Saturday, July 30, 2022

Solar stocks rose last week after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Joe Manchin, said they’ve reached a deal on climate spending. The package earmarks a record $369 billion for climate and clean energy provisions.

Invesco Solar ETF added 9.6%



 Soybeans weather problems..










Silver increased to a 4-week high of 20.247 







 Yen - interesting..














Tuesday, July 26, 2022

A reshuffle in the Board of the Bank of Japan resulted in two new policymakers, former private economist Takata and former banker Tamura, they spared little time before voicing the need to think of an exit strategy from the BoJ’s ultra-easy monetary policy stance.





 


Quick Overview is up to date

Sunday, July 24, 2022

30 year low China Consumer Confidence








With consumer confidence this low, may it be necessary to direct attention somewhere else?



 Quick Overview is up to date


Notes today:

 

  • A day after Ukraine and Russia had signed a deal to resume grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, Russian missiles hit Odessa, the biggest of those ports. 

  • (Economist) Xinjiang, a region in the far west of China, was warned that it faced flash floods, mudslides, and risks to agriculture amid forecasts of more unusually high temperatures in the coming days. Some 20% of the world’s cotton is produced in the area. Since mid-June much of China has baked under brutal heatwaves, which are attributed to climate change. 

  • Australia now gets an amazing 35.8% of its electricity from renewables, up from 8% in 2009. 1 in 4 Australian homes have solar. 

  • Mario Draghi’s, the man credited with saving the euro, departs. Italy has had 69 govts since the end of WWII – on average one every 13mths. 

  • (FT) China’s Belt and Road spending in Russia drops to zero... 

  • (FT) Palestinian villagers lose 20-year legal fight to hang on to homes... 

  • Recently BMW announced plans to charge a subscription for heated seats – Hackers are having a field day. 

  • Stocks in Argentina hit all-time High. 












  • “No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot” Mark Twain

 

 



Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Sunday, July 17, 2022

 


Quick Overview is up to date

Copper and Gold - decline continues..

Notes today: 

  • Italy’s public debt currently stands at €2.8tn in May, near record. The debt-to-GDP ratio is over 150% making Italy the “proud” home of almost a quarter of all Eurozone debt. 
  • In addition, northern Italy has the worst drought in 70 years.

  • Fitch downgraded Turkey’s sovereign debt rating into junk. 

  • After drawing foreign capital into China’s markets for years, President Xi Jinping is now facing the risk of a nasty period of financial de-globalization


Wall Street Set for New ETF Gold Rush as Single-Stock Era Begins


Cholera Found in Turtles at Wet Market in Covid Epicenter Wuhan


Friday, July 08, 2022


 Later

 


Quick Overview is up to date

Notes today: 

  • Pregnant woman says fetus should count as a passenger in the HOV lane. Says Texas can’t have it both ways. 
  • Great News: Musk said he’s ending his $44 billion arrangement to acquire Twitter  and take it private. 

  • The US economy added 372K jobs last month, well above market expectations of a 268K rise, while the jobless rate held steady as expected. 

  • Consumer credit in the US increased by USD 22.35 billion in May - slowing significantly. Market expected 31.9 billion. 

  • Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died after being shot on the campaign trail for Sunday’s upper house elections. 

  • Narcissistic, dishonest Brexiteer Boris Johnson is soon-to-be former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. 

  • Claims of the largest cyberattack (1 billion Chinese) in Chinese history have sparked an open debate about the extent to which Beijing hoovers up personal data and uses private firms to “safeguard” that trove. 

  • Mexico’s had its debt rating cut by Moody’s to Baa2, putting it two steps above junk and on par with Uruguay and the Philippines. (7/7/2022 U.S. State Department issues new travel advisory impacting Tijuana, Rosarito and Baja California)

Thursday, July 07, 2022

Nice drop in mortgage rates:



S&P 500 Average Weekly Performance from 1900





Week 27 (this one ) is generally second best..


Wednesday, July 06, 2022

Notes today: 

  • The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU needs to make emergency plans to prepare for a complete cut-off of Russian Gas.
  • Boris Johnson was clinging to power wounded by the resignation of ministers who said he was not fit to govern. 
  • US Job openings decreased to 11.3 million on the last business day of May. Hires and total separations changed little at 6.5 million and 6.0 million, respectively. 
  • Guardian analysis of water samples taken in nine US locations shows test agency uses is likely missing significant levels of PFAS pollutants.
  • Economists at Bloomberg calculate a 38% chance of a US recession in the next year... 
  • The alleged theft of some 23 terabytes of personal information on about a billion Chinese citizens from a Shanghai police database would rank as the world’s largest ever known data breach.

  • (FT) Martin Wolf: The crypto crash (and preceding bubble) shows that cryptocurrencies are objects of speculation rather than stores of value. That also makes them unusable as units of account. 

  • German factory orders unexpectedly rose 0.1% in May.

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

New report that all (or nearly all) ancient bristlecone pines growing in Panamint Range, Death Valley have died in 2022 


Victims of record drought & invading bark beetles. 
Add these irreplaceable 1000+ year-old trees to the list of losses due to escalating climate change.
Evan Frost @EFrost_Wildwood 

 


Quick Overview
is up to date

  • Copper new low
  • Gold new low
  • Dollar new high


Monday, July 04, 2022

 What's moving this week is up to date

ETF's(Exchange traded funds)



 


Notes today:
 

  • The Bank of Japan is likely to keep its current monetary easing program “for many quarters to come," according to a former BOJ official.

Is that so ? 

  • The number of foreign tourist arrivals in Spain surged by 411.1% YoY 

  • Germany’s trade surplus narrowed sharply in May of 2022, the lowest since December 1992. 

  • Turkey’s CPI rose an annual 78.62% through last month, up from 73.5% in May. 

  • Inflation in Switzerland accelerated to the fastest pace in nearly three decades, hitting 3.4% in June. That’s up from 2.9% in May. 

  • General Motors reported that nearly 100,000 vehicles sat uncompleted due to supply chain issues.
  • Chinas government has embarked on a campaign to rein in the market for pork, just as higher costs of its staple meat threaten to breach inflation targets and complicate efforts to stimulate growth. Hog futures in Dalian have risen to their strongest in a year, while wholesale meat prices are at a six-month high.

Friday, July 01, 2022

For the first time in history, the USA supplied more gas to the EU than Russia did.