in China: This Man Claims to Know the Truth 5 November 2020
One of China’s largest gold jewelry manufacturers, Kingold
Jewelry Inc., was caught in a major fake gold scandal earlier this year. The
company used 83 tons of gold bars to back loans worth 20 billion yuan ($3
billion) from 14 Chinese financial institutions. This amount of gold would be
equivalent to about 22% of China’s annual gold production. However, the media reported in July that the gold bars turned out to be fake
and were just gilded copper alloy, but the company and its executives denied
any wrongdoing.
Kingold Jewelry is a Nasdaq-listed company headquartered in
Wuhan, China. Its share price plunged 88% since the scandal surfaced to $0.1334
on Wednesday. The company announced in August its plan to voluntarily delist from Nasdaq.
While the Chinese authorities have not revealed where the
real gold is or whether it even exists, one man claims to know what happened,
NTD reported last week. Yizhi Wei told the publication that the
real gold bars were swapped for fake ones and smuggled out of China into Hong
Kong where they were sold below market prices. He claimed to be one of the
middlemen.
The publication described Wei as “a member of China’s
so-called red aristocracy … from the Manchu ethnic minority.” In addition, “His
father was a senior communist official” and “His grandfather was a communist
revolutionary who helped the regime seize power.”
Wei detailed: “Every day it would come in from the Chinese
city of Shenzhen. We would go buy it every day, 10 kilos, 20 kilos, 30 kilos.
Then we will sell it in the afternoon on the same day. We made money from the
price differences. We didn’t know where the gold came from.”
He became certain that the gold bars he bought and sold
were the same ones as those belonging to Kingold Jewelry because the numbers
printed on them matched the range of numbers supposedly printed on Kingold
Jewelry’s gold bars.
More
https://news.bitcoin.com/83-tons-fake-gold-bars-china-scandal/
Winter
Watch.
The Arctic winter sea-ice expansion and
northern hemisphere snow cover. From around mid-October, the northern
hemisphere snow cover usually rapidly expands, while the Arctic ice gradually
expands back towards its winter maximum.
Over simplified, a rapid expansion of
both, especially if early, can be a sign of a harsher than normal arriving northern
hemisphere winter. Perhaps more so in 2020-2021 as we’re in the low of the
ending sunspot cycle, which possibly also influenced this year’s record
Atlantic hurricane season.
Adding to this year’s winter concerns,
a developing La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific. While the La Nina effect
on the winter weather of western Europe is weaker than that of an El Nino
pattern, which tends to make for a milder winter, a La Nina pattern tends to
make for a colder winter.
The early take, Eur-Asia turned snowy fast
in mid-October. The Arctic sea ice
expansion is slow, and from a very low level at the end of September, but with
the vastly expanded snow cover, sea ice formation will probably now speed up.
Which now seems to be happening in the Kara and Laptev Seas.
It is still too early to suggest a mild
western European winter ahead, but it is the way I’m leaning given the slowish
recovery of the Arctic sea ice, albeit speeding up fast now.
US National Ice
Center.
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about
money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Oscar Wilde
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
U.S. Daily Cases Top 100,000;
Japan Numbers Rise: Virus Update Bloomberg News November
5, 2020, 11:39 PM GMT Updated on November 6, 2020, 5:15 AM GMT
The
U.S. became the first country to top 100,000 cases in one day, according to
data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg. Illinois, Ohio,
Michigan and Indiana were among states reporting record Covid-19 infections on
Thursday.
A Height Capital Markets analyst estimated that U.S. hospitals
could reach capacity and trigger lockdowns before the
Thanksgiving holiday if infections continue at the current pace. In Europe,
France warned of a “violent” second wave and Greece imposed a three-week
lockdown.
In Asia, Japan recorded over 1,000 coronavirus infections
on Thursday, the highest level the country has seen since August. South Korea
reported 145 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the biggest gain in two weeks.
China will temporarily halt entry by non-Chinese nationals who are in Russia
and India, after doing so for those in the U.K. and Belgium.
Key
Developments:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-05/u-s-daily-infections-top-100-000-in-global-record-virus-update?srnd=premium-europe
Swiss trim trains to Italy,
France and Germany as COVID cases top 200,000 November 5, 2020 3:52 PM
ZURICH (Reuters) - Coronavirus infections
rose by 10,128 in a day, data here
Switzerland also announced on Thursday it
was cutting the number of trains to neighbouring Italy, Germany and France amid
partial lockdowns in each of the countries and as travelers avoid cross-border
public transportation as governments appeal for them to keep a distance from
others.
Total confirmed COVID-19 cases in
Switzerland and neighbouring Liechtenstein increased to 202,504 and the death
toll rose by 62 to 2,337. Switzerland had breached the 100,000 case mark only
on Oct. 23.
Hospitalisations rose by 399 as the government
deployed army personnel to help the hard-pressed health care system cope with
the surge in admissions.
Five Swiss train connections daily to Italy
will be suspended from Monday to at least Dec. 12, while long-distance routes
to France will be reduced to two connections daily between Geneva and Paris and
one connection daily between Zurich to Paris via Basel until at least Dec. 1.
Moreover, night trains run by the Austrian
Federal Railways between Zurich, Berlin and Hamburg are also being canceled
starting this weekend until early December.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-swiss-numbers/swiss-trim-trains-to-italy-france-and-germany-as-covid-cases-top-200000-idUKKBN27L25P
Greece orders nationwide lockdown
to curb COVID surge November 5,
2020 10:16 AM
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece ordered a nationwide lockdown on Thursday for
three weeks to help contain a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.
“I’ve chosen to take drastic measures sooner rather than later,” Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.
Under the new countrywide restrictions to take effect from Saturday,
retail businesses will be shut with the exception of supermarkets and
pharmacies. Civilians will need a time-slot permit to venture outdoors.
Primary schools will stay open, but high schools will shut.
The country has reported fewer cases than most in Europe, mainly due to
an early nationwide lockdown that it imposed when the pandemic broke out in
February. It started unwinding those restrictions in May.
Since early October it has seen a surge in infections and has been
reimposing curbs. The resurgence was “particularly aggressive”, chief government
scientific adviser Sotiris Tsiodras said, speaking alongside Mitsotakis.
Greece registered 2,646 infections on Wednesday, the highest daily tally
since its first case surfaced, bringing the total number of cases to 46,892. So
far, 673 people have died of the disease.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-greece/greek-pm-orders-nationwide-lockdown-to-curb-covid-cases-surge-idUKKBN27L17C
Sweden and Germany removed from
England's travel corridors November 5, 2020
5:18 PM
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday it was removing Germany and
Sweden from its list of countries where travellers would not have to quarantine
on arrival in England.
“From 4 a.m. Saturday 7th November, if you arrive into the UK from these
destinations you will need to self-isolate,” transport minister Grant Shapps
said on Twitter.
He added no countries were being added to the list of travel corridors.
England entered a second countrywide lockdown on Thursday meaning people must
stay at home, barring a limited number of exceptions.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-quarantine/sweden-and-germany-removed-from-englands-travel-corridors-idUKKBN27L2EA
Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
New method smashes record for
longest carbon nanotube forests ever made By Michael Irving November 04, 2020
Researchers
at Waseda University in Japan have grown “forests” of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
longer than ever before. Using a new method, the team grew bunches of nanotubes
up to 14 cm (5.5 in) long, which should help make it easier to scale up
production of this versatile material.
The
name is pretty descriptive – carbon nanotubes are tubes of carbon atoms with
diameters just nanometers wide. Forests of these tubes have shown promise in
making materials that are lightweight and
strong , have useful optical properties , as
well as better water filters , batteries and transistors .
The problem is and always has been around growing them in
bulk. In past studies scientists have managed to grow individual nanotubes as long as 50 cm
(19.7 in), but single tubes aren’t particularly useful. Forests of them,
meanwhile, have struggled to stretch longer than about 2 cm (0.8 in).
Now, the researchers on the new study have managed to
extend CNT forests to a much more practical 14 cm. To do so, they tackled
several problems that usually stunt the growth of CNT forests – the first of
which is to reduce the deterioration of the catalyst that feeds the tubes.
“In the conventional technique, the CNTs stop growing due to a gradual
structural change in the catalyst, so we focused on developing a new technique
that suppresses this structural change and allows the CNTs to grow for a longer
period,” says Hisashi Sugime, lead author of the study.
Normally, the catalyst is an iron-aluminum oxide coated onto a silicon
substrate, but for this study the team addd a new layer of gadolinium. This
reduced the rate that the catalyst deteriorated, but alone it only boosted the
CNT forests to about 5 cm (2 in).
The extra length came by placing the catalyst into a cold-gas chemical
vapor deposition chamber. The catalyst was heated to 750 °C (1,382 °F), and the
team then added small concentrations of iron and aluminum vapors at room
temperature. That fed the catalyst for 26 hours, giving it the time to grow the
CNT forests to the record-breaking length.
Importantly, the team says that analysis of the resulting
carbon nanotube forests showed that they were as pure and strong as those grown
through other methods. That means the new technique should be able to make
viable carbon nanotubes at production scale.
“This simple but novel method that drastically prolongs
catalyst lifetime by supplying parts-per-million-level vapor sources is
insightful for catalyst engineering in other fields such as petrochemistry and
nanomaterial crystal growth,” says Sugime. “The knowledge herein could be
pivotal to making nanomaterials a ubiquitous reality.”
The research was published in the journal Carbon
https://newatlas.com/materials/longest-carbon-nanotube-forests-record/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e9ec87459b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_05_09_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-e9ec87459b-90625829
Another weekend and a lock down weekend in much, if not
most of Europe. One consolation, everyone can forget about US politics for a
change. Life, except in the media, can get back to the new normal. Have a great
weekend everyone.
What is a cynic? A
man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
