Notes Today:

• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc BRK announced Monday that it has increased its stakes in Japan's top five trading houses. This move is believed to have contributed to the robust momentum driving the nation's stock market to reach multiyear highs.
• The company holds stakes in Itochu Corp. ITOCF, Marubeni corp. MARUF, Mitsubishi Corp. MSBHF, Mitsui & Co. Ltd MITSY, and Sumitomo Corp. SSUMF. Berkshire said its stakes in these companies now average more than 8.5%.

• Intel will spend more than $33 billion to develop two chip-making plants in Magdeburg as part of its expansion push in Europe, a deal Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed as Germany's biggest ever foreign investment 

• At least 9 dead, dozens injured from mass shootings and violence across the US this weekend. 

• An extreme, prolonged heat wave from Texas to Louisiana is helping fuel deadly southern storms that have resulted in the deaths of at least six people and left hundreds of thousands without power.
• Cities across parts of northern China are bracing for further hot weather this weekend as high-pressure ridges persist across a swathe of the country.The heatwave has engulfed much of the north this week, sending temperatures soaring in an area stretching from Inner Mongolia, across northern Hebei province to western Liaoning.
• India’s government issued several severe heat advisories on Sunday, as many states continue to grapple with sweltering heat and high humidity. On Saturday, temperatures reached 45.4-degrees C (113.72 degrees F) in the Indian state of Odisha, and temperatures hovered around 42 and 44 degrees C (107.6 and 111.2 degrees F) in other states.  
• With five months completed, 2023 is on pace to challenge for the warmest year ever directly measured.
  
  
  
  
  
• YouTube says it has removed a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking with podcast host Jordan Peterson for spreading what the company says is vaccine misinformation.👍

Problem with these notes: some tend to run up against a deeply rooted feature of human cognition - the desire not to think about anything unpleasant…Sorry about that.

 

  

Unexpected Recovery Sweeps World’s Riskiest Sovereign Bonds

The world’s riskiest sovereign bonds are having a moment as Wall Street investors seek out high yields from countries showing early signs of market-friendly pivots.

• Even serial defaulter Argentina has seen its dollar bonds advance in June as investors position for the nation’s upcoming presidential elections. President Alberto Fernandez has ruled out running for reelection with inflation running above 100% and government coffers running dry, opening the door for a new administration with market-friendly priorities. 

Shipping:

Breakwave Dry Bulk shipping

BDI Baltic Exchange Dry Index

China Container Index

 VIX

 Nikkei P&F

 DJIA P&F

 NASDAQ new highs versus new lows

Notes Today: 

• Massive new investment is pouring into US heavy industry, shaping the economic landscape for years to come.

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• Putin said Russia had stationed a first batch of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

• Economist: Binance, the largest global cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.US, an affiliate, and America’s Securities and Exchange Commission announced a proposed agreement to guarantee that only Binance.US employees have access to funds owned by American customers. The deal, which still requires approval from a judge, is intended to avert a proposed SEC motion to freeze Binance.US’s assets while it sues Binance on securities-related charges.

• The last Indian journalist in China has been asked to leave, as Beijing and New Delhi eject each other’s reporters in a tit-for-tat row deepening a rift between the Asian economic powerhouses. 

• A stretch of dry weather following planting season has stressed crops across the U.S. Midwest, raising doubts about a government forecast projecting record corn and soybean crops. 

• Some scientists predict that 2023 could be the warmest year on record, as a developing El Niño exacerbates the impacts of the climate crisis. 

• Reminder: Democratic states are subsidizing Republican states. 7 of the top 10 dependent states are red states. 

• Jamal Khashoggi's wife sues NSO Group, maker of Pegasus spyware in US. Alleges spyware was used to track Jamal before murder.

Problem with these notes: some tend to run up against a deeply rooted feature of human cognition - the desire not to think about anything unpleasant…Sorry about that.

 

 

Quick Overview is up to date

Looking at this chart of Intel, it appears to me (could be wrong), that the advertised continued overpowering by Nvidia etc. and therefore its demise, could be a tad premature.

Antarctic sea ice anomalies

 Earth as seen by Cassini from  Saturn. 

Just to keep things in perspective

The US Midwest is facing one of the worst droughts in 131 years

 

S&P 500 stocks at 52 week highs:

Instrument Name	Close	Highest	Symbol
Broadcom Ord Shs	886.18	855.36	AVGO.O
Equinix REIT Ord Shs	775.78	757.61	EQIX.O
Lam Research Ord Shs	630.03	629.96	LRCX.O
ServiceNow Ord Shs	567.31	556.71	NOW
Monolithic Power Systems Ord Shs	537.21	536.88	MPWR.O
Cintas Ord Shs	486.09	484.6	CTAS.O
KLA Ord Shs	480.54	479.89	KLAC.O
Adobe Ord Shs	479.53	478.99	ADBE.O
Eli Lilly Ord Shs	447.72	446.04	LLY
Netflix Ord Shs	440.86	435.73	NFLX.O
NVIDIA Ord Shs	429.97	410.22	NVDA.O
Linde Ord Shs	374.31	373.26	LIN
Moody's Ord Shs	340.71	338.8	MCO
Microsoft Ord Shs	337.34	335.94	MSFT.O
ANSYS Ord Shs	334.31	333.23	ANSS.O
Intuitive Surgical Ord Shs	323.07	317.49	ISRG.O
Meta Platforms Ord Shs Class A	273.35	272.61	META.O
Apple Ord Shs	183.95	183.79	AAPL.O
Marriott International Ord Shs Class A	181.46	181.41	MAR.O
Darden Restaurants Ord Shs	167.64	166.04	DRI
Walmart Ord Shs	156.87	155.3	WMT
AMETEK Ord Shs	153.6	153.47	AME
PTC Ord Shs	141.38	141.01	PTC.O
DexCom Ord Shs	127.06	126.91	DXCM.O
Oracle Ord Shs	122.27	116.68	ORCL.K
ON Semiconductor Ord Shs	92.74	92.67	ON.O
Otis Worldwide Ord Shs	87.51	87.2	OTIS.K
Microchip Technology Ord Shs	86.64	86.52	MCHP.O
Pinnacle West Ord Shs	82.02	81.5	PNW
Fortinet Ord Shs	71.48	71.27	FTNT.O
Ingersoll Rand Ord Shs	64.12	64.1	IR
Iron Mountain Ord Shs	56.72	56.63	IRM
Delta Air Lines Ord Shs	42.19	41.56	DAL
Carnival Ord Shs	15.6	15.34	CCL

 

Notes Today: 

• Farmers Insurance Group stops writing new property policies in Florida. (see below) "Over the past 18 months in Florida, we've had 15 companies decide to stop writing new business,"

• Australia’s government will intervene to block the construction of a new Russian embassy in its capital Canberra

• In a poll conducted mostly after news broke of Trump's indictment, 53% of republicans support his 2024 bid. 

• Twitter is being evicted from its Colorado, Boulder office over unpaid rent. 

• Zuckerberg (Meta) is pushing ahead with plans to launch a rival to Twitter because public figures reportedly want a platform that is “sanely run”. 

• Mercedes-Benz beat Tesla for approval of automated driving tech in California. 

• For some US residents, it is now impossible to get home insurance - and all because of the climate crisis.
• House prices haven’t plummeted yet, of course. Quite the opposite: California is an incredibly expensive place to live. But if you can’t get insurance, it’s almost impossible to get a mortgage. This makes it harder to sell your house and will make prices go down. The writing is on the wall, as insurance companies are well aware.

Synthetic human embryos created in groundbreaking advance

Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.

Scientists say these model embryos, which resemble those in the earliest stages of human development, could provide a crucial window on the impact of genetic disorders and the biological causes of recurrent miscarriage.

However, the work also raises serious ethical and legal issues as the lab-grown entities fall outside current legislation in the UK and most other countries.

 

The Fed left the target for the fed funds rate  unchanged at 5%-5.25%. The Fed paused on Wednesday following 15 months of interest-rate hikes but indicated they would likely resume tightening at some point to cool inflation.

👍👍I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men..

Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his  novel Lord of the Flies.

The Latest Solar Power Projections

 US CPI

 

North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature

 

Quick Overview is up to date

Trains Save Ten Times the Emissions of Planes

 

The top 1%

US  Construction Boom

The slow collapse of the American middle class (FT chart)