Baltic
Dry Index. 1774 -30 Brent Crude 88.19
Spot
Gold 2316 US 2 Year Yield 4.89 +0.03
"Gold is not
less but more rational than paper money. Money holds value so long as it is in
limited supply; gold will always be in limited supply, and would require real
resources to produce even from the sea; paper and printing ink are not in limited
supply. The gold system is much closer to a modern automatic scientific control
system than the crude and relatively unstable system of paper."
William Rees-Mogg.
Did Meta, one of the ”magnificent seven,” so called technology stocks, just burst the magnificent seven bubble?
Tesla had already deflated some of that bubble, but if the Meta dream just blew up, who’s next?
With interest rates, higher for longer,
already bursting the wider global stock mania, and Uncle Scam showing no
interest in stopping piling up new debt by another one trillion fiat dollars every
hundred days, the whole global financial system is headed for a crash.
Asia markets take
a breather as South Korea beats first-quarter GDP expectations
UPDATED THU, APR 25 2024 9:58 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets took a breather after two
straight days of rallies, mirroring moves on Wall Street ahead of first-quarter
gross domestic product figures from the U.S. due Thursday.
In Asia, investors
will assess South Korea’s advance first-quarter GDP growth of 3.4% year on
year, the highest quarterly growth since the fourth quarter of 2021.
Separately, the
Bank of Japan kicks off its monetary policy meeting Thursday as investors
monitor for action against yen weakness. The yen slid past the 155 mark against
the U.S. dollar on Wednesday, hitting a fresh 34-year low.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped
1.8%, while the Topix was down 1.4%. The yen was still firmly beyond the 155
mark against the greenback, trading at 155.41.
South Korea’s Kospi also
slipped 1.12%, while the small cap Kosdaq was down 0.36%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was
0.45% lower, while China’s CSI 300 fell 0.4%.
Markets in Australia and New
Zealand are closed for a public holiday.
Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes
were largely range bound as interest rate fears dampened the enthusiasm
stemming from a strong slate of corporate earnings.
Treasury yields rose, pressuring
stocks. At session highs, the benchmark 10-year Treasury
note yield
topped 4.67%, while the rate on the 2-year note surpassed
4.95%
The S&P 500 eked
out a 0.02% gain, while the Dow Jones
Industrial Average fell
0.11%. The Nasdaq Composite edged
0.1% higher.
Asia markets: South
Korea GDP, Malaysia CPI, BOJ MPM meeting (cnbc.com)
Morning Bid: Gearing
up for the tech roller-coaster ride
By Reuters April 25, 2024 6:00 AM GMT+1
A look at the day ahead in
European and global markets from Ankur Banerjee
Tech stocks are yet again set to sway the wider markets after a
lacklustre forecast from Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META.O) sparked a broad sell-off
across regions.
Meta's lower-than-anticipated revenue forecast along with
guidance for higher expenses knocked $200 billion of its market value and
dragged several of its rivals lower as worries over the surging cost of AI
weighed on sentiment.
Asian tech stocks (.MIAPJIT00NUS) followed suit and were down
2%, with tech heavy Taiwan (.TWII) and South Korean stocks (.KS11)both down 1%. All eyes now
will be on European tech stocks (.SX8P)
Earnings from Intel (INTC.O), Alphabet (GOOGL.O)and Microsoft (MSFT.O) will probably paint a
fuller picture of how firms are faring in the AI race.
An earnings-filled Thursday awaits traders in Europe, with
banking firms in the spotlight, while yen watchers keep looking around for a
possible intervention now that the currency has breached past the
psychologically key 155 per dollar level.
Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), BNP Paribas SA (BNPP.PA) and Barclays Plc (BARC.L) are due to report their earnings and the focus will be
on their net interest margin especially with interest rates in Europe and UK
priced to fall in the second half of the year.
More
Morning
Bid: Gearing up for the tech roller-coaster ride | Reuters
Meta loses
$200 billion in value as Zuckerberg focuses earnings call on all the ways
company bleeds cash
Mark Zuckerberg started Meta’s
earnings call by talking about artificial intelligence. Then he moved onto the
metaverse, touting his company’s headsets, glasses and operating system. He
spent almost the entirety of his opening remarks focused on the many ways Meta
loses money.
Investors weren’t into it. Meta
shares tumbled as much as 19% in extended trading on Wednesday, wiping out more
than $200 billion in market cap. The drop came despite Meta reporting better-than-expected
profit and revenue for the first quarter.
Zuckerberg appeared ready for the
sell-off.
“I think it’s worth calling that
out, that we’ve historically seen a lot of volatility in our stock during this
phase of our product playbook where we’re investing in scaling a new product
but aren’t yet monetizing it,” Zuckerberg said. He cited past efforts like
short-video service Reels, Stories and the transition to mobile.
Meta generates 98% of its revenue
from digital advertising. But to the extent Zuckerberg talked about ads, he was
looking to the future and the ways the company could potentially turn its
current investments into ad dollars. In discussing Meta’s effort to build a
“leading AI,” he said, “There are several ways to build a massive business here
including scaling business messaging, introducing ads or paid content into AI
interactions.”
He spent time talking about Meta
Llama 3, the company’s newest large language model, and the recent
rollout of Meta AI, the company’s answer to OpenAI’s
ChatGPT.
Zuckerberg then moved onto
potential opportunities for expansion within the mixed reality headset market,
like a headset for work or fitness. Meta opened up access to the operating system
that powers its Quest headsets on Monday, which Zuckerberg said will help the
mixed reality ecosystem grow faster.
He also talked up Meta’s AR
glasses, which he called “the ideal device for an AI assistant because you can
let them see what you see and hear what you hear.”
In the meantime, Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which houses the company’s hardware and software
for development of the nascent metaverse, continues to bleed cash. Reality Labs
reported sales of $440 million for the first quarter and $3.85 billion in
losses. The division’s cumulative losses since the end of 2020 have topped $45
billion.
More
Meta loses $200 billion in value, Zuckerberg focuses on AI, metaverse (cnbc.com)
Stock futures
fall after Meta Platforms, IBM report quarterly results: Live updates
UPDATED THU, APR 25 2024 7:12 PM EDT
U.S. stock
futures fell on Wednesday night after tech juggernaut Meta Platforms reported
its latest quarterly results. Traders also looked ahead to the release of key
economic data later this week.
Futures
tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell
76 points or 0.2%. S&P 500
futures slid
0.6%, and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped
1%.
Meta plunged
15% in extended trading after the social media giant issued light
revenue guidance for the second quarter. International Business Machines fell
8% after missing consensus estimates for its first-quarter
revenue.
The moves follow a mixed day for
the stock market, as rising Treasury yields on Wednesday placed downward
pressure on stocks. The S&P 500 edged
0.02% higher, while the Nasdaq Composite added
0.1%. The 30-stock Dow lost
0.11%.
Traders will watch out for the
first-quarter reading of the U.S. gross domestic product, due at 8:30 a.m. ET
Thursday. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect that real GDP came in at 2.4%.
Weekly jobless claims are also due.
March’s personal consumption
expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, will
be issued on Friday. Economists are calling for a monthly increase of 0.3% and
a jump of 2.6% from a year earlier.
These data points will inform the
central bank’s path forward on interest rate policy. Fed funds futures trading
suggests the first cut could take place at the September Fed meeting, according
to CME FedWatch Tool.
More
Stock market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
In other news.
China may have to
brace for a new wave of bond defaults, S&P says
BEIJING — China’s
state-directed economy may be creating the conditions for a new wave of bond
defaults that could come as soon as next year, according to an S&P Global
Ratings report released Tuesday.
It would be the third
round of corporate defaults in about a decade, the ratings agency pointed out.
It comes against a
backdrop of extremely few defaults in China amid concerns about overall growth
in the world’s second-largest economy.
“The real thing to
watch for policymakers is whether the current directives are creating distorted
incentives in the economy,” Charles Chang, greater China country lead at
S&P Global Ratings, said in a phone interview Wednesday.
China’s corporate
bond default rate fell to 0.2% in 2023, the lowest in at least 8 years and far
below the global rate of about 2.6%, S&P data showed.
“To a certain extent
this is not a good sign, because we see this divergence as something that’s not
the result of the functioning of markets,” Chang said. “We’ve seen directives
or guidance from the government in the past year to discourage defaults in the
bond market.”
“The question is:
When the guidance to avoid the defaults in the bond market [ends], what happens
to the bond market?” he said, noting that’s something to watch out for next
year.
Chinese authorities have in recent years
emphasized the need to prevent financial risks.
But heavy-handed
approaches to tackling problems, especially in the real estate sector,
can have unintended consequences.
The property market slumped after
Beijing’s crackdown on developers’ high reliance on debt in the last three
years. The once-massive sector has dragged
down the economy, while the property sector shows few signs of
turning around.
Real estate led the latest wave of
defaults between 2020 and 2024, according to S&P. Prior to that, their
analysis showed that industrials and commodity firms led defaults in 2015 to
2019.
More
China
may have to brace for a new wave of bond defaults, S&P says (cnbc.com)
Israel says it is
poised to move on Rafah
By Dan Williams
April
25, 2024 12:23 AM GMT+1
JERUSALEM, April 24 (Reuters) - Israel's military is poised to evacuate
Palestinian civilians from Rafah and assault Hamas hold-outs in the southern
Gaza Strip city, a senior Israeli defence official said on Wednesday, despite
international warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government said
Israel was "moving ahead" with a ground operation, but gave no
timeline.
The defence official said Israel's Defence Ministry had bought 40,000
tents, each with the capacity for 10 to 12 people, to house Palestinians
relocated from Rafah in advance of an assault.
Video circulating online appeared to show rows of square white tents
going up in Khan Younis, a city some 5 km (3 miles) from Rafah. Reuters could
not verify the video but reviewed images from satellite company Maxar
Technologies which showed tent camps on Khan Younis land that had been vacant
weeks ago.
An Israeli government source said Netanyahu's war cabinet planned to
meet in the coming two weeks to authorise civilian evacuations, expected to
take around a month.
The defence official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters that the
military could go into action immediately but was awaiting a green light from
Netanyahu.
Rafah, which abuts the Egyptian border, is sheltering more than a
million Palestinians who fled the half-year-old Israeli offensive through the
rest of Gaza and say the prospect of fleeing yet again is terrifying.
More
Israel says it is poised to move on Rafah | Reuters
Finally, yet another lucky airline disaster escape in America. We’ve all got to die sometime, but most of us just hope to wake up one morning in our comfortable bed, dead.
Swiss Air jet nearly collides with four other planes
on JFK runway
April 23, 2024
A Swiss Air jet nearly collided with four other planes at JFK airport, after a communication error sent the jets across a runway at the same time.
The incident
happened last week and is now being investigated by the Federal Aviation
Administration, after the quick thinking pilot aborted takeoff.
The A330 had
been given the all clear to take off from the New York airport and was speeding
down the runway.
Despite the
green light, the pilot noticed air traffic control had also cleared four other
planes to cross the same runway.
Audio taken
from air traffic control have confirmed that the flight was cleared for
takeoff, before the pilot says: 'Swiss 17k heavy rejecting takeoff. Traffic on
the runway.'
The airline said: 'Due to the high level of situational
awareness and quick reaction of our crew, a potentially dangerous situation was
quickly de-escalated.'
Robert Sumwalt, executive director of the Boeing
Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University told CBS: 'It's a situation of one controller not knowing what
the other controller is doing.
'That is a totally unacceptable situation, as it
turns out this is not what I would call a close call. Still it is not something
that should happen.'
While John
Nance, aviation expert and ABC News contributor told ABC7: 'Moving four
aircraft across an active runway and one controller not talking to another
indicates a special level of stress.'
The incident
last week came just one day after another close call at Washington's Reagan
National Airport.
Two packed
airplanes came within 400 feet of each other, after a JetBlue flight was
cleared for takeoff.
The pilot was
forced to slam on the brakes after Air Traffic Control noticed they had also
cleared a Southwest Airlines plane to taxi across that same runway.
In audio
obtained from Air Traffic Control, the controller can be heard saying:
'Southwest stop! Southwest 2937 stop!'
Southwest
Airlines Flight 2937, which was bound for Orlando, Florida, took off from the
airport at 7:47 a.m., according to FlightAware.
JetBlue flight
1554 was bound for Boston, with the flight taking off from Reagan National at
1:48 p.m.
JetBlue said
in a statement that the flight aborted takeoff because of another aircraft
trying to cross the runway, but no injuries were reported.
More
Swiss Air jet nearly collides with four other planes on JFK runway (msn.com)
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Boomtime
for businesses as the UK economic recovery is 'well under way', economists say
April
23, 2024
UK business has enjoyed its strongest
growth for nearly a year – outpacing global rivals – in the latest sign that
the recession has been left behind.
A closely watched survey compiled by
data provider S&P Global showed private sector activity gathering pace this
month with the healthiest expansion since last May.
Ashley
Webb, UK economist at Capital Economics, said the report suggests 'the economic
recovery is well under way'.
It
came as separate figures from lender Nationwide showed households were starting
to splash out more on gardening, eating out and holidays as cost-of-living
pressures ease.
---- But
hopes that the economic recovery would help to deliver further relief to
hard-pressed households ahead of the election suffered a setback as worse than
expected borrowing figures reduced Chancellor Jeremy
Hunt's scope to cut taxes.
And
in another blow, the Bank of England's chief economist, Huw Pill, said that
there was still 'a reasonable way to go' before it could start cutting interest
rates.
Britain suffered a recession at the
end of last year when the economy shrank for two quarters in a row.
Official figures next month are
expected to show it returned to growth in the first three months of 2024,
ending the downturn.
S&P's latest purchasing managers'
index survey suggested the bounce-back extended into April.
It gave a reading of 54, up from 52.8
in March. A reading above 50 signals growth and below 50 points to contraction.
The figure put the UK ahead of the US and the eurozone. In Germany and France,
the private sector is experiencing little or no growth.
More
Boomtime for businesses as the UK economic recovery is 'well under way', economists say (msn.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Sounds like, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me, just hit Scotland’s healthcare workforce.
Covid vaccine Scotland: Only a third of healthcare workers vaccinated this winter, report finds
April 24, 2024
Only a third of health and
social care professionals were vaccinated against Covid over the winter, figures have revealed, leading to
calls for a “targeted campaign” to tackle “popular myths”.
The latest report from Public Health Scotland (PHS)
shows a fall in Covid-19 and flu vaccine uptake for all eligible groups this
past winter, when compared to winter 2022/23, but “notably” among occupational
groups, such as health and social care workers.
In winter
2022/23, 57.7 per cent of all frontline healthcare workers took the Covid
vaccine, and 55.7 were vaccinated against influenza. However, in winter
2023/24, just 35.1 per cent of healthcare workers were vaccinated against
Covid, and 42.2 per cent against seasonal flu.
Dr Sam Ghebrehewet, head of
vaccination and immunisation at PHS, said vaccination “remains the best protection against
severe outcomes” of both flu and Covid-19 and “reduces the likelihood of severe
illness, hospital admission and, in some cases, death”.
“Work is underway to
understand the reasons behind the decrease in vaccine uptake,” Dr Ghebrehewet
said. “This is crucial to ensure that those most vulnerable are aware of their
eligibility for vaccination.”
This
winter’s Covid-19 and flu vaccination programme ran from September 4, 2023 to
March 31 this year, and administered a total of 1,647,596 flu vaccinations to
adults and 538,580 to children, as well as 1,387,766 Covid-19 vaccine jags.
“Uptake was lower for influenza and Covid-19
vaccines compared to winter 2022/23 for all eligible groups,” a report from PHS
added.
More
But…. Approx. 22 minutes.
Outrageous
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.
Today, something different. Did the
Sun just attack planet Earth?
4 solar flares simultaneously erupt from the sun in
rare 'super' explosion — and Earth could be hit by the fallout
April 23, 2024
An exceptionally rare, "quadruple"
solar flare just exploded from four different points across the sun's surface
at almost the exact same time. The components of this interconnected, explosive
tetrad may have also launched a solar storm toward Earth — which could
potentially slam into our planet in the coming days.
The
four-part eruption began at around 1:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday (April 23),
according to video footage captured
by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The near-simultaneous outbursts came from
three sunspots and a large magnetic filament — a large loop of plasma suspended
above the solar surface — located in between those three dark patches, Spaceweather.com reported.
The blast sites were each separated by hundreds of thousands of miles, and the
area between them covered around a third of the solar surface facing Earth.
The concurrent blasts were
part of one single eruption, known as a sympathetic
solar flare. This type of solar outburst
happens when sunspots or filaments are invisibly linked by massive magnetic
field loops that arch above the solar surface. When one detonates, the others
quickly follow suit.
In almost all reported cases of
such events, sympathetic flares include just two linked flares, which can range
in intensity from small outbursts to X-class flares, the most powerful class
of solar flares the sun can produce. However, in this case, there
were twice as many flares as usual, which makes this a
"super-sympathetic" flare, according to Spaceweather.com.
It is currently unclear what the combined power
of the blast was. But given the large area covered by the sunspots, there is a
decent chance that "at least some of the debris will be
Earth-directed," Spaceweather.com reported. This debris would most likely
be a massive cloud of plasma and radiation launched by one of the flares, known
as a coronal mass ejection (CME).
If confirmed, a CME could smash into our planet in the next few days and
trigger vibrant auroras near its magnetic poles.
This is at least the third
sympathetic solar flare of 2024 following a pair of explosions in January and an X-class flare duo in March.
Sympathetic solar flares are
more likely to occur during or around solar maximum, the most
active phase of the sun's roughly 11-year solar cycle, according to a 2022 study that
analyzed nearly 40 years of solar flare data. Some researchers believe this
explosive peak may have already begun,
around a year earlier than initially forecast.
In addition to ushering in more frequent and
powerful solar storms, the solar maximum also comes with an increase in the
number of sunspots littered across the sun. At the start of Tuesday, there were
14 sunspot groups on the sun's near side — tying the record for the
highest sunspot total since the start of the current solar cycle in 2019, EarthSky reported.
Finally,
our latest new section, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP
compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
"Start buying
gold now, regardless of the price. By acting now, you will not have to react
when it's too late. Too late will be when the majority of the public finally
figures out what is happening to paper money and frantically tries to get
aboard. Remember, if you're one of the ones holding paper in the end, you will
have given away your products and services for nothing."
Robert Ringer.
