Notes Today:

•  When reason prevails in Russia, Putin is lost.

• Visa and Mastercard will both suspend operations in Russia (Guardian) 

• It’s sickening to see how one deranged man can cause so much pain and suffering—and to think how many Americans empowered him with their adoration. @StevenBeschloss

•            The Kyiv Independent  @KyivIndependent⚡️Mariupol Mayor: Russia blockades city, denies humanitarian corridor. According to Mayor Vadym Boychenko, the city has been left without water and electricity, while 400,000 city residents are held hostage by the Russians.

Heating Oil

 NYSE Volume Advance Decline Line

 NYSE Advace  Decline Line

Copper Point & Figure Chart

Wheat in 3 charts: Ukraine War continues to add risk premium to World wheat prices. There remains concern that 12-14 mmt of Russia wheat and 5 mmt of EU wheat may not get shipped. Reuters: 

• Reuters: China's ag minister says winter wheat condition could be worst in history.

Wheat long term 

Wheat CPI adjusted

 

Quick Overview is up to date

Notes Today:

 

• Reuters: China's ag minister says winter wheat condition could be worst in history

• Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev says that Russia has resources left for the war until Sunday, after which they will collapse. 

• Microsoft suspends all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. 

• Samsung suspends shipments of phones, chips to Russia. Samsung has more of Russia’s smartphone market than Apple (also suspended) 

• How about Coca Cola, McDonalds, Pepsi, Estee Lauder, Mondelez, Kimberly-Clark   etc., etc.! 

• Russia has banned Facebook / restrictions on Twitter.
• PayPal stops working in Russia

• The Metropolitan Opera, soprano Anna Netrebko will not be performing this year due to her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Met made several attempts to convince Netrebko, who has made statements critical of the war, to rebuke Putin but failed to persuade the singer.

And Putin's Ruble crashing right along

The end of the Putin delusion

 "A picture is worth a thousand words" 

"huddling" with officials..

 The Ruble crash continues

Notes Today: 

 

• Bank of Russia raises key rate to 20% from 9.5% in emergency measure.
• Russia bans foreign clients from selling their securities, effective immediately - TASS 
• Moscow  Stock Exchange won't open as scheduled..

• Reuters reports that the Bank of China's Singapore division has 'stopped financing deals involving Russian oil and Russian companies

• Rapid change in Germany! Decades of security policy changed in a day, and now seriously considering extension of nuclear power plants. 

• Swiss President Ignazio Cassis says it's "very probable" that Switzerland will follow the European Union on Monday in sanctioning Russia and freezing Russian assets.  

• EU shuts down airspace to Russia 

• BP to offload 20% stake in Rosneft 

• EU  imposes sanctions on Belarus, bans petroleum imports, sharing technologies. 

• Brazil’s Bolsonaro won’t condemn Putin.

• Russian Forex Reserves (Probably quite useless because of sanctions)

Where is Russia's Money?

Russia, like the US, has safeguards for nuclear

deployment. Every nation has contingencies for

when a madman is in charge. 

Hoping they’ll work.

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

– Carl Sagan 

 Miss Ukraine Anastasiia Lenna

 Cartoon Of The Day

Notes Today:

 

• Ukrainian President Zelensky was asked to evacuate Kyiv at behest of US, Zelensky replied “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” according to a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation- AP 

• American’s views of Russia are tanking. 85% now view it unfavorably -- the highest since the end of the Cold War. 

• At least two of China’s largest state-owned banks are restricting financing for purchases of Russian commodities. 

• “I believe the war must be immediately halted” - Communist Party State Duma deputy Mikhail Matveev becomes first Russian federal level lawmaker to oppose the Ukraine invasion. 

• The sums involved are mind-boggling. Novokmet et al. estimate that in 2015 the hidden foreign wealth of rich Russians amounted to around 85 percent of Russia’s G.D.P. To give you some perspective, this is as if a U.S. president’s cronies had managed to hide $20 trillion in overseas accounts. 

 

 

Notes Today:

 

• There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell,’ Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said as he addressed his Russian counterpart, Vassily Nebenzia, during an emergency meeting held by the U.N. Security Council 

• Russia blocs all shipping movements of commercial vessels in the Azov Sea – this will affect grain cargoes.

• Ukraine has asked Nato member Turkey to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Russian ships.

• Wheat is up 50 (5.65% limit).
• Corn up limit
• Beans are up 75 (4.5%)
• Crude up 5 (6%)
• Gold up 34 (1.8%)
• Bitcoin is down 2985 (7.88%)  Please note DOWN!
• S&P holding together remarkably well, down only 1.5% - so far…
• Ruble tanking
• 
  
  
  

• Russian markets are crashing 1.3 million  shares  to sell Gazprom  and 0 buyers..
• Russia's RTS Index plunges by almost 50%

 Ruble

PUTIN Invades

 Ruble

 

Quick Overview is up to date

Soybeans

 

Dow Theory

 HUI Gold Bug Index

 XAU Gold and Silver Index

 

Quick Overview is up to date

 Russia Index

Unprecedented Soybean prices for this time of year. 

(from Karen Braun @kannbwx )

 Russian Ruble USDRUB about to make all time low

Notes Today:  

Putin is sending “peacekeeping“ forces into Ukraine regions. In other words, Putin is invading Ukraine!!

S&P down some 1.7% Gold up some 0.75%, crude up  3.43%, new high  for the move...  so far - 15 minutes past opening. 

“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind”

- Martin Luther King Jr

 Quick Overview is up to date

 Dow Theory: Worrying!

 

Later

 

Quick Overview is up to date

Notes Today: 

• Amazon appears to do quite well, even if Jeffrey’s tiny boat is a bit of an embarrassment.  (1 hr chart below)

• 
  
  Putin's Russia becoming more and more warlike.

• More than 4 million Texans have lost power (again) after a weekend storm crippled the state’s energy infrastructure (again).  Abbott in action – again... Don’t think I’ll be moving to Texas.

• (Bloomberg) -- Soybean buyers stung by a smaller and slower harvest than expected in Brazil are turning to the U.S. for supply, driving up prices and threatening to worsen food inflation.What was expected to be a record crop in Brazil is now looking far smaller, with lower yields and harvest delays due to adverse weather catching traders and end-users shorthanded. The uncertainty has driven buyers into the U.S. market. More than 110 ships have been chartered on a preliminary basis to load crops at ports in the Pacific Northwest, according to Bill Tierney, chief economist for AgResource Co. in Chicago.
  
  
  

 

Notes Today:

• Investors wipe about $200 billion from Facebook's / Meta’s value (aka the plague on humanity)

• Reno, Nevada, hasn’t recorded a single drop of rain during the entire month of January, a record that goes back nearly 130 years. (Guardian)

• $324 million stolen from blockchain platform Wormhole  

• If you created an online account to manage your tax records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), those login credentials will cease to work later this year. The agency says that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log in to irs.gov will be through ID.me, an online identity verification service that requires applicants to submit copies of bills and identity documents, as well as a live video feed of their faces via a mobile device.

Facebook (FB) performing as advertised. New members becoming scarcer (15 minute chart below)

More than half of the sea now logs temperatures once considered extreme, threatening countless species, livelihoods, and the air we breathe.