LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) – Global shares hovered near a record high and the dollar also held steady on Thursday, eyeing U.S. inflation data for any sign the Federal Reserve could start tapering its massive stimulus. Risk assets have remained buoyant in recent weeks as central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic signal their willingness to keep the monetary taps on until the post-pandemic recovery takes hold, believing inflationary pressures to be short-lived. Yet April’s surprisingly strong U.S. inflation print spooked some, leading to a cautious run into the May numbers later on Thursday in case of another upside surprise. With the euro zone lagging in the pace of its recovery from COVID-19, the European Central Bank is set to keep rates unchanged when it meets later in the session, despite the most recent inflation print passing the target of just under 2%. Ahead of both key events, market sentiment remained subdued with MSCI’s broadest gauge of global stocks flat at 715.77 points, just off a record high of 718.19 hit last week. U.S. stock futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street, with the S&P called flat and Nasdaq down 0.3%. In Europe, the pan-regional STOXX Europe 600 index was down 0.3% following gains overnight in Asia, where MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.5%. Ankit Gheedia, BNP Paribas’ head of equity and derivative strategy for Europe, said he expected inflation to pick up “sharply” in the coming months. “Some of the supply chain constraints point to more long lasting pain. So we think there will be higher inflation during summer,” although stock volatility would likely remain low in the coming days, absent a shock on inflation. Overnight, fixed income markets were the big movers, with some analysts pointing to a setback to more U.S. stimulus efforts, while others suggested a likely clearing out of short positions in U.S. government bonds ahead of the May CPI. Short positions in Treasuries were the highest since 2018, according to JP Morgan positioning data last week. The yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes edged higher and was last at 1.5025%, albeit some way off the June high of 1.6270%. Euro zone debt yields, meanwhile, were trading near their lowest levels since April, with Germany’s 10-year bond yield at -0.233%. Ahead of the U.S. CPI data, analysts polled by Reuters said they expected a rise of 0.4% in May, taking the annual pace to 3.4%. “I doubt the Fed will be spooked and I doubt markets will be unless we get the core well above 3.5%. And the less bonds get scared, the greater the chance that risk sentiment is supported and dollar weakness resumes,” Societe Generale analyst Kit Juckes said in a note. Activity was muted in the currency market with the dollar flat against a basket of major currencies, with the euro down 0.1% and the pound down 0.2% The CPI number is also likely to be key for gold as a higher print and the subsequent tapering fears could reduce demand. The yellow metal last traded down 0.5% at $1,879.4 an ounce. Nick Note: Sitting here marking time…
Volkswagen expects chips shortage to ease in Q3
BERLIN (Reuters) – Volkswagen expects a shortage in semiconductor supply to ease in the third quarter but sees the bottlenecks continuing in the long-term, a board member told Handelsblatt newspaper. “At the moment we have reached the lowest point. We are facing the toughest six weeks,” Murat Aksel, the head of procurement on the Volkswagen board, told the newspaper in an interview. He said he expects around 10% shortage in chips over the long-term as building up production capacities takes up to two years. Volkswagen will prepare for the bottlenecks by expanding its chips storage and is currently classifying the supply risk of its all models components, he added. Automakers and electronics producers around the world are being hit hard by manufacturing delays of chips, caused by a global shortfall. Volkswagen AG has been unable to build 100,000 cars due to the shortage, CEO Herbert Diess said in March, adding the group would not be able to make up for the shortfall in 2021. Nick Note: I never give much credence to shortage hysteria. Its ALWAYS a shorting opportunity. All my life we have been running out of everything. From oil to cooper to gold/silver to meat. And the price goes up and miraculously some how supply returns… then over supply and the prices ALWAYS crash Always Always ALWAYS……
Stocks hover near highs as bond yields dip
NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) – World stocks hovered near record highs and U.S. bond yields fell on Wednesday as some of U.S. President Joe Biden’s stimulus efforts appeared to be on the rocks, boosting the appeal of technology stocks as future inflation pressures ease. A little noticed ruling by the Senate parliamentarian in late May said Democrats can only use “reconciliation” once in a fiscal year to circumvent legislation that requires 60 votes. Democratic fiscal packages in Congress are rapidly shrinking, leading to a net outcome that inflationary pressures are set to recede, said Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management. The yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes fell 3.2 basis points to 1.4958%, down from 1.528% late on Tuesday. Yields plunged as traders in part were forced to unwind short positions in Treasuries, said Joe LaVorgna, chief economist of the Americas at Natixis. “More importantly, the economy is at its peak growth and a lot of what the (Biden) administration wants to do in terms of fiscal stimulus may not be met because of the parliamentarian ruling,” LaVorgna said. Attention remained focused on Thursday’s release of U.S. consumer price data and a European Central Bank meeting that could indicate how soon policymakers will begin to withdraw support for Europe’s economy as the COVID-19 crisis ebbs. Germany’s 10-year Bund yield, which is closely correlated with U.S. Treasuries, extended Tuesday’s decline to -0.253%, the lowest since late April, as investors continued to price in a dovish outcome to the ECB policy meeting on Thursday. “As the recovery in the (U.S.) job market is contained, any discussion at the Fed on tapering is unlikely to gain momentum, even if it starts soon,” said Naokazu Koshimizu, senior rates strategist at Nomura Securities. U.S. payrolls data last Friday showed hiring was slower than economists had expected, despite increasing signs of a labor market shortage. Many analysts say more evidence of strong jobs growth is required for the Federal Reserve, which has repeatedly said a jump in inflation this quarter would be transient, to step up taper talk. Thursday’s U.S. consumer price data is expected to show the overall annual inflation rate spiking to 4.7% and core inflation rising to 3.4%, a pick-up that concerns investors who don’t entirely buy the Fed’s transitory narrative. The CPI data is unlikely to settle questions about the future path of inflation, said James Athey, investment director at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “I therefore see potential for a higher print to push real yields and shorter-dated yields higher, thus flattening the curve and boosting the dollar,” Athey said. “This might not be a great environment for risky assets. Nick Note: My bet is on higher stock market valuations. Inflation has nothing to do with the stock market. In fact during the times of the greatest inflation we have seen the biggest rallies in stocks
US wholesale inventories up by 0.8% in April
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. wholesale inventories increased in April as businesses continued to replenish stocks to meet pent-up demand, supporting expectations for robust economic growth this quarter. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that wholesale inventories rose 0.8% as estimated last month. Stocks at wholesalers advanced 1.2% in March. Wholesale inventories increased 5.2% in April from a year earlier. Inventories are a key part of gross domestic product. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast that April’s increase in wholesale inventories would be unrevised. The component of wholesale inventories that goes into the calculation of gross domestic product also increased 0.8%. Businesses ran down inventories in the first quarter amid a burst in domestic demand. The inventory drawdown subtracted nearly three percentage points from GDP growth last quarter. Still, the economy grew at a robust 6.4% annualized rate in the January-March period after expanding at a 4.3% pace in the fourth quarter. Most economists are forecasting double-digit GDP growth in the second quarter. Sales at wholesalers rose 0.8% after accelerating 4.3% in March. At April’s sales pace it would take wholesalers 1.22 months to clear shelves, unchanged from March. That is the shortest period since September 2014. Nick Note: This is part of the boom in profits I expect to drive stock market profits and valuations……
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center Named 9th Best Hospital In The World By Newsweek
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center at the Tel Hashomer Hospital, the largest in the country, has been named among the 10 best hospitals in the world by Newsweek magazine for the second year in a row. The medical center, located right outside Tel Aviv, came in ninth this year, moving up one slot from 2019. Newsweek’s “World’s Best Hospitals 2020” list named selected hospitals in 21 countries and said the rankings were “based on recommendations from medical professionals, results from patient surveys and key medical performance indicators.” Thousands of medical professionals in the selected countries answered an online survey from September to November 2019, the US magazine indicated. Sheba Medical Center has been at the center of the coronavirus story in Israel, having been charged with caring for Israeli patients under hospitalized quarantine. The hospital has made use of top-of-the-line Israeli tele-medicine technologies to treat the patients and help prevent the spread of the virus. Sheba Medical Center has been described by Newsweek as “a leader in medical science and biotechnical innovation, both in the Middle East and worldwide.” The hospital’s director-general, Professor Yitzhak Kreiss, said in a statement: “I am especially proud to be on the Newsweek list once more. This achievement denotes another year of innovative medical achievements which are impacting the world.” “I am especially proud of our 9,100 medical professionals who wake up each morning and come to work dedicating themselves to thinking outside the box, creating new ways to giving patients the best care and dealing with crises like the coronavirus by employing game-changing technologies such as telemedicine. At Sheba we use the phrase…hope has no boundaries. And this is what motivates us,” he went on.
Websites rumble back to life after Fastly-linked outage
(Reuters) -Thousands of government, news and social media websites across the globe were coming back online on Tuesday after getting hit by a widespread hour-long outage linked to U.S.-based cloud company Fastly Inc. High-traffic sites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, Paypal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network and the New York Times went down, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. They came back after outages that ranged from a few minutes to around an hour. “Our global network is coming back online,” Fastly said. One of the world’s most widely-used cloud-based content delivery network providers, the company earlier reported a disruption from a “service configuration” and did not explain. “Incidents like this underline the fragility of the internet and its dependence on a patchwork of fragmented technology. Ironically, this also underlines its inherent strength and how quickly it can recover,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight said. “The fact that an outage like this can grab headlines around the world shows how rare it is.” Typical service configurations for a cloud service provider can include updating security rules to protect information, or instructing a server to refresh the contents of a news site before serving it to a customer, said Andy Champagne, senior vice president at Akamai, a cloud service company. A simple typo can be propagated to thousands of servers and cause disruptions, he said. Fastly, which went public in 2019 and has a market capitalization of under $6 billion, is far smaller than peers like Amazon’s AWS. The company’s content delivery network (CDN) helps websites move content using less-congested routes, enabling them to reach consumers faster. Nick Note: as a point in fact i lost many of my news feeds delivered by IP. But i have redundant satellite direct feeds that are RF and all as in all of them were still working. Like i tell my kinds triple redundancy is the order of the day. And i am proud to announce NONE and in not one of our web sights was affected,,,, Why we do not use the fucking cloud and we sure as shit are not letting any of these new age assholes get in the middle of our delivery….. Remember the head in is in my office and the fiber satellite internet is in my living room where i control the horizontal and the vertical……….
Gangrene, Hearing Loss Show Delta Variant May Be More Severe
Hearing impairment, severe gastric upsets and blood clots leading to gangrene, symptoms not typically seen in Covid patients, have been linked by doctors in India to the so-called delta variant. In England and Scotland, early evidence suggests the strain — which is also now dominant there — carries a higher risk of hospitalisation. Delta, also known as B.1.617.2, has spread to more than 60 countries over the past six months and triggered travel curbs from Australia to the US. A spike in infections, fueled by the delta variant, has forced UK to reconsider its plans for reopening later this month, with a local report saying it may be pushed back by two weeks. Higher rates of transmission and a reduction in the effectiveness of vaccines have made understanding the strain’s effects especially critical. “We need more scientific research to analyze if these newer clinical presentations are linked to B.1.617 or not,” said Abdul Ghafur, an infectious disease physician at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai, in Chennai, southern India’s largest city. Ghafur said he is seeing more Covid patients with diarrhea now than in the initial wave of the pandemic.
“Last year, we thought we had learned about our new enemy, but it changed,” Ghafur said. “This virus has become so, so unpredictable.”
Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, hearing loss and joint pain are among the ailments Covid patients are experiencing, according to six doctors treating patients across India. The beta and gamma variants — first detected in South Africa and Brazil respectively — have shown little or no evidence of triggering unusual clinical signs, according to a study by researchers from the University of New South Wales last month. “I saw three-to-four cases the whole of last year, and now it’s one patient a week,” Manudhane said. India has reported 1.86 crore Covid cases thus far in 2021, compared with 1.03 crore last year. The delta variant was the “primary cause” behind the country’s deadlier second wave and is 50 per cent more contagious than the alpha strain that was first spotted in the UK, according to a recent study by an Indian government panel. The surge in cases may have driven an increase in the frequency with which rare Covid complications are being observed. Even still, Manudhane said he is baffled by the blood clots he’s seeing in patients across age groups with no past history of coagulation-related problems. “We suspect it could be because of the new virus variant,” he said. Manudhane is collecting data to study why some people develop the clots and others don’t. Doctors are also finding instances of clots forming in blood vessels that supply the intestines, causing patients to experience stomach pain — their only symptom, local media have reported. As the second wave of Covid-19 recedes, nearly a dozen cases of Covid-induced intestinal clots and gangrene have been reported in Mumbai. According to doctors, if the gangrene is left untreated for 24 hours, the chances of survival drop to 50 percent. “Every person is showing different symptoms” in the second wave, she said. The unusual presentations for delta and a closely related variant known as kappa, whose spread led to a fourth lockdown in the Australian city of Melbourne, are still being confirmed, said Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. “In the meanwhile, it is important to take note of this and be aware of possible atypical presentations,” she said. The most alarming aspect of the current outbreak in India is the rapidity with which the virus is spreading, including to children, said Chetan Mundada, a pediatrician with the Yashoda group of hospitals in Hyderabad. Apollo’s Ghafur said he was also seeing entire families with Covid symptoms, unlike last year when individuals dominated, reflecting an increase in household transmission caused by the delta variant. Cases of Mucormycosis — a rare opportunistic fungal infection — have also been surging in India. It had infected more than 8,800 Covid patients and survivors as of May 22, forcing local health care authorities to call it an epidemic. Even as India’s outbreak begins to ease — daily infections have slipped to less than a quarter of the May 7 peak — the delta variant is sparking outbreaks elsewhere, including hitherto virus havens such as Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam, bolstering calls for mass immunisation. German politician and scientist Karl Lauterbach said Tuesday the variant will probably become more prevalent in Germany too in the coming months. “To avoid it completely seems unrealistic to me,” he said on Twitter in German. “The decisive factor is a very high vaccination rate, which reduces mortality.”
But with emerging evidence delta and at least one other variant may be adept at evading vaccine-induced antibodies, pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to tweak existing shots or develop new ones.
“New vaccines have to prepared with new variants in mind,” said Ghafur. “We can’t get ahead of the virus, but at least we can least keep up with it.” Nick Note: This has got my attention. I am on it. I find the reluctance of vaccine makers to resolve the issue of their vaccines effectiveness against these variants VERY disturbing.
U.S. Republicans vow to oppose Yellen’s G7 tax deal, casting doubt on its future
Oh Janet honey baby sweetty. I think you have taken your victory lap way to soon. this is going nowhere fassssst
Several top U.S. Senate Republicans on Monday rejected Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s G7 deal to impose a global minimum corporate tax and allow more countries to tax big multinational firms, raising questions about the U.S. ability to implement a broader global agreement. The opposition from Republicans may push President Joe Biden to attempt to use budget procedures to pass the initiatives with only Democratic votes. It left lawyers and tax experts in Washington wondering whether it could get done without crafting a new international treaty, which requires approval by a two-thirds majority in the evenly split 100-member Senate. “It’s wrong for the United States,” Republican Senator John Barrasso said of the tax deal struck on Saturday by finance ministers from the G7 wealthy democracies. “I think it’s going to be anti-competitive, anti-U.S., harmful for us as we try to continue to grow the economy and certainly at a time when we’re coming out of a pandemic,” Barrasso, who chairs the Senate Republican Conference, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. In the landmark agreement, G7 finance ministers agreed to pursue a global minimum tax rate of at least 15% and to allow market countries to tax up to 20% of the excess profits – above a 10% margin – of around 100 large, high-profit companies. Yellen said the “significant, unprecedented commitment” would end what she called a race to the bottom on global taxation. In exchange, G7 countries agreed to end digital services taxes, but the timing for that is dependent on the new rules being implemented. The deal could pave the way for broader buy-in by G20 countries and some 140 economies participating in international negotiations over how to tax large technology firms such as Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Facebook Inc (FB.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and Apple Inc (AAPL.O). All are expected to be included in the new, broader mechanism, which is targeted for a final international agreement in October. Republican Senator Pat Toomey said the deal would drain tax revenues away from the U.S. Treasury to other countries, adding that he hoped some Democrats would be unwilling “to subject the American economy to this kind of misery.” “There will be no Republican support for this, and they’ll have to do this on a party-line vote. That needs to fail,” Toomey told Fox Business Network. Daniel Bunn, an international tax expert at the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, said he believed that establishing new taxing rights on 100 multinational firms would require a new tax treaty. The U.S. Constitution gives the president the right to make international treaties “if two-thirds of Senators present concur.” U.S. participation in some international treaties has been hampered by domestic partisan divides, in which a president approves the deals but they are not ratified by Congress. Manal Corwin, head of KPMG’s Washington National Tax Practice and a former U.S. Treasury official, said Yellen’s G7 deal could be done through legislation that overrides existing bilateral tax treaties – using a simple majority as part of budget reconciliation procedures. With Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote, Democrats control 51 votes in the Senate, but cannot afford to lose any Democratic votes. Senator Ron Wyden, asked how much can be done with the budget reconciliation procedures and what would require a super-majority vote, said: “Those are all questions that lawyers are now immersed in.” Wyden, who chairs the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, told reporters that deterring the use of tax-haven countries and ensuring minimum levels of corporate taxation were “in the long-term interest of American workers.”
“There’s a lot of heavy lifting to do here,” Wyden added. “It’s going to take a number of months, that’s for sure.”
Toomey, who sits on the Finance Committee, said he believed Democrats could push through the tax changes with only Democratic votes, without a treaty, but added that would require the United States to “surrender” and agree not to oppose changes imposed by other countries. Nick Note: This goes on my list of things NOT to worry about. Their will be no universal capital gains tax. They can not even agree on how many fishes to let boats catch. AND here is my short list of things not to worry about. Like microchips in my COVID vaccine. Martian invasions despite the recent UFO “sightings”. A meteor strike ending all life on earth. And my favorite. A twenty something show girl telling me to squeeze her nipples you big dicked mother fucker….. All this is NOT happening.
US mostly flat premarket on trade, tech news
Equities on Wall Street were mostly muted in the premarket session on Tuesday, as investors digested the latest news on the tech sector and trade. The United States will resume trade talks with Taiwan according to Secretary Blinken, a move which will likely further dampen relations the US has with China. Meanwhile, regulators pondered stricter rules for trading apps such as Robinhood, Tesla confirmed the date for its Model S Plaid unveiling, and officials warned that the microchip shortage might last longer than originally expected. The US trade balance report for April is also set to be released before markets open. The Dow Jones declined 0.15% at 4:21 am ET. The Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 stood flat a minute later. The euro dropped 0.14% compared to the dollar trading for $1.21723 at 4:23 am ET. Nick Note: the millennials have no idea of the trap being set for them. I have seen this many many times before… Another group of suckers are about to get fucked in the ass. Virginity does not last long on Wall Street. If they could fuck a billionaire like Bunker Hunt WITH IMPUNITY they can fuck anyone….. See I entered the Wall Street whore house during my formative years.. And i learned my lessons well!
US gov lab presented COVID lab origin theory – report
A report on the origins of Covid-19 by a US government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis claiming the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, according to a report.The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the The Wall Street Journal reported. Lawrence Livermore’s assessment drew on genomic analysis of the Covid-19 virus, the newspaper said. The laboratory declined to comment on the report. President Joe Biden said last month he had ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus.US intelligence agencies are considering two likely scenarios – that the virus resulted from a laboratory accident or that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal – but they have not come to a conclusion, Mr Biden said. Nick News: As you know we broke this story before the pandemic was a pandemic,,, Early on we were suspicious. and after my”dream” i was convinced. So i fired up our resources and found a expert who told me the corona virus was spliced. Of course this was part of the Chinese viral weapons research.America is not a virgin in this biowhore house mess,,,,, they all do it. Bio weapons experts have explored corona viruses for decades. This time the genie got out of the bottle……