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The World Ahead

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Notes Today:

• Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said America’s central bank may reduce its monthly asset purchases “a few months sooner” than planned. 

• Inflation in the eurozone ascends to 4.9% – highest since the euro was introduced.. 

• Economist: The secretary-general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Russia that there would be a “high price to pay” if it were to use force against Ukraine. The sabre-rattling came as Russia massed troops on the border of the former Soviet republic. On Monday, Belarus announced joint exercises with Russia on its own border with Ukraine. 

• Guardian: Patients who survive severe Covid are more than twice as likely to die over the following year than those who remain uninfected or experience milder virus symptoms, a study says.

         The research, published in Frontiers in Medicine, suggests that serious coronavirus infections                 may significantly damage long-term health, showing the importance of vaccination. 

• If you use an iPhone and go to Privacy > Tracking > and find the Facebook app there, you can turn off ALL of their tracking devices and that will hurt their bottom line.

 Money has to be / go somewhere..

Asian markets slide on Covid variant jitters

The emergence of a heavily mutated new strain of Covid-19 in South Africa, labeled B.1.1.529, has sent Asian investors scurrying for the exit door. The UK has paused flights from South Africa and five other neighbouring countries. We can expect more of the same elsewhere, the complacency seen with the emergence of delta in India being a lesson harshly learned. Two cases with the new variant have already been detected in Hong Kong today. There are also media reports this morning about tightening virus restrictions in parts of China.

Equity markets are being heavily sold including US futures, with OTC markets being closed overnight for the Thanksgiving holiday. S&P 500 futures are 0.85% lower, with Nasdaq futures down 0.70% and growth-centric Dow Jones futures tumbling by 1.25%.

 

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Dow Trend Earnings aka Fed Model

According to the model the DJIA should be trading 

at $97,000.

Btw, current earnings for the DJIA are $1601.47

thats up from $1011.07 year ago.

     Later 

 

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Later

 

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 1 Year relative performance:

Oats performing as advertised. So far.

 

Later

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Notes today: "some" of the current problems.

• The S&P 500 fell 2% as fears over a government shutdown grew following the refusal by Senate Republicans (head in sand)
  of a debt-ceiling suspension. 
• The Nasdaq 100 had its worst day since March and the Dow Jones followed suit. 

• The world economy is facing inflation from surging energy prices at 3 year high. 
• Natural Gas at 7 year high. 
• Cotton above a buck. 
• Oats (they know) all-time high. 

• German import prices rose by 16.5% YoY in August most since the 1980s, after 15% in July, 12.9% in June, 11.8% in May.. Natural gas jumped a whiopping 177.5% in Aug & oil by 63.6%.

• China is literally out of gas (energy is being rationed) while they are sitting on millions of unsold apartments. 

• 10-year treasuries up 1.55%. Liquidity may be less plentiful sooner than anticipated. 

• The recovery is slowing due to the ongoing pandemic. 

• Yellen told Congress that unless the debt ceiling is lifted, the U.S. will effectively be out of cash by Oct. 18. Republicans (head in sand) are “now” of course united in opposing a  lifting of the ceiling. 

• Senator Elizabeth Warren opposes a new term for Jerome Powell calling the Fed leader a “dangerous man.” 

• Is Biden’s $3.5 trillion economic agenda alive?  when and by how much?
• In deep red West Virginia, Biden’s $3.5tn spending proposal is immensely popular. Are you paying attention Manchin? 

• Voter protections appear to be fading away...

So that no one gets depressed I’m ignoring  other current problems.😏

 

 

Later

 

FT: The real risk from Evergrande

The China Real Estate / Evergrande  disaster   has everyone watching Iron Ore

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John Auther's: China’s Evergrande Moment Is Looking More LTCM Than Minsky. The Chinese government's likely response implies a nasty and messy market, but not an all-out implosion.

Volcano erupts on the Spanish island of La Palma, September 19

Hollywood fantasy? Tidal wave disaster is just waiting to happen

Median US new home price divided by median US houshold income

The median price of a new home in the US is now 5.8x higher than the median household income.

Bloomberg: The Global Housing Market Is Broken, and It’s Dividing Entire Countries

 

Expensive Food

 

Apple and Google cave to Putin.

Never thought I’d see the day.

Later

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The cartoon I drew 20 years ago --   Mike Luckovich 

No comment

Why nations that fail women fail 

And why foreign policy should pay more heed to half of humanity

There is growing evidence that Hillary Clinton was on to something when she said, a decade ago, that “The subjugation of women is…a threat to the common security of our world.”

That index of sexist customs, had it existed 20 years ago, would have warned them how hard nation-building would be in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, it suggests that stability cannot be taken for granted in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or even India.

U.S. Housing Consumer Price Index YoY change at 10 + year high..

Notes today: 

• Salesforce offers to relocate thousands employees and their families from Texas if they’re concerned about the ability to seek reproductive care..

• A new U.S. government study found unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die of Covid-19 as the delta variant continues to kill thousands of them daily while also triggering so-called breakthrough cases among the vaccinated. 

• A Florida appeals court said Friday that  Ron DeSantis’s ban on school mask mandates can be enforced for now – 

• Bloomberg: Almost "all" the top Wall Street banks have come out this week with a nervous message “a storm is brewing” in the U.S. stock market.  (I find “ALL” a bit encouraging)

• Bloomberg: The Biden administration is weighing a new investigation into Chinese subsidies and their damage to the U.S. economy as a way to pressure Beijing on trade – (further frosty China relations). 

• Corn: USDA's September Crop Production report showed a yield of 176.3 bu. per acre, which is 1.7 bu. per acre higher than the August report, and 4.3 bu. per acre above last year’s crop. 

• Soybeans:  The report forecast soybean production to increase 1% from the August forecast, at 4.37 billion bushels. That’s 6% higher than last year’s final production number. 

• The biggest production increase by USDA Friday came to cotton. USDA adjusted its all cotton production forecast 7% higher, now at 18.4 million, 480-pound bales.  

• Bloomberg: Apple was ordered by a federal judge to allow app developers to steer consumers to alternative payment methods. The ruling for plaintiff Epic Games may shrink a key revenue stream for the world’s most valuable company, which faces a range of antitrust suits. Analysts estimate Apple’s App Store takes in more than $20 billion a year with a profit margin above 75%. Apple is expected to appeal.

 

  

Facebook’s New Camera Glasses Are Dangerously Easy to Use

FACEBOOK IS NOTORIOUS for borrowing ideas from other tech companies, then taking advantage of its massive global platform and its expertise in building sticky apps to bring those ideas into the mainstream. 

(FT) These glasses look almost identical to the classic Ray-Ban model, except for one thing: they have Facebook embedded in them. But the barely visible recording apparatus is likely to raise privacy concerns. Would you buy a pair?

 

Notes today:

• Among California’s likely voters, 54% of respondents support keeping Newsom and 41 % want to see him replaced, according to a SurveyUSA poll released Thursday.
• 41% would evidently prefer Elder – astonishing! 

• Hospitals in California’s Central Valley (the extra RED part of CA) have been increasingly overwhelmed by the fourth surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, with officials scrambling to transfer some critically ill patients more than 100 miles away because local intensive care units are full.

• Conab sees Brazil’s corn output at 4-year low on 'most challenging crop' 
• USDA is expected to raise its estimate for the U.S. corn crop by about 1.3% from a previous forecast, to 14.94 billion bu., based on a Reuters survey of analysts.

Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole

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Notes today:

 

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler put the crypto business on notice of how far he’ll go to bring it to heel. -- He is threatening to sue Coinbase if the exchange lets customers earn interest on digital tokens and sent a warning to other firms offering similar stuff. 

• Bloomberg: More than half of the United States now offers legal sports betting, just three years after it was allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court. -- East Rutherford, New Jersey, just outside New York City, said one trend is clear. “A lot of people having a lot more money," he said. "They’re getting unemployment or stimulus checks and they want to double or triple their money. They say that all the time: ‘I just got a check and I’m going to make itdouble.’” 

• George Soros criticized BlackRock Inc.’s China push as a risk to clients’ money and U.S. security interests, in the billionaire financier and philanthropist’s latest broadside against investment in the world’s second-largest economy. 
• Cinas income per person, at slightly over $10,000 a year, is about one-sixth of Americas standard of living.

• Yellen said that the Treasury Department would likely run out of cash and exhaust “extraordinary” measures to keep the federal government within its legal borrowing limit at some point next month. 

• U.S. job openings raced to a new record high in July while layoffs rose moderately, suggesting last month’s sharp slowdown in hiring was due to employers being unable to find workers rather than weak demand for labor

• Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalises abortion..

 

Later

Notes today:

• U.S. hiring dropped abruptly in August with the smallest jobs gain in seven months, complicating any decision by the Fed to begin scaling back monetary support by the end of the year. 

• Hurricane Ida knocked out at least a tenth of U.S. grain export capacity, and in the process wiped away optimism that corn and soy prices would rise. 

• Lyft and Uber vowed to pay legal fees for drivers who are sued under Texas’s new insane abortion law. Meanwhile, Republicans in as many as six states are falling all over themselves to follow the lead of Texas in adopting this extreme bs. 

• ‘You’repoisoning us’: Ida brings fresh hell for Cancer Alley residents already battling pollution.

• The Florida Department of Health has issued a notice indicating it will start issuing $5,000 fines to businesses, schools, and government agencies that require Floridians to show proof of COVID

• 
  
  Oklahoma hospitals deluged by ivermectin overdoses, doctor says. “Some people taking inappropriate doses have actually put themselves in worse conditions than if they’d caught Covid. The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss.

 

Disaster-proofing the latest growth industry: Sump Pumps, Wet Vacs and Generators are Climate Change Must-Haves.

Chart of Generac Holdings (GNRC) below.

 Later

 

 

Later

Gold / Cripto: Paulson, 65, is increasingly concerned about rising prices, he said in an episode of “Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein.” The rapidly expanding money supply could push inflation rates well above current expectations, he said, and gold, which he’s backed for years, is primed for its moment.  

His harshest words are for the hottest investments of this era. SPACs, on average, will be a losing proposition, while cryptocurrencies are a bubble that will “eventually prove to be worthless.”

 

Later

Boolmberg: America is again one of the worst hotspots for coronavirus infection on Earth. Covid-19 patients are dying in U.S. hospitals at levels not seen since February—and the numbers are expected to keep climbing. In Alabama, the entire state is out of intensive care beds. Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas’s ICUs are at 90% capacity. Complicating the fight, a new study showed vaccines are less effective against the now-dominant delta variant, and lose effectiveness over time. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has condemned President Joe Biden’s plan to dole out boosters to U.S. adults when much of the world has yet to get one shot. —Margaret Sutherlin

Back from Costco (COSTnew all time high today), hardly anyone is wearing a mask. Some people are wearing one but around the chin – very helpful.  At Starbuck’s some 50 people sitting around, close together– not one mask in sight.

Library of Congress bomb suspect livestreamed on Facebook for hours before being blocked

Why is the Plague on Humanity still in business?

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