Happy Holidays 

The USDA's projected 2016/17 world sugar stocks-to-use ratio of 17.7% would be the lowest in more than 20 years ...

Baltic Exchange Dry Index etc.

is up-to-date

Donald Trump seems to have brought the techniques of Twitter to the construction of his government. “Trolling” on Twitter is defined as “making a deliberately offensive online posting with the aim of upsetting someone”. In this spirit, Mr Trump has placed a climate-change denier in charge of environmental protection, an opponent of the minimum wage as labour secretary, a conspiracy theorist in charge of the National Security Council and a protectionist at the commerce department. The pièce de résistance could be the appointment of Rex Tillerson, a recipient of the Kremlin’s Order of Friendship, as secretary of state.

 (FT) Gideon Rachman

QUICK OVERVIEW

•  China flies nuclear bomber over South China Sea to 'send a message' to Donald Trump
•  US officials say flight is in response to President-elect’s phone call with Taiwan's leader
• 
  
• Hmm. Is America about to enter a new golden age under (I'm, like a smart person) Trump  ? Another fresh all-time high of the skyrocketing Dow seems to says so.
•  
• Libor Fed Fund spread is looking interesting 

• Russia and others join OPEC in a rare, coordinated push to cut oil output...

• One in six Americans now believes that military rule would be a good idea...

• The CIA concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help elect (I'm, like a smart person) Trump...

• Trump (I'm, like a smart person) is expected to name the CEO of Exxon Mobil Tillerson as the country's top diplomat.HE RUNS WORLDS LARGEST OIL COMPANY, has extensive business dealings with Putin & Russia, and favors doing away with sanctions. In 2013, Putin awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship, Russia’s highest honors for foreigners.

• (NYT) Trump (I'm, like a smart person), in Louisiana, says he will end energy regulations…

• China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.3% YoY in November, up from October's 2.1% the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced.

• (WP) Trump's (I'm, like a smart person) transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.

• Gold futures fell on Thursday as the European Central Bank' s decision on quantitative easing supported the U.S. dollar

• (Paul Krugman) Another metric: Trump would have to do one Carrier-sized deal a week for 30 years to save as many jobs as Obama's auto bailout

• (Reuters) - Britain's Royal Mint and leading U.S.-based derivatives exchange CME Group have teamed up to create a blockchain-based digital platform for dealing in gold in a drive to cut the costs involved in trading the precious metal.

• Economists at Zillow arepredicting a trend reversal in 2017, due partly to expected policy changes under President-elect Trump and partly to the ongoing housing recovery. Experts there say 2017 will see more millennial home ownership, more driving and rising construction costs.

• (Zillow) Experts Predict Housing Market Will Soon Favor Buyers

• The median home value in the U.S. is now $191,200, up 6.2 percent since last October, according to Zillow's October Real Estate Market Report

• - Home values rose 6.2 percent over the past year to a Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) of $191,200 in October.

• - Rents rose 1.4 percent over the past year to a Zillow Rent Index (ZRI) of $1,402.

• - There are 6 percent fewer homes for sale than a year ago, with Boston and Indianapolis reporting the greatest drop in inventory.

• - Most experts surveyed predict the housing market will shift from the current seller's market to a buyer's market by 2019.

Weekly Charts are up-to-date   

Real Estate is up-to-date

Daily Charts are up-to-date

Baltic Exchange Dry Index etc.




is up-to-date

QUICK OVERVIEW

• (NYT) A quarter of India’s 1.25 billion people are younger than 15. Every month, until 2030, nearly a million Indians will turn 18 European Central Bank 

• (ECB) President Mario Draghi said 2016 marked the first year when gross domestic product (GDP) in the Eurozone recovered to above its pre-crisis level since 2008.

• (Economist) Global wealth distribution: Where you fit in - If you had only $2,220 to your name, you might not think yourself terribly fortunate. But you would be wealthier than half the world’s population. With $71,560 or more, you’d be in the top tenth. If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400, as 18m Americans do, you are a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against. Some of those railing against the global elite probably do not know they belong to it.

• (538) 82% of U.S. middle school students who weren’t able to determine the difference between sponsored content and a real news article, according to a new Stanford University study.

• (Bloomberg/538) $146 million, estimated size of the market for aloe vera products in the U.S. Well, for products that claim to contain aloe vera, anyway. It turns out that store-brand aloe products sold in Target, Walmart and CVS didn’t contain any aloe at all, according to a lab analysis sponsored by Bloomberg News, despite listing it as one of the top two ingredients.

• The Federal Trade Commission struck a blow for reality when it declared that homeopathic products may no longer make claims to treat any condition unless those claims are backed up by hard scientific evidence.

• (Economist) Arctic sea ice: On the rocks Scientists are interested in sea ice as a marker—and amplifier—of climate change. In recent years the melting season in the Arctic has been ending later in the year. As a result, the total sea-ice extent in September 2016 was over 3m sq km smaller than in September 1980—though not quite as small as in 2012, the worst year so far. In the Arctic, it is around 2m sq km below average, the lowest figure on record for November (Economist)

• Donald Trump said this week that on his first day in office, America would quit the TPP, a trade pact nearly a decade in the making. It would have covered almost 40% of the global economy. The deal was meant to be strategic as well as economic; its other signatories consider it pointless without American participation. Observers expect China to fill the void and assume economic leadership in Asia.

• CME Group, announced it set a total open interest record of 116,999,368 on Nov. 23, 2016. The new record surpassed the previous open interest record of 116,427,935 contracts set on June 9, 2016. Interest Rate open interest also hit a record of 69,493,548 contracts, surpassing the previous open interest record of 68,147,202 set on Nov. 22, 2016.

9/11, global elites and goblins: How America's top conspiracy theorist helped Donald Trump win (NZ Herald)

Mr Jones offered his followers $US1000 if they appeared on national TV for more than five seconds wearing the shirt, and $US5000 if they shouted the phrase "Bill Clinton is a rapist".

The Drums of War George Monbiot

The combination of automation, complexity and climate change is dangerous in ways we haven’t even begun to grasp.

 
Dow Trend Earnings (aka Fed model) is up-to-date

Baltic Exchange is up-to-date

Capesize etc. is up-to-date

Trump voters will not like what happens next


..millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. I'll be one  of them - back whenever..

 

An American Tragedy

David Remnick (The New Yorker)

(USDA) Indian centrifugal sugar production in marketing year (MY) 2016/17 (out-year) is revised down by six percent to 23.9 million metric tons (MMT). Despite higher sugar production in Uttar Pradesh, lower than anticipated sugar production from Maharashtra and Karnataka will further push overall production levels below last year. Assuming normal sugarcane yields and a net decline in planted area, overall sugarcane production during the out-year is now revised lower to 324 MMT from 4.57 million hectares. Commercial trade will be minimal.

California Dreamin: If memory serves, the sugar move in the early seventies went from some 2 cents to some 66 cents. (I believe I know the guy that bought that all-time high tick).

Translating this to “now”, per the bureau of labor statistics inflation calculator, 2 cents in 1973 equals $11 cents now.
And 66 cents in 1973 are equal to $3.63 now.

Therefore, I’m now looking for a sugar move to $3.63. The Presidential debate is over, time for another whisky -
$ 3.63 HA

All you heavy Orange Juice drinkers may want to stock up - in case it makes "all time" new highs..

Charts are up-to-date

Daily Charts are up-to-date

Brexit cost investors $2 trillion, the worst one day drop ever

(CNBC)Worldwide markets hemorrhaged more than $2 trillion in paper wealth on Friday, according to data from S&P Global, the worst on record. For context, that figure eclipsed the whipsaw trading sessions of the 2008 financial crisis, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.

Charts are up-to-date

Dry Bulk Shipping To Witness Steady Progress Moving Forward On The Back Of Growing Trade Volumes Says BIMCO

“We are still worried about the sustainability of freight rates in the years to come. Our main worry is that demolition activity will slow down as the BDI improves. If shipowners slow demolition of ships considerably, the fleet will keep growing. This will widen the fundamental imbalance further because we forecast the demand side to grow slowly in the coming years. In order to reverse several years of adding capacity in excess of demand growth, we need to develop a multi-year trend of negative fleet growth. BIMCO assess the current utilisation rate of the dry bulk fleet at the low end of the 70s”, said the report.

Baltic Dry Index and Overview are up-to-date

Baltic Dry Index and Overview are up-to-date

BDI and Overview are up to date

Baltic Dry index and Quick Overview are up-to-date

Where in this cycle are we? - (YOU?)

Zombie ships send maritime freight into worst crisis in living memory Cheap debt, the China slowdown, and a glut of ships have seen the Baltic Dry Index plummet to its lowest level in more than 30 years

Mercator to exit dry bulk shipping business due to downturn  
Mercator decides to exit dry bulk cargo business carried on by its Singapore unit by way of divestment as part of its ongoing portfolio-restructuring exercise

 Baltic Exchange Capesize index in new low


 Opportunities are emerging to tempt those with strong nerves..

Quick Overview is up-to-date

Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is up-to-date 

New low :(

QUICK OVERVIEW

• The whole world is on edge “again” so global stocks had a miserable start to the year – the worst ever.

• China’s stock market lost almost 10% for the week, causing trading to be suspended twice.

• Fears of a wider Sunni-Shia conflict are increasing

• North Korea keeps rattling nukes, and South Korea put its military on alert

• America’s economy added 292,000 jobs in December, better than expected.

• Inflation in the Eurozone is unchanged at 0.2%. Forecasters had expected a rise.

• Sweden, also battling low inflation, has a benchmark interest rate of -0.35%.

• Car manufacturers in the US had the best year “ever” – selling 17.47 million vehicles.

• Iron Ore prices continue depressed

• APX spot electricity rates are at a 15 year low

• Rubber continues to sink

• Total U.S. Rail carloads are down 20.3 %

• YoY Coal Rail carloads are down 35.3% YoY

• The Libor - Fed Funds Spread is beginning to look interesting “again”.

• Our opinion of Dow Theory is currently bearish. IT will return to a bullish stance if the Dow Industrials close above 17919 “and” the Dow Transports close above 8292.

• Dow Divided by CPI pulling back to breakout point.

• The CPI adjusted S&P hasn’t made new highs “yet”..

• When vied from this angle (lt DJ log) things look quite benign “so far”- especially if one includes dividends..

• The next short term S&P Cycle low should show up around Jan. 22 - perhaps!

• The S&P Vix Ratio is in green territory - perchance it’ll get a bit greener?

• Gold Bugs: buy XAU versus Gold?

• % of world markets with 5 week average above 20 week average
• % of world markets with 6 month average above 24 month average

• ( WSJ) 40% of millennials have used a pawnshop or payday lender.

• Brazil's inflation rate soaring to 10.7% a 13-year high

• U.S. home values gained $1.1 trillion; renters paid record $535 billion in 2015 T .