Baltic Dry Index. 2277
+10 Brent
Crude 61.09 Spot Gold $1,529
Never ending Brexit
now October 31st, maybe. 62
days away.
Nuclear Trump
China Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war
postponed to November, maybe.
I did
exactly the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat
showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are
few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a
loss and keep what shows you a profit.
Jesse
Livermore
With global stock
markets still reeling from last week’s new trade war tariffs between China and
America, China clambered aboard President Trump’s pro-stocks agenda, and played
their part in goosing stocks higher for the month-end figures. I think it’s
just more of the exit rally.
But with China
playing good cop for now in the trade war, and with the 70th
anniversary coming up of Communist China, Beijing probably doesn’t want trouble
from falling stock markets, nor a Tiananmen Square ending this week in Hong
Kong.
Below, more on
yesterday’s relief rally. This is no way to be running investments in stocks or
anything else.
Asian shares rise on conciliatory trade tone but mood cautious
August 30, 2019 /
1:52 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) -
Asian shares rose on Friday as China struck a hopeful tone on trade with the
United States but continued fears about a global growth slowdown, or even a
recession, capped sharp rallies.
Investors were focused on a string of economic releases due over the weekend including China’s official manufacturing survey which would provide a good gauge of the real impact from the Sino-U.S. trade war.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS climbed 0.6% but stayed near a recent 7-1/2 month trough. For the week, it is still set for a small weekly loss.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 jumped 1% while South Korea's KOSPI index .KS11 gained 1.5% and Australian shares rose 0.9%.
Overnight, Wall Street added more than 1% after China’s commerce ministry said Beijing and Washington were discussing the next round of face-to-face talks scheduled for September.
The comments spurred hopes for progress in the talks and boosted the
Chinese yuan, which snapped a 10-day losing streak.
Stock analysts were more circumspect though.
“It’s really hard to say the U.S.-China trade backdrop changed
dramatically in the last 12 hours – the Sept 1 tariffs are still going into
effect and there are further hikes on the calendar,” JPMorgan analysts wrote to
clients in a note.
U.S. President Donald Trump said some discussions were taking place on
Thursday, with more talks scheduled.
China’s commerce ministry also said a September round of meetings was
being discussed by the two sides, but added it was important for Washington to
cancel a tariff increase.
“In reality, the headlines are extremely innocuous and don’t differ from
what China has said in the past but they crossed during a dead zone of
liquidity and attendance and as a result are having an outsized influence on
trading,” JPMorgan said.
Trade tensions have dominated market sentiment for much of this year
with wild swings in world stocks as rhetoric between the United States and
China fluctuates from conciliatory to combative.
More
U.S. stock futures spike as China says it won’t immediately respond to tariff hike
By Steve
Goldstein Published: Aug 29, 2019 4:25 a.m. ET
A spokesman for China’s commerce ministry was quoted as
saying the country would not immediately respond to the latest tariffs imposed
on them, which boosted U.S. stock futures and European stocks.Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying at a press conference that “the question that should be discussed now is about removing the new tariffs to prevent escalation.”
He also said that both sides were discussing the planned September meeting of U.S.-Chinese trade negotiators.
Last week, Beijing imposed a fresh set of tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. goods, and the U.S. then retaliated with an additional 5% levy on Chinese goods. “Escalation of the trade war won’t benefit China, nor the U.S., nor the world,” Gao was quoted as saying.
China hopes U.S. will create conditions necessary for September trade talks
August 29, 2019 /
8:33 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China and the United States are discussing the next round of face-to-face
trade talks scheduled in September, but hopes for progress hinge on whether
Washington can create favourable conditions, China’s commerce ministry said on
Thursday.
In the latest tit-for-tat escalation of the trade war between the
world’s two largest economies, U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday said he
would heap an additional duty of 5% on about $550 billion (£448 billion) in
targeted Chinese goods.
The move came hours after China had unveiled retaliatory tariffs on
$75-billion worth of U.S. goods.
China hopes the United States can cancel the planned additional tariffs
to avoid an escalation in the trade war, its commerce ministry spokesman, Gao
Feng, told reporters on Thursday.
“The most important thing at the moment is to create necessary
conditions for both sides to continue negotiations,” he said during a weekly
briefing, adding that China was lodging “solemn representation” with the United
States.
For two years, the Trump administration has sought to pressure China to
eliminate what it calls unfair trade practices and make sweeping changes to its
policies on intellectual property protection, forced transfers of technology to
Chinese firms, industrial subsidies and market access.
But China has constantly denied such accusations, vowing to fight back
in kind and criticizing U.S. measures as protectionist.
Gao said China had “ample” countermeasures to retaliate against the
planned U.S. tariffs, but talks in the current circumstances should focus on
whether the tariffs could be cancelled.
He did not answer directly when asked if his remarks suggested China
would not retaliate against the latest U.S. tariff threat.
China has repeatedly said it would have no choice but to retaliate if
the United States followed through on its threat.
More
In European news,
as a no deal Brexit approaches Germany slides towards recession, will GB follow?
Europe’s politicians are still in denial that GBs leaving deal or no deal.
Their actions and inactions only make a new European recession far more likely
and unstoppable.
German inflation slows, jobless edges up as economy splutters
August 29, 2019 /
12:00 PM
BERLIN
(Reuters) - German inflation likely slowed in August from the prior month,
state data indicated on Thursday, sliding further below the European Central
Bank’s target ahead of its Sept. 12 policy meeting at which fresh stimulus is
expected.
Annual inflation in six German states slowed in August from a month
earlier, the data showed, with the rate in North Rhine-Westphalia, the
country’s most populous region, dipping to 1.5 percent from 1.7 percent in
July.
The ECB targets inflation of close to but below 2 percent. Pan-German
inflation data for August is due at 1200 GMT.
Federal Labour Office data also published on Thursday showed seasonally
adjusted unemployment rose by 4,000 on the month in August, eroding the
domestic pillar of strength that has helped support Germany’s economy even as
its export engine splutters.
With German exports suffering from global trade disputes and waning foreign demand, Germany has become increasingly reliant on its domestic economy to support growth - a dependency that leaves it exposed to any weakening in the labour market.
“All of this only means that the protection shield against the industrial slowdown and external woes is getting thinner if not wearing out,” ING economist Carsten Brzeski said of the rise in unemployment.
Recruiter Hays Plc (HAYS.L) warned earlier that it was seeing growing signs of weakening business confidence in Germany, its largest market.
More
EU should not let itself be scared into Brexit renegotiation - Merkel ally
August 29, 2019
/ 7:32 PM
BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union should not let itself be pressured
into Brexit renegotiations following British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s
decision to order the suspension of parliament for almost a month, a senior
German conservative said on Thursday.
“If the rationale was to scare
the EU into renegotiation by removing parliament as the final obstacle to
NoDeal Brexit, the UK government has been gravely misled,” Norbert Roettgen,
chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of parliament,
said in a tweet.
“The executive denying parliament its
democratic say at this decisive moment, cannot be rewarded by the EU.”
More
German Slump Threatens Bank Profits as Loan Default Risk Spreads
By Nicholas Comfort and Steven Arons
August
30, 2019, 5:00 AM GMT+1
Germany’s deepening economic slump is
squeezing the life out of the nation’s struggling banks, a little more than a
decade after a crippling financial crisis from which many of them never fully
recovered
----“Headwinds from interest rates and the economy are intensifying,” HSBC’s Germany head Carola von Schmettow said on Wednesday. There is an “increased danger of credit defaults” in the second half of the year, according to the bank.
The growing threat comes at exactly the wrong time for a banking industry already debilitated by years of sub-par profitability and failed turnaround plans. Deutsche Bank recently unveiled the most sweeping restructuring plan in its recent history and has since acknowledged that the underlying macro-economic assumptions didn’t factor in the rapidly deteriorating outlook.
Commerzbank is working on a strategy update while the world around it slides toward recession. About a third of the lender’s total loan book -- or about a fifth of its total balance sheet -- is pledged to German companies.
The outlook for some of Germany’s key industries and in particular the automotive sector is worrisome. Several carmakers and parts suppliers including Daimler AG and Continental AG have issued profit warnings. The insolvency last month of Eisenmann SE, a maker of surface coating machines for car producers, has increased the focus on the sector.
This year, Commerzbank increased its expectations of losses from exposure to the automotive industry to the highest in more than four years. The larger part of the second-quarter loan impairments at HSBC came from a small number of big defaults, including within Germany’s automotive industry, according to a person familiar with the matter.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-30/german-slump-threatens-bank-profits-as-loan-default-risk-spreads?srnd=premium-europe
Finally, with China now playing
Trump’s game of let’s all talk up global stock markets, even as a new recession
sticks its head around the door, some see a big opportunity arriving in gold.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see $3,000 gold: David Rosenberg
August 29,
2019 9:33 AM EDT
Interest rates will keep going
down and gold will keep going up in what Gluskin Sheff’s chief economist calls
a “bona fide and durable gold rally.” David Rosenberg talks with the FP’s
Larysa Harapyn about gold’s prospects.
Video.
I learned early that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again. I’ve never forgotten that.
Jesse Livermore
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, Atlantic hurricane Dorian. Where will it hit, when, and how bad?
With plenty of advance notice, hopefully its impact will be minimized.
Trump skips goodwill trip to Poland due to Hurricane Dorian
August 29, 2019
/ 9:42 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly called off a
weekend trip to Poland on Thursday, saying he wanted to stay home and make sure
the federal government is prepared for a looming hurricane headed for Florida.
Trump, who returned to the White House on Monday after a Group of Seven
summit in France, announced that Vice President Mike Pence would take his place
for the trip to Warsaw, intended to mark the beginning 80 years ago of World
War Two.
“The storm looks like it could be a very, very big one indeed,” Trump
said in the Rose Garden during an event to officially establish the U.S. Space
Command.
Hurricane Dorian, projected to become a Category 4 storm, appeared to be
on a track to hit Florida, with his own Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach on the
Atlantic Coast possibly in its path.
Trump had already cancelled a visit to Denmark that was to have been
combined with the Poland stop. He said last week he was postponing the trip to
Denmark after the negative response from that country about his idea for the
United States to purchase Greenland.
More
Florida braces for potentially catastrophic landfall by Hurricane Dorian
By Associated Press Published: Aug 29, 2019 11:56 p.m. ET
MIAMI — Florida residents picked the shelves clean of bottled water and
lined up at gas stations Thursday as an increasingly menacing-looking Hurricane
Dorian threatened to broadside the state over Labor Day weekend.
Leaving lighter-than-expected damage in its wake in Puerto Rico and the
Virgin Islands, the second hurricane of the 2019 season swirled toward the
U.S., with forecasters warning it will draw energy from the warm, open waters
as it closes in.
The National Hurricane Center said the Category 2 storm is expected to
strengthen into a potentially catastrophic Cat 4 with winds of 130 mph and slam
into the U.S. on Monday somewhere between the Florida Keys and southern Georgia
— a 500-mile stretch that reflected the high degree of uncertainty this far
out.
“If it makes landfall as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane, that’s a big
deal,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. “A lot of
people are going to be affected. A lot of insurance claims.”
President Donald Trump canceled his weekend trip to Poland and declared
Florida is “going to be totally ready.”
With the storm’s track still unclear, no immediate mass evacuations were
ordered.
Along Florida’s east coast, local governments began distributing
sandbags, shoppers rushed to stock up on food, plywood and other emergency
supplies at supermarkets and hardware stores, and motorists topped off their
tanks and filled gasoline cans. Some fuel shortages were reported in the Cape
Canaveral area.
---- As of Thursday night, Dorian was centered about 295 miles northeast of the Bahamas, its winds blowing at 105 mph as it moved northwest at 12 mph.
It is expected to pick up steam as it pushes out into warm waters with favorable winds, the University of Miami’s McNoldy said, adding: “Starting tomorrow, it really has no obstacles left in its way.”
The National Hurricane Center’s projected track had the storm blowing ashore midway along the Florida peninsula, southeast of Orlando and well north of Miami or Fort Lauderdale. But because of the difficulty of predicting its course this far ahead, the “cone of uncertainty” covered nearly the entire state.
More
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?
Canada's 'largest' solar project gets green light for construction
Published Wed, Aug 28 2019 9:10 AM EDT
A 400-megawatt Canadian solar facility, expected to be the largest
operating solar energy project in the country, is a step closer after the
Alberta Utilities Commission granted approval for its construction and
operation.
In an announcement Tuesday, Greengate Power said construction on the
Travers Solar project would start in 2020, with commercial operations slated
for 2021.
Greengate said the photovoltaic facility could supply electricity to
over 100,000 homes. The site of the project is in Vulcan County, Alberta.
Photovoltaic refers to the process of directly converting light from the sun
into electricity.
“We are very pleased to have received approval for what we expect will
be Canada’s largest solar energy project and one of the largest in the world,”
Greengate CEO Dan Balaban said in a statement.
At
400 MW, the Travers Solar project would be toward the upper end of solar PV
plants. In North America, other large-scale PV plants include the 550 MW Topaz
Solar Farms project and the 586 MW Solar Star Projects facility, which are both
located in California.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/28/canadas-largest-solar-project-gets-green-light-for-construction.html
Mitsubishi invests in UK company to bring off-grid solar to Asia
Japanese conglomerate backs solar utility BBOXX to expand service in south Asia and AfricaWed 28 Aug 2019 00.00 BST
A British energy firm lighting up homes in Africa with pay-as-you-go solar power has secured £40m to extend its reach to Asia with the help of Japan’s Mitsubishi.
The conglomerate has taken a stake in off-grid solar company BBOXX through the start-up’s latest funding round, which will power the Africa-focused company deeper into Asia.
The funds will also help BBOXX, which operates in Rwanda, Kenya, Togo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to break into new African markets, where an estimated one in three people live without reliable access to electricity.
BBOXX is one of a growing number of energy companies to plug into the demand for energy across Africa and south Asia.
The falling cost of solar technology and the strength of mobile banking across Africa have encouraged major investments from global energy companies including US giant General Electric and France’s EDF and Engie.
Mansoor Hamayun, BBOXX’s chief executive and co-founder, said Mitsubishi’s “extensive reach” and “technological expertise” would help the company to supply more people living without access to modern utilities and services.
“The funding is further evidence of Japanese interest in Africa and in PAYG [pay as you go] solar energy globally,” he said.
BBOXX and its rivals use mobile money to charge customers a monthly fee for the use of mini solar panels and ultra-efficient lighting strips. The fixed-period contracts usually run for about two years, until the equipment is paid off.
Customers can then choose to keep their existing kit and use the electricity for free, or upgrade their system to include more panels and extra appliances under a new contract.
Earlier this year, BBOXX sold a 50% stake in its Togo-based business to EDF Energy in return for funding to help grow the company.
More
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/28/mitsubishi-invests-in-uk-company-to-bring-off-grid-solar-to-asia
Another weekend and a
long weekend in America. A worryingly long weekend for those anywhere near the
possible path of the hurricane. At least President Trump seems to be more
prepared for the hurricane than was President G. W. Bush. Have a great weekend
everyone.
I knew something was wrong somewhere, but I couldn’t spot it
exactly. But if something was coming and I didn’t know where from, I couldn’t
be on my guard against it. That being the case I’d better be out of the market.
Jesse Livermore
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: 26,864 +53 Up. NASDAQ: 8,175 +65 Down.
SP500: 2,980 +53 Up.
The S&P and Dow remain up, but in very unconvincing fashion. The NASDAQ remains down. Like the Fed, I would await a better data
driven signal.
