GOLD PRICE CLOSED DOWN $12.20 TO $2163,20
SILVER PRICE DOWN 9 cents TO $24.86
Gold ACCESS CLOSED 2163.30
Silver ACCESS CLOSED: 24,85
Bitcoin morning price:$72,800 DOWN 287 DOLLARS.
Bitcoin: afternoon price: $69,994 DOWN 3093 dollars
Platinum price closing DOWN $9.75 AT $932.90
Palladium price; UP 4.10 AT $1069.60
END
SHANGHAI GOLD PREMIUM 30 DOLLARS/COMEX GOLD
SHANGHAI GOLD………
SHANGHAI GOLD (USD) FUTURES – QUOTES
Beginning Monday, April 1, 2024, CME Group settlement data will no longer be accessible through ftp.cmegroup.com and will have a delayed publication time of 12:00 a.m. CT on all cmegroup.com web pages. Learn about alternate ways to access the data in our FAQ.
Last Updated 14 Mar 2024 03:17:59 PM CT.
Market data is delayed by at least 10 minutes.
I will now provide gold in Canadian dollars, British pounds and Euros
4: 15 PM ACCESS
*CANADIAN GOLD: $2,927.40 UP $0.40 CDN dollars per oz( * NEW ALL TIME HIGH 2,941.47CDN DOLLARS PER OZ//MARCH 11 2024)
*BRITISH GOLD: 1696.39 DOWN 1.00 pounds per oz// *(NEW ALL TIME HIGH//CLOSING///1703.22 BRITISH POUNDS/OZ) MARCH 11/2024
*EURO GOLD: 1987.39 UP 4.10 euros per oz //* (ALL TIME CLOSING HIGH: 1997.12 EUROS PER OZ//MARCH 11.2024)
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END
EXCHANGE: COMEX
EXCHANGE: COMEX
CONTRACT: MARCH 2024 COMEX 100 GOLD FUTURES
SETTLEMENT: 2,175.400000000 USD
INTENT DATE: 03/13/2024 DELIVERY DATE: 03/15/2024
FIRM ORG FIRM NAME ISSUED STOPPED
363 H WELLS FARGO SEC 6
661 C JP MORGAN 22
737 C ADVANTAGE 6 1
905 C ADM 11
TOTAL: 23 23
MONTH TO DATE: 5,156
JPMorgan stopped 22/23 contracts.
FOR MARCH/2024
GOLD: NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR MAR/2024. CONTRACT: 23 NOTICES FOR 2300 OZ or 0.0715 TONNES
total notices so far: 5156 contracts for 515,600 Oz (16.037 tonnes)
FOR MARCH:
SILVER NOTICES: 0 NOTICE(S) FILED FOR nil OZ/
total number of notices filed so far this month : 5111 for 25,555,000 oz
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END
BOTH GLD AND SLV ARE FRAUDULENT VEHICLES//THEY ARE NOW RAIDING GLD AND SLV FOR PHYSICAL
GLD
THE CROOKS ARE STEALING GOLD AND SILVER FROM THE GLD/SLV AND REPLACING THE PHYSICAL WITH PAPER DOLLARS.
WITH GOLD DOWN $12.20
INVESTORS SWITCHING TO SPROTT PHYSICAL (PHYS) INSTEAD OF THE FRAUDULENT GLD/ :
HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD..//INVENTORY RESTS AT 816.86 TONNES
INVENTORY RESTS AT 816.86 TONNES
SLV//
WITH NO SILVER AROUND AND SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS AT THE SLV//
NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: INVENTORY REMAINS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ/
INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV.
CLOSING INVENTORY: 418.872 MILLION OZ
Let us have a look at the data for today
SILVER//OUTLINE
SILVER COMEX OI ROSE BY A MEGA HUMONGOUS SIZED 2890 CONTRACTS TO 147,424 AND CLOSER TO THE RECORD HIGH OI OF 244,710, SET FEB 25/2020 AND THIS HUGE SIZED GAIN IN COMEX OI WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH OUR HUGE GAIN IN PRICE OF $0.78 IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX ON WEDNESDAY. WE HAD ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION AT THE COMEX SESSION WITH AGAIN MAJOR SHORT COVERING WITH THE STRONG PRICE GAIN. WE HAD A HUGE 1196 T.A.S ISSUANCE AND THESE WILL BE USED FOR MANIPULATION LATER THIS MONTH/AS WELL AS TODAY. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CROOKS NEED A HIGHER SILVER/GOLD T.A.S. TO CARRY ON THEIR CROOKED MANIPULATION ON A DAILY BASIS
CRAIG HEMKE HAS POINTED OUT THAT THE CROOKS USE THE MID MONTH FOR MANIPULATION AS THEY SELL THEIR BUY SIDE OF THE CALENDAR SPREAD FIRST AND THEN KEEP THE SELL SIDE TO LIQUIDATE AT A LATER DATE. THUS WE HAVE TWO VEHICLES THE CROOKS USE FOR MANIPULATION AND BOTH ARE SPREADERS: 1) AT MONTH’S END/SPREADERS COMEX AND 2/ TAS SPREADERS, MID MONTH. TOTAL TAS ISSUED ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT: 1196 CONTRACTS. DESPITE MANY COMPLAINTS THAT THE CROOKS HAVE VIOLATED POSITION LIMITS DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE TAS ISSUED HAVE A VALUE OF ZERO (AS TO POSITION LIMITS FOR OUR CROOKED BANKERS). THE PROBLEM OF COURSE IS THAT THE CROOKS DO NOT LIQUIDATE THE TAS TOGETHER BUT SELL THE BUY SIDE FIRST AND THEN LIQUIDATE THE SELL SIDE TWO MONTHS HENCE. IT IS OBVIOUS MANIPULATION TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE BUT IT NATURALLY FELL ON DEAF EARS WITH OUR REGULATORS (OCC) WHEN THEY RECEIVED OUR COMPLAINTS. IT THUS LOOKS LIKE THE FED (GOV’T) IS BEHIND ALL OF THESE TRADES.
WE HAVE NOW SET ANOTHER RECORD LOW AT 114,102 CONTRACTS ///JULY 3.2023// OUR BANKERS WITH THE HELP OF SPECULATORS AND HIGH FREQUENCY TRADERS WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING THE PRICE OF SILVER DOWN (IT ROSE BY $0.78),BUT WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING ANY SILVER LONGS AS WE HAD A MEGA HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF 5725 CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES WITH THE STRONG GAIN IN PRICE OF 78 CENTS.
WE MUST HAVE HAD:
A GIGANTIC SIZED 2835 ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS) iiii) AN INITIAL SILVER STANDING FOR COMEX SILVER MEASURING AT 22.270 MILLION OZ (FIRST DAY NOTICE) FOLLOWED BY TODAY,S 0.085 MILLION OZ QUEUE JUMP //NEW TOTALS INCREASES TO : 26.980 MILLION OZ
//NEW STANDING FOR SILVER IS THUS 26.980 MILLION OZ
WE HAD:
/ HUMONGOUS SIZED COMEX OI GAIN/ GIGANTIC SIZED EFP ISSUANCE/ VI) HUGE SIZED NUMBER OF T.A.S. CONTRACT ISSUANCE 1196 CONTRACTS)/
I AM NOW RECORDING THE DIFFERENTIAL IN OI FROM PRELIMINARY TO FINAL -REMOVED A HUGE 669 CONTRACTS //
HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS FEB. ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S SILVER/JPMORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES/STARTING FROM FIRST DAY/MONTH OF MARCH
TOTAL CONTRACTS for 10 days, total 16,545 contracts: OR 82.725 MILLION OZ (1655 CONTRACTS PER DAY)
TOTAL EFP’S FOR THE MONTH SO FAR: 82.725725 MILLION OZ
LAST 23 MONTHS TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED IN MILLIONS OF OZ:
MAY 137.83 MILLION
JUNE 149.91 MILLION OZ
JULY 129.445 MILLION OZ
AUGUST: MILLION OZ 140.120
SEPT. 28.230 MILLION OZ//
OCT: 94.595 MILLION OZ
NOV: 131.925 MILLION OZ
DEC: 100.615 MILLION OZ
YEAR 2022:
JAN 2022-DEC 2022
JAN 2022// 90.460 MILLION OZ
FEB 2022: 72.39 MILLION OZ//
MARCH 2022: 207.140 MILLION OZ//A NEW RECORD FOR EFP ISSUANCE
APRIL: 114.52 MILLION OZ FINAL//LOW ISSUANCE
MAY: 105.635 MILLION OZ//
JUNE: 94.470 MILLION OZ
JULY : 87.110 MILLION OZ
AUGUST: 65.025 MILLION OZ
SEPT. 74.025 MILLION OZ///FINAL
OCT. 29.017 MILLION OZ FINAL
NOV: 134.290 MILLION OZ//FINAL
DEC, 61.395 MILLION OZ FINAL
TOTALS YR 2022: 1135.767 MILLION OZ (1.1356 BILLION OZ)
JAN 2023/// 53.070 MILLION OZ //FINAL
FEB: 2023: 100.105 MILLION OZ/FINAL//MUCH STRONGER ISSUANCE VS THE LATTER TWO MONTHS.
MARCH 2023: 112.58 MILLION OZ//FINAL//STRONG ISSUANCE
APRIL 118.035 MILLION OZ(SLIGHTLY GREATER THAN THAN LAST MONTH)
MAY 66.120 MILLION OZ/INITIAL (MUCH SMALLER THIS MONTH)
JUNE: 110.395 MILLION OZ//MUCH LARGER THAN LAST MONTH
JULY 85.745 MILLION OZ (SMALLER THAN LAST MONTH)
AUGUST: 171.43 MILLION OZ (THIS MONTH IS GOING TO BE HUGE //2ND HIGHEST ON RECORD
SEPT: 72.705 MILLION OZ (SMALLER THIS MONTH)
OCT: 97.455 MILLION OZ
NOV. 50.050 MILLION OZ
DEC. 66.140 MILLION OZ//
TOTAL 2023: 1,104.10 MILLION OZ/
JAN ’24 : 78.655 MILLION OZ//
FEB /2024 : 66.135 MILLION OZ./FINAL
MARCH: 82.725 MILLION OZ//WILL BE MUCH LARGER THIS MONTH//MAYBE CLOSE TO A RECORD ISSUANCE
RESULT: WE HAD A HUGE SIZED INCREASE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX CONTRACTS OF 2835 CONTRACTS WITH OUR HUGE GAIN IN PRICE OF SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX//WEDNESDAY.,. THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT WE HAD A GIGANTIC EFP ISSUANCE CONTRACTS: 2855 ISSUED FOR MAY AND 0 CONTRACTS ISSUED FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS) WHICH EXITED OUT OF THE SILVER COMEX TO LONDON AS FORWARDS. WE HAVE A GOOD INITIAL SILVER OZ STANDING FOR MARCH. OF 23.385 MILLION OZ ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S SMALL 0.085 MILLION OZ QUEUE JUMP
//NEW TOTAL STANDING RISES TO 26.980 MILLION OZ
WE HAVE A HUMONGOUS GAIN OF 5735 OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES WITH THE HUGE GAIN IN PRICE. THE TOTAL OF TAS INITIATED CONTRACTS TODAY: A HUGE SIZED 1196 CONTRACTS//HUGE FRONT END OF THE TAS CONTRACTS WERE LIQUIDATED DURING THE WEDNESDAY COMEX SESSION/// WITH MAJOR SHORT COVERING FROM OUR SPEC SHORTS
THE NEW TAS ISSUANCE WEDNESDAY NIGHT (1196) WILL BE PUT INTO “THE BANK” TO BE COLLUSIVELY USED AT A LATER DATE//PROBABLY TODAY., .
WE HAD 0 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR 0.000 MILLION OZ
THE SILVER COMEX IS NOW BEING ATTACKED FOR METAL BY LONDONERS ET AL.
GOLD//OUTLINE
IN GOLD, THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST ROSE BY A HUMONGOUS SIZED 24,348 CONTRACTS TO 540,654 AND CLOSER TO THE RECORD (SET JAN 24/2020) AT 799,733 AND PREVIOUS TO THAT: (SET JAN 6/2020) AT 797,110, BUT WE ARE NOW CLOSER TO OUR ALL TIME LOW OF 390,000 CONTRACTS.
THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI IN GOLD TODAY: REMOVED 358 CONTRACTS
WE HAD A HUMONGOUS SIZED INCREASE IN COMEX OI ( 24,597 CONTRACTS) WITH OUR $14.40 GAIN IN PRICE//WEDNESDAY. THE BANKERS WERE FORCED TO SUPPLY THE NECESSARY SHORT PAPER TO CONTAIN GOLD’S RISE.WE ALSO HAD A RATHER LARGE INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR MARCH. AT 10.270 TONNES ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’’S QUEUE JUMP OF 1400 OZ.
NEW TOTAL Of INITIAL GOLD STANDING RISES TO: 16.762 TONNES // ALL OF THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR $14.40 GAIN IN PRICE WITH RESPECT TO WEDNESDAY’S TRADING. WE HAD A HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF 28,706 OI CONTRACTS (89.28) PAPER TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES.
E.F.P. ISSUANCE
THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A STRONG SIZED 3751 CONTRACTS:
The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 540.654
IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A HUMONGOUS SIZED INCREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 28,348 CONTRACTS WITH 24,597 CONTRACTS INCREASED AT THE COMEX// AND A STRONG SIZED 3751 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS TOTAL OI GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 28,348 CONTRACTS.. WE HAD THE FOLLOWING TAS CONTRACTS INITIATED (ISSUED): MEGA MEGA HUMONGOUS SIZED 37,807 CONTRACTS,
CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES
WE HAD STRONG SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (3751 CONTRACTS) ACCOMPANYING THE HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN IN COMEX OI (24,955) //TOTAL GAIN FOR OUR THE TWO EXCHANGES: 28,348 CONTRACTS. WE HAVE ( 1) NOW RETURNED TO OUR FORMER FORMAT OF BANKERS GOING LONG AND SPECULATORS GOING SHORT ,2.) STRONG INITIAL STANDING AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR MARCH. AT 7.502 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S STRONG QUEUE JUMP OF 0.0435 TONNES/NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 16.871 TONNES.
/ 3) ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION // 4) HUMONGOUS SIZED COMEX OPEN INTEREST LOSS/ 5) STRONG ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL PAPER///6: MEGA HUMONGOUS T.A.S. ISSUANCE: 37,807 CONTRACTS//SOME SHORT COVERING AGAIN
HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN 2023-2024 INCLUDING TODAY
MARCH
ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH. :
TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED: 57,285 CONTRACTS OR 5,728,500 OZ OR 178.18 TONNES IN 10 TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 5948 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY
TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS : THIS MONTH IN 10 TRADING DAY(S) IN TONNES 178.18 TONNES
TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2022, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 3555 TONNES
THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS 178.18/3550 x 100% TONNES 5.01% OF GLOBAL ANNUAL PRODUCTION
ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S YEAR 2021 TO 2023
JANUARY/2021: 265.26 TONNES (RAPIDLY INCREASING AGAIN)
FEB : 171.24 TONNES ( DEFINITELY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN)..
MARCH:. 276.50 TONNES (STRONG AGAIN/
APRIL: 189..44 TONNES ( DRAMATICALLY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN//GOLD IN BACKWARDATION)
MAY: 250.15 TONNES (NOW DRAMATICALLY INCREASING AGAIN)
JUNE: 247.54 TONNES (FINAL)
JULY: 188.73 TONNES FINAL
AUGUST: 217.89 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE.
SEPT 142.12 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE ( LOW ISSUANCE)_
OCT: 141.13 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE (LOW ISSUANCE)
NOV: 312.46 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE//NEW RECORD!! (INCREASING DRAMATICALLY)//SIGN OF REAL STRESS//SURPASSING THE MARCH 2021 RECORD OF 276.50 TONNES OF EFP
DEC. 175.62 TONNES//FINAL ISSUANCE//
TOTALS: 2,578.08 TONNES/2021
JAN:2022 247.25 TONNES //FINAL
FEB: 196.04 TONNES//FINAL
MARCH/2022: 409.30 TONNES //FINAL( THIS IS NOW A RECORD EFP ISSUANCE FOR MARCH AND FOR ANY MONTH.
APRIL: 169.55 TONNES (FINAL VERY LOW ISSUANCE MONTH)
MAY: 247.44 TONNES FINAL//
JUNE: 238.13 TONNES FINAL
JULY: 378.43 TONNES FINAL
AUGUST: 180.81 TONNES FINAL
SEPT. 193.16 TONNES FINAL
OCT: 177.57 TONNES FINAL ( MUCH SMALLER THAN LAST MONTH)
NOV. 223.98 TONNES//FINAL ( MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUS MONTHS//comex running out of physical)
DEC: 185.59 tonnes // FINAL
TOTAL: 2,847,25 TONNES/2022
JAN 2023: 228.49 TONNES FINAL//HUGE AMOUNT OF EFP’S ISSUED THIS MONTH!!
FEB: 151.61 TONNES/FINAL
MARCH: 280.09 TONNES/INITIAL (ANOTHER STRONG MONTH FOR EFP ISSUANCE)
APRIL: 197.42 TONNES
MAY: 236.67 TONNES (A VERY STRONG ISSUANCE FOR THIS MONTH)
JUNE: 172.667 TONNES (WEAKER ISSUANCE THIS MONTH)
JULY: 151.69 TONNES (WEAKER THAN LAST MONTH)
AUGUST: 195.28 TONNES (A STRONGER MONTH)//FINAL
SEPT: 254.709 TONNES (WILL BE LARGER THAN LAST MONTH AND A STRONG MONTH)
OCT. 248.09 TONNES. LIKE SILVER, THIS MONTH IS GOING TO BE A STRONG E.F.P. ISSUANCE.
NOV. 239.16 TONNES//WILL BE STRONG THIS MONTH,
DEC. 213.704 TONNES. A STRONG MONTH//
TOTAL FOR YEAR 2023: 2,569.57 TONNES VS 2578 TONNES LAST YEAR
JAN ’24: 291.76 TONNES (WILL BE MUCH GREATER THAN LAST MONTH.//3RD HIGHEST EVER RECORDED EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL)
FEB’24: 201.947 TONNES
MARCH 2024: 178.18 TONNES//THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE HUMDINGER OF AN E,F,P. ISSUANCE.
SPREADING OPERATIONS
(/NOW SWITCHING TO GOLD) FOR NEWCOMERS, HERE ARE THE DETAILS
SPREADING LIQUIDATION HAS NOW COMMENCED AS WE HEAD TOWARDS THE NEW ACTIVE FRONT MONTH OF FEB. WE ARE NOW INTO THE SPREADING OPERATION OF GOLD
HERE IS A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF HOW THE CROOKS FLEECE UNSUSPECTING LONGS IN THE SPREADING ENDEAVOUR ;MODUS OPERANDI OF THE CORRUPT BANKERS AS TO HOW THEY HANDLE THEIR SPREAD OPEN INTERESTS:HERE IS HOW THE CROOKS USED SPREADING AS WE ARE NOW INTO THE NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF NOV HEADING TOWARDS THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF FEB., FOR GOLD: AND MARCH FOR SILVER
YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE THAT THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST STARTS TO RISE BUT SO IS THE OPEN INTEREST OF SPREADERS. THE OPEN INTEREST IN WILL CONTINUE TO RISE UNTIL ONE WEEK BEFORE FIRST DAY NOTICE OF AN UPCOMING ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH (APRIL), AND THAT IS WHEN THE CROOKS SELL THEIR SPREAD POSITIONS BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME OF THE DAY. THEY WILL USE THE SELL SIDE OF THE EQUATION TO CREATE THE CASCADE (ALONG WITH THEIR COLLUSIVE FRIENDS) AND THEN COVER ON THE BUY SIDE OF THE SPREAD SITUATION AT THE END OF THE DAY. THEY DO THIS TO AVOID POSITION LIMIT DETECTION. THE LIQUIDATION OF THE SPREADING FORMATION CONTINUES FOR EXACTLY ONE WEEK AND ENDS ON FIRST DAY NOTICE.”
WHAT IS ALARMING TO ME, ACCORDING TO OUR LONDON EXPERT ANDREW MAGUIRE IS THAT THESE EFP’S ARE BEING TRANSFERRED TO WHAT ARE CALLED SERIAL FORWARD CONTRACT OBLIGATIONS AND THESE CONTRACTS ARE LESS THAN 14 DAYS. ANYTHING GREATER THAN 14 DAYS, THESE MUST BE RECORDED AND SENT TO THE COMPTROLLER, GREAT BRITAIN TO MONITOR RISK TO THE BANKING SYSTEM. IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE, THEN THIS IS A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AS WE NOW WITNESS A MONSTROUS TOTAL EFP’S ISSUANCE AS IT HEADS INTO THE STRATOSPHERE.
The crooks also use the spread in the TAS account (trade at settlement). They buy the spot TAS (e.g. June) and sell the future TAS two months out (e.g. August). Then they unload the front month (i.e. unload the buy side first so the price of gold/silver falls. This occurs in the middle of the front delivery month cycle. They unload the sell side of the equation, two months down the road. The crooks violate position limits as the OCC refuse to hear our complaints.
First, here is an outline of what will be discussed tonight:
1.Today, we had the open interest at the comex, in SILVER ROSE BY A HUGE SIZED 2890 CONTRACTS OI TO 147,424 AND CLOSER TO THE COMEX HIGH RECORD //244,710(SET FEB 25/2020). THE LAST RECORDS WERE SET IN AUG.2018 AT 244,196 WITH A SILVER PRICE OF $14.78/(AUGUST 22/2018)..THE PREVIOUS RECORD TO THAT WAS SET ON APRIL 9/2018 AT 243,411 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS WITH THE SILVER PRICE AT THAT DAY: $16.53). AND PREVIOUS TO THAT, THE RECORD WAS ESTABLISHED AT: 234,787 CONTRACTS, SET ON APRIL 21.2017 OVER 6 YEARS AGO. HOWEVER WE HAVE NOW SET A NEW RECORD LOW OF 114,102 CONTRACTS JULY 3.2023
EFP ISSUANCE 2835 CONTRACTS
OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:
MAY 2835 and ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 1100 CONTRACTS. EFP’S GIVE OUR COMEX LONGS A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON. IF WE TAKE THE COMEX OI GAIN OF 2890 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 2835 E.FP. ISSUED
WE OBTAIN A MEGA HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF 5725 CONTRACTS
THUS IN OUNCES, THE GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES TOTAL 28.625 MILLION OZ
OCCURRED DESPITE OUR HUGE $.78 GAIN IN PRICE …..
END
OUTLINE FOR TODAY’S COMMENTARY
1a/COMEX GOLD AND SILVER REPORT
(report Harvey)
b, ) Gold/silver trading overnight Europe,//GOLD COMMENTARIES
(Peter Schiff)
c) Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens
ii a) Chris Powell of GATA provides to us very important physical commentaries
b. Other gold/silver commentaries
c. Commodity commentaries//
d)/CRYPTOCURRENCIES/BITCOIN ETC
2.ASIAN AFFAIRS//
THURSDAY MORNING/WEDNESDAY NIGHT
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.60 PTS OR 0.18% //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 120.45 PTS OR 0.71% / Nikkei CLOSED UP 1121.41 PTS OR 0.29%//Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.19% /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed UP 7.1894 //OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN CLOSED UP TO 7.1943 /Oil UP TO 80.37 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT UP AT 84,55/ Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL GREEN// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN STRONGER
A)NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA
outline
b) REPORT ON JAPAN/
OUTLINE
3 CHINA
OUTLINE
4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS
OUTLINE
5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS
OUTLINE
6.Global Issues//COVID ISSUES/VACCINE ISSUES
OUTLINE
7. OIL ISSUES
OUTLINE
8 EMERGING MARKET ISSUES
9. USA
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1. COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS
GOLD
LET US BEGIN:
THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST ROSE BY MEGA HUMONGOUS 24,597 CONTRACTS TO 540.654 WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $14.40 WITH RESPECT TO WEDNESDAY TRADING. MOST LIKELY IT WAS THE BANKERS SUPPLYING THE NECESSARY PAPER WITH OUR SHORT PLAYERS EXITING AS FAST AS THEIR FEET COULD CARRY THEM. THE SHORTS HAVE BEEN KILLED LATELY, AS THEY HAVE BEEN LED BY THE NOSE BY OUR BANKER-HIGH FREQUENCY TRADERS.
EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE
WE ARE NOW IN THE NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MARCH..… THE CME REPORTS THAT THE BANKERS ISSUED A STRONG SIZED TRANSFER THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE AS THESE LONGS RECEIVED A DELIVERABLE LONDON FORWARD TOGETHER WITH A FIAT BONUS.,
THAT IS 3751 EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: : APRIL 3751 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:
TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 3751 CONTRACTS
ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE GAINED THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A HUMONGOUS SIZED TOTAL OF 28,348 CONTRACTS IN THAT 3751 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS TO LONDON AND WE HAD A HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF 24,597 COMEX CONTRACTS..AND THIS GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES HAPPENED WITH OUR RISE IN PRICE OF $14.40 WEDNESDAY COMEX. AS PER OUR NEWBIE TRADE AT SETTLEMENT (TAS) MANIPULATION OPERATION (WHICH CRAIG HEMKE HAS POINTED OUT HAPPENS DURING MID MONTH IN THE DELIVERY CYCLE), THE CME REPORTS THAT THE TOTAL T.A.S. ISSUANCE FOR WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS A MEGA MEGA HUMONGOUS SIZED 37,807 CONTRACTS,
THROUGHOUT THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS, THE BANKERS CONTINUE TO SELL OFF THE LONG SIDE OF THE SPREAD WHICH OF COURSE CONTINUES TO MANIPULATE THE PRICE OF GOLD SOUTHBOUND. (THEY KEEP THE SHORT SIDE OF THE CALENDAR/T.A.S. SPREAD WHICH WILL BE LIQUIDATED IN DAYS HENCE//. IT SEEMS THAT OUR CROOKS ARE HAVING A HARD TIME TRYING TO CONTROL THE PRICE OF GOLD AND THUS THE NEED FOR RECORD T.A.S. ISSUANCE.
// WE HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING: MARCH (16,871 TONNES) ( NON ACTIVE MONTH)
HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 24 MONTHS OF 2021-2023:
DEC 2021: 112.217 TONNES
NOV. 8.074 TONNES
OCT. 57.707 TONNES
SEPT: 11.9160 TONNES
AUGUST: 80.489 TONNES
JULY: 7.2814 TONNES
JUNE: 72.289 TONNES
MAY 5.77 TONNES
APRIL 95.331 TONNES
MARCH 30.205 TONNES
FEB ’21. 113.424 TONNES
JAN ’21: 6.500 TONNES.
TOTAL YEAR 2021 (JAN- DEC): 601.213 TONNES
YEAR 2022:
JANUARY 2022 17.79 TONNES
FEB 2022: 59.023 TONNES
MARCH: 36.678 TONNES
APRIL: 85.340 TONNES FINAL.
MAY: 20.11 TONNES FINAL
JUNE: 74.933 TONNES FINAL
JULY 29.987 TONNES FINAL
AUGUST:104.979 TONNES//FINAL
SEPT. 38.1158 TONNES
OCT: 77.390 TONNES/ FINAL
NOV 27.110 TONNES/FINAL
Dec. 64.000 tonnes
(TOTAL YEAR 656.076 TONNES)
2023:
JAN/2023: 20.559 tonnes
FEB 2023: 47.744 tonnes
MAR: 19.0637 TONNES
APRIL: 75.676 tonnes
MAY: 19.094 TONNES + 1.244 tonnes of exchange for risk = 20.338
JUNE: 64.354 TONNES
JULY: 10.2861 TONNES
AUGUST: 38.855 TONNES(INCLUDING .6842 EXCHANGE FOR RISK)
SEPT: 15.281 TONNES FINAL
OCT. 35.869 TONNES + 1.665 EXCHANGE FOR RISK =37.0355 tonnes
NOV: 18.7122 TONNES + 16.2505 EX. FOR RISK = 34.9627 TONNES
DEC. 47.073 + 4.634 TONNES OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK = 51.707 TONNES
TOTAL 2023 YEAR : 436.546 TONNES
JAN ’24. 22.706 TONNES
FEB. ’24: 66.276 TONNES (INCLUDES 1.723 TONNES EX. FOR RISK)
MARCH: 16.871 TONNES
THE SPECS/HFT WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE( IT GAINED $14.40 //// AND WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING ANY SPECULATOR LONGS AS WE HAD A HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF 28,348 TOTAL CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES WITH OUR HIGHER PRICE.
WE HAD A STRONG T.A.S. LIQUIDATION ON THE FRONT END OF WEDNESDAY’S TRADING . THE T.A.S. ISSUED ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, WILL BE “PUT INTO THE BANK” TO BE USED AT A LATER DATE AT THE COLLUSIVE CHOOSING OF OUR BANKERS. THE HIGH T.A.S. ISSUANCE IS MEANT TO CONTROL THE PRICE OF GOLD (AS WELL AS INITIATE A RAID).
WE HAVE GAINED A TOTAL OI OF 88.174 PAPER TONNES FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES, ACCOMPANYING OUR INITIAL GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR MARCH. (10.3576 TONNES) ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 1400 OZ QUEUE JUMP//NEW STANDING INCREASES TO 16.871 TONNES
ALL OF THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE TO THE TUNE OF $14.40
WE HAD -REMOVED 669 CONTRACTS TO THE COMEX TRADES TO OPEN INTEREST (CROOKS)
NET GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 28,348 CONTRACTS OR 2,834,800 OZ OR 88.174 TONNES.
estimated volume today 331,590 strong
final gold volumes/yesterday 334,172 strong
//speculators have left the gold arena
MARCH 14/ INITIAL MARCH GOLD
/ /// THE MARCH 2024 GOLD CONTRACT
| Gold | Ounces |
| Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory in oz | nil |
| Withdrawals from Customer Inventory in oz | nil oz . |
| Deposit to the Dealer Inventory in oz | nil oz |
| Deposits to the Customer Inventory, in oz | NIL oz |
| No of oz served (contracts) today | 23 notice(s) 2300 OZ 0.0715 TONNES |
| No of oz to be served (notices) | 268 contracts 26800 oz 0.8336 TONNES |
| Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month | 5156 notices 515,600 oz 16.037 TONNES |
| Total accumulative withdrawals of gold from the Dealers inventory this month | NIL oz |
| Total accumulative withdrawal of gold from the Customer inventory this month | x |
0 dealer deposits:
total dealer deposits: nil oz
total customer withdrawals: 0
total customer withdrawal: nil oz
we had 0 customer deposit
total deposit NIL oz
Adjustments: 0
CALCULATIONS FOR THE AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR MAR.
For the front month of MARCH we have an oi of 291 contracts having LOST 496 contracts. We had 510 contracts filed upon on Wednesday, so we gained a 14 contracts or an additional 1400 oz of gold(0435 tonnes) will stand at the comex in this non active delivery month of March
APRIL LOST 5783 CONTRACTS FALLING TO 262,104.
MAY EARNED 26 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 646
JUNE INCREASED ITS OI BY 28,289 CONTRACTS UP TO 220,579 CONTRACTS.
We had 23 contracts filed for today representing 2,300 oz
Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer account and 0 notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equate to 23 contract(s) of which 0 notices were stopped (received) by j.P. Morgan dealer and 22 notice(s) was (were) stopped (received) by J.P.Morgan//customer account
To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the MARCH. /2024. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (5156 x 100 oz ), to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MARCH. (291 CONTRACTS) minus the number of notices served upon today 23 x 100 oz per contract equals 542,400 OZ OR 16.871 TONNES
thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the MARCH. contract month: No of notices filed so far (5156) x 100 oz + (291) {OI for the front month} minus the number of notices served upon today (23) x 100 oz which equals 542,400 oz (16.871 TONNES)
TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING FOR MARCH: 16.871 TONNES WHICH IS HUGE FOR A NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH IN THE CALENDAR.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
COMEX GOLD INVENTORIES/CLASSIFICATION
NEW PLEDGED GOLD:
241,794.285 oz NOW PLEDGED /HSBC 5.94 TONNES
204,937.290 PLEDGED MANFRA 3.08 TONNES
83,657.582 PLEDGED JPMorgan no 1 1.690 tonnes
265,999.054, oz JPM No 2
1,152,376.639 oz pledged Brinks/
Manfra: 33,758.550 oz
Delaware: 193.721 oz
International Delaware:: 11,188.542 oz
total pledged gold: 1,333,165.842 41,40 tonnes
TOTAL OF ALL GOLD ELIGIBLE AND REGISTERED GOLD: 17,887,532.221 OZ
TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD 7,782,182.341 (242,05 tonnes).
TOTAL OF ALL ELIGIBLE GOLD: 10,092.069.959 OZ
REGISTERED GOLD THAT CAN BE SERVED UPON: 6,449,017 oz (REG GOLD- PLEDGED GOLD) 200.59 tonnes/dropping like a stone
END
SILVER/COMEX
MARCH 14/INITIAL
//2024// THE MARCH 2024 SILVER CONTRACT//INITIAL
| Silver | Ounces |
| Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory | NIL oz |
| Withdrawals from Customer Inventory | 597,171.800 oz ASAHI . |
| Deposits to the Dealer Inventory | nil OZ |
| Deposits to the Customer Inventory | 594,486.200 oz ASAHI |
| No of oz served today (contracts) | 0 CONTRACT(S) (nil OZ) |
| No of oz to be served (notices) | 285 contracts (1.425 MILLION oz) |
| Total monthly oz silver served (contracts) | 5111 Contracts (25.555 MILLION oz) |
| Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Dealers inventory this month | NIL oz |
| Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Customer inventory this month |
i) 0 dealer deposit
total dealer deposit:nil oz
i) We had 0 dealer withdrawal
total dealer withdrawals: 0 oz
We had 1 deposits customer account:
i) Into ASAHI: 594,486.2 oz
total customer deposits 594,486. 2 oz
JPMorgan has a total silver weight: 129.806 million oz/286.483 million or 45.30%
adjustment: 0
Comex withdrawals: 1
i) Out of ASAHI 597,171.800 oz
total withdrawal: 597,171.800 oz
TOTAL REGISTERED SILVER: 48.213MILLION OZ//.TOTAL REG + ELIGIBLE. 286.483million oz
CALCULATIONS FOR THE NEW STANDING FOR SILVER FOR DECEMBER:
silver open interest data:
FRONT MONTH OF MARCH /2023 OI: 285 CONTRACTS HAVING LOST 14 CONTRACT(S).
WE HAD 31 NOTICES FILED ON WEDNESDAY SO GAINED 17 CONTRACTS OR AN ADDITIONAL 85,000 OZ WILL STAND AT THE COMEX
APRIL SAW A GAIN OF 106 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 819
MAY SAW A GAIN OF 2157 CONTRACTS UP TO 115,511.
TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR TODAY: 0 for 0.00 MILLION oz
Comex volumes// est. volume today 76,973 good
Comex volume: confirmed yesterday 55,216 fair
To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in MARCH. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 5111 x 5,000 oz = 25,555,000 oz
to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MARCH. (285) and the number of notices served upon today 0 x (5000 oz) equals the number of ounces standing.
Thus the standings for silver for the MARCH/2024 contract month: 5111 (notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for the front month of MARCH. (285) – number of notices served upon today (0 )x 500 oz of silver standing for the MARCH contract month equates to 26.980 MILLION OZ.
New total standing: 26.980 million oz.
There are 48.213 million oz of registered silver.
The record level of silver open interest is 234,787 contracts set on April 21./2017 with the price on that day at $18.42. The previous record was 224,540 contracts with the price at that time of $20.44
END
GLD AND SLV INVENTORY LEVELS//
BOTH GLD AND SLV ARE MASSIVE FRAUDS!
MARCH 14 WITH GOLD DOWN $12.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//:INVENTORY REMAINS AT 816.86 TONNES
MARCH 13 WITH GOLD UP $14.40 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:INVENTORY REMAINS AT 815.13 TONNES
MARCH 12 WITH GOLD DOWN $21.15 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:NOT AVAILABLE///LAST VALUE 815.13 TONNES
MARCH 11 WITH GOLD UP $3.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD AFTER 7 CONSECUTIVE GOLD PRICE RISES//INVENTORY RESTS AT 815.13 TONNES
MARCH 8 WITH GOLD UP $21.05 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.87 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD AFTER 7 CONSECUTIVE GOLD PRICE RISES//INVENTORY RESTS AT 816.57 TONNES
MARCH 7 WITH GOLD UP $7.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 4,20 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 817.44 TONNES
MARCH 6 WITH GOLD UP $17.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.30 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 821.47 TONNES
MARCH 5 WITH GOLD UP $16.55 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.30 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 821.47 TONNES
MARCH 4 WITH GOLD UP $30.55 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .86 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 823.77 TONNES
MARCH 1 WITH GOLD UP $40.40 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 822.91 TONNES
FEB29/WITH GOLD UP $12.60 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//WITHDRAWAL OF 4.03 TONNES INVENTORY RESTS AT 822.91 TONNES
FEB28/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.00 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD INVENTORY RESTS AT 826.94 TONNES
FEB27/WITH GOLD UP $4.40 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF .87 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 826.94 TONNES
FEB26/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.90 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 827.81 TONNES
FEB23/WITH GOLD UP $17 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.01 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 827.81 TONNES
FEB22/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.15 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD://INVENTORY RESTS AT 829.82 TONNES
FEB21/WITH GOLD DOWN $5.30 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 7.59 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 29.82 TONNES
FEB20/WITH GOLD UP $16.15 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 0.58 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 837.89 TONNES
FEB16/WITH GOLD UP $8,60 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 837.31 TONNES
FEB15/WITH GOLD UP $11.70 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB14/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.75 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB13/WITH GOLD DOWN $20.15 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB12/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.80 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A STRONG WITHDRAWAL OF 1.74 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB9/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.60 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A STRONG DEPOSIT OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 843.66 TONNES
FEB8/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.70 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 5.47 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 842.22 TONNES:
FEB7/WITH GOLD UP $0.40 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.04 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 847.69 TONNES:
FEB6/WITH GOLD UP $8.50 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/ / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 851.73 TONNES:
GLD INVENTORY: 816.86 TONNES
Now the SLV Inventory/( vehicle is a fraud as there is no physical metal behind them
MARCH 14/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ
MARCH 13/WITH SILVER UP 78 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ…
MARCH 12/WITH SILVER DOWN 31 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A SMALL WITHDRAWAL OF 0.549 MILLION OZ OF SILVER INTO THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ…
MARCH 11/WITH SILVER UP 11 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 2.147 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.323 MILLION OZ…SUCH A MASSIVE FRAUD!
MARCH 8/WITH SILVER DOWN 5 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.299 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 420.519 MILLION OZ…SUCH A MASSIVE FRAUD!
MARCH 7/WITH SILVER UP 8 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.665 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 424.818 MILLION OZ…SUCH A MASSIVE FRAUD!
MARCH 6/WITH SILVER UP 52 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 2.378 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 427,105 MILLION OZ
MARCH 5/WITH SILVER DOWN 2 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 1.499 MILL;ION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 429.483 MILLION OZ
MARCH 4/WITH SILVER UP CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430.982 MILLION OZ
MARCH 1/WITH SILVER UP 49 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430.982 MILLION OZ
FEB 29/WITH SILVER UP 25 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.104 MILLION OZ OUT OF THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430/982 MILLION OZ
FEB 28/WITH SILVER DOWN 7 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 5.123 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.086 MILLION OZ
FEB 27/WITH SILVER UP 3 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.64 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 427.943 MILLION OZ
FEB 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 44 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.065 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 428.603 MILLION OZ
FEB 23/WITH SILVER DOWN 44 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.065 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 428.603 MILLION OZ
FEB 22/WITH SILVER DOWN 10 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV
// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 432.766 MILLION OZ
FEB 21/WITH SILVER DOWN 28 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.348 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 432.766 MILLION OZ
FEB 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 33 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.385 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 435.008 MILLION OZ
FEB 16/WITH SILVER UP 53 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A DEPOSIT OF 1.235 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.393 MILLION OZ
FEB 15/WITH SILVER UP 56 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.615 MILLION OZ
FEB 14/WITH SILVER UP 24 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.615 MILLION OZ
FEB 13/WITH SILVER DOWN 60 CENTS TODAY SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A SMALL WITHDRAWAL OF 0.504 MILLION OZ OZ OUT OF THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.615 MILLION OZ
FEB 12/WITH SILVER UP 14 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 1.921 MILLION OZ OZ OUT OF THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.119 MILLION OZ
FEB 9/WITH SILVER DOWN 4 CENTS TODAY SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A SMALL DEPOSIT OF 600,000 OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 440.040 MILLION OZ
FEB 8/WITH SILVER UP 29 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 439.994 MILLION OZ
FEB 7/WITH SILVER DOWN 18 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A MASSIVE DEPOSIT OF 4.04 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 439.994 MILLION OZ//LAST 9 DAYS: 10.7598 MILLION OZ WITHDRAWAL
CLOSING INVENTORY 418.872 MILLION OZ//
PHYSICAL GOLD/SILVER COMMENTARIES
1:Peter Schiff/Mike Maharrey
end
2.Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens/ SIMON WHITE..//
Wall Street Mega Banks Have Drawn a Law-Free Zone Around Themselves – The Media Is Complicit
By Pam Martens:
March 13, 2024
From revoking the American people’s right to a jury trial in matters involving Wall Street; to brazenly thumbing their nose at anti-trust law; to trading the stock of their own bank in the darkness of their own dark pools; to forming their own stock exchange; to committing serial felonies without being criminally prosecuted or having their bank charters revoked – Wall Street mega banks have drawn a law-free zone around themselves and are more dangerous today than they have ever been in U.S. history.The most dangerous eras for the American people versus Wall Street mega banks have been the late 1920s and 1930s; 2007 to 2010; and today. We know that today is the most dangerous era because we read 12,000 pages produced by the Senate Banking Committee of the early 1930s on the Wall Street corruption in the late 20s and 30s; we read every government report produced on the causes of the crash of 2008 and its aftermath, as well as every important book on the subject; and we have personally chronicled at Wall Street On Parade the unprecedented corruption of the Wall Street mega banks since 2008.One key factor stands out in our mind as to why today’s Wall Street mega bank era is so much more corrupt and dangerous than earlier times: the failure of mainstream media to do its job.For the past decade, mainstream media has failed to adequately report to the American people the activities of the Wall Street mega banks and the insidious role of the Federal Reserve in being their secret bailout kingpin. Consider what happened with the Fed’s so-called repo loan bailouts in the last quarter of 2019.On September 17, 2019 the overnight repo loan rate spiked from an average of about 2 percent to 10 percent – signaling that one or more important Wall Street firms were in trouble. The repo loan market is an overnight loan market where banks, brokerage firms, mutual funds and others make predominantly one-day loans to each other against safe collateral, typically Treasury securities. Repo stands for “repurchase agreement.” When firms back away from lending to each other, someone is in trouble and spreading fear of the kind of contagion that occurred in 2008.Because the repo market dried up, the Fed effectively became the repo loan market on September 17, 2019. It exponentially grew the amount of emergency repo loans it was making over the following months. And, instead of just making the customary overnight loans, the Fed also added loans lasting for weeks, up to 42-day loans in some cases. The dollar amounts of the Fed’s repo loans grew to staggering levels. On October 24, 2019, we reported the following:“The New York Fed will now be lavishing up to $120 billion a day in cheap overnight loans to Wall Street securities trading firms, a daily increase of $45 billion from its previously announced $75 billion a day. In addition, it is increasing its 14-day term loans to Wall Street, a program which also came out of the blue in September, to $45 billion. Those term loans since September have been occurring twice a week, meaning another $90 billion a week will be offered, bringing the total weekly offering to an astounding $690 billion. It should be noted that if the same Wall Street firms are getting these loans continuously rolled over, they are effectively permanent loans. (That’s exactly what happened during the 2007-2010 Wall Street collapse: some teetering Wall Street casinos received, individually, $2 trillion in cumulative loans that were rolled over for two and one-half years – without the authorization or even awareness of Congress or the American people. One bank, Citigroup, received over $2.5 trillion in Fed loans, much of them at an interest rate below 1 percent, at a time when it was insolvent and couldn’t have obtained loans in the open market at even high double-digit interest rates.)”The names of the banks receiving the repo loans in 2019 remained secret from the American people for two years. When the stunning data was finally released by the Fed, it received a total news blackout by mainstream media. We have never seen anything that unprecedented in our 40 years of working on Wall Street or covering Wall Street on this website. The names of the banks in desperate need of cash in the fourth quarter of 2019 included some of the biggest and most iconic names on Wall Street.The Fed’s cumulative repo loans for the fourth quarter of 2019 on a term-adjusted basis came to $19.87 trillion, based on the data the Fed released two years later. Just six trading units of the Wall Street mega banks received 62 percent of the $19.87 trillion: Nomura ($3.7 trillion), JPMorgan ($2.59 trillion), Goldman Sachs ($1.67 trillion), Barclays ($1.48 trillion), Citigroup ($1.43 trillion), and Deutsche Bank ($1.39 trillion).Consider this news blackout involving the biggest names on Wall Street to what occurred after the Fed bailouts of 2007 to 2010.In response to the financial crisis of 2008, the Fed stepped in with an alphabet soup of emergency lending programs, as well as cranking out discount window loans. While the Fed released general details of what the programs were created to do, it did not release the names of the Wall Street mega banks and their trading units that were doing the bulk of the borrowing, or the sums borrowed by each institution.A tenacious investigative reporter at Bloomberg News, Mark Pittman, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Fed for the names of the banks, the amounts borrowed and the terms. Under the law, the Fed had to respond in 20 business days. The Fed stalled Pittman for six months, leading to the parent of Bloomberg News, Bloomberg LP, filing a lawsuit against the Fed in November 2008. Bloomberg won that suit. The Fed then appealed to the Second Circuit Appellate Court in 2009, attempting to continue to keep the details secret from the American people.What is particularly noteworthy about that appellate case is that the very same media outlets that drew a dark curtain around the Fed’s revelations of the names of the banks taking its massive repo loans of 2019 filed an Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court) brief in Bloomberg’s appellate case in 2009. Those news outlets included Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (owner of the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch), Reuters, Associated Press, and the New York Times.The Amicus writers told the appellate court this: “The public interest in disclosure in this case could hardly be greater. The [Federal Reserve] Board has lent out more than $2 trillion under the lending programs documented in the Remaining Term Reports. Despite this massive outlay, the public knows little about who has received these funds or the terms of their loans…While the Board releases aggregate data…it refuses to reveal any transaction-level data identifying where money has gone. Without this information, it is impossible to monitor the Board’s actions, and FOIA’s core purpose is defeated.”Let this sink in for a few moments. In 2019, just 11 years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the same mega banks on Wall Street are running amok again and back at the trough demanding trillions of dollars in cheap loans from the Fed – despite no apparent financial crisis in the general economy – and mainstream media does not go to court to demand the information and then, uniformly, blacks out the details to the American people when the data is finally reported by the Fed.The Fed lost on the Bloomberg case at the Second Circuit Appellate Court. The Fed was too embarrassed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, because President Obama’s acting Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, planned to file a brief contrary to the Fed’s position, so a group called The Clearing House Association LLC, made up of some of the very same mega banks that were being bailed out by the Fed, filed their own appeal with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March of 2011, leaving the decision of the Second Circuit Appellate Court in place and making way for the release of the data.The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 had forced the Fed to release the transaction details of its seven emergency lending facilities in December of 2010. When the Supreme Court declined to hear the court case, the discount window transactions were released in March 2011. When the various data was released, it was widely covered by mainstream media.On March 21, 2011, Bloomberg News Editor in Chief Matthew Winkler released this statement:“At some point long before the credit markets seized up in 2007, financial markets collapsed and the economy plunged into the worst recession since the 1930s, the Federal Reserve forgot that it is the central bank for the people of the United States and not a private academy where decisions of great importance may be withheld from public scrutiny. As only Congress has the constitutional power to coin money, Congress delegates that power to the Fed and the Fed must be accountable to Congress, especially in disclosing what it does with the people’s money.”
3. CHRIS POWELL//
end
4. OTHER MAJOR GOLD COMMENTARIES/PODCASTS//LIVE FROM THE VAULT
end
end
5 a. IMPORTANT COMMENTARIES ON COMMODITIES /EGGS
Time For A Backyard Chicken Coop? Supermarket Egg Prices Soaring Once-Again
WEDNESDAY, MAR 13, 2024 – 06:00 PM
As of Wednesday, there are just 18 days left until Easter celebrations begin. For those who have recently visited the supermarket, egg prices are trending in the wrong direction, although well off the highs recorded in December 2022.
Data from the United States Department of Agriculture shows that Grade A egg prices per dozen jumped 40% from $2.13 to $3 between November and February.
Customer review and consumer news platform “ConsumerAffairs” reports that egg prices have “zoomed higher by a significant percentage in certain parts of the country,” indicating the largest surges have been at supermarkets in Minneapolis and Buffalo/Rochester, adding “Orlando’s egg prices went up as well.”
ConsumerAffairs noted that the price surges were mainly seen in “large central metro areas, but in non-core rural areas, there was a fairly noticeable decrease.”
“You can try and pin this on grocer greed, but that’s a wasted accusation. The higher prices of eggs in the US are actually due to several factors. There has been a significant reduction in the supply of eggs as a result of the avian influenza outbreak, which has resulted in the euthanasia of millions of chickens and ducks,” ConsumerAffairs said.
What intrigues us is the price gap in egg prices that ConsumerAffairs finds in cities versus rural areas. This means anyone who lives in big cities and wants to escape the inflation horror show under Bidenomics should at least consider rural communities where food can be sourced locally and sometimes a lot cheaper.
It probably wouldn’t hurt to homeschool the kids while living out in rural America.
Alternatively, starting a farm and taking control of one’s food supply is a powerful step towards independence from the overreaching state and mega-corporations.
For those who can’t move because the Federal Reserve has paralyzed the housing market with high-interest rates, consider a backyard garden and chicken coop.
5 B GLOBAL COMMODITY ISSUES/FOOD IN GENERAL//FREIGHT
END
6.CRYPTOCURRENCY//DIGITAL CURRENCY// COMMENTARIES/
1.YOUR EARLY CURRENCY VALUES/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGS THURSDAY MORNING.7:30 AM
ONSHORE YUAN: CLOSED UP 7.1894
OFFSHORE YUAN: UP TO 7.1943
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.60 PPTS OR 0.13%
HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 120.45 PTS OR 0.71%
2. Nikkei closed UP 111.41 PTS OR 0.29%
3. Europe stocks SO FAR: ALL GREEN
USA dollar INDEX UP TO 102.45 EURO FALLS TO 1.0943 DOWN 10 BASIS PTS
3b Japan 10 YR bond yield: RISES TO. +.768 Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese YEN vs USA cross now at 147.67/JAPANESE YEN NOW FALLING AS WELL AS LONG TERM 10 YR. YIELDS RISING //EVENTUALLY THIS WILL BREAK THE JAPANESE CENTRAL BANK
3c Nikkei now ABOVE 17,000
3d USA/Yen rate now well ABOVE the important 120 barrier this morning
3e Gold DOWN /JAPANESE Yen DOWN CHINESE ONSHORE YUAN: UP/ OFFSHORE: UP
3f Japan is to buy INFINITE TRILLION YEN worth of BONDS. Japan’s GDP equals 5 trillion USA
Japan to buy 100% of all new Japanese debt and NOW they will have OVER 50% of all Japanese debt.
3g Oil UP for WTI and UP FOR Brent this morning
3h European bond buying continues to push yields lower on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund YIELD UP TO +2.3625***/Italian 10 Yr bond yield UP to 3.595* /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD UP TO 3.136…**
3i Greek 10 year bond yield UP TO 3.141
3j Gold at $2168.35 silver at: 25.00 1 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $30.00
3k USA vs Russian rouble;// Russian rouble UP 0 AND 3 /100 roubles/dollar; ROUBLE AT 91.46//
3m oil into the 80 dollar handle for WTI and 84 handle for Brent/
3n Higher foreign deposits moving out of China// huge risk of outflows and a currency depreciation. This can spell financial disaster for the rest of the world/
JAPAN ON JAN 29.2016 CONTINUES NIRP. THIS MORNING RAISES AMOUNT OF BONDS THAT THEY WILL PURCHASE UP TO .5% ON THE 10 YR BOND///YEN TRADES TO 147.67// 10 YEAR YIELD AFTER FIRST BREAKING .54% LAST YEAR NOW EXCEEDS THAT LEVEL TO 0.768% STILL ON CENTRAL BANK (JAPAN) INTERVENTION
30 SNB (Swiss National Bank) still intervening again in the markets driving down the FRANC. It is not working: USA/SF this 0.8794 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF: 0.9623 well above the floor set by the Swiss Finance Minister. Thomas Jordan, chief of the Swiss National Bank continues to purchase euros trying to lower value of the Swiss Franc.
USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 4.189 UP 1 BASIS PTS…
USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 4.343 DOWN 1 BASIS PTS/
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.626 UP 1 BASIS PTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 32.13…(TURKEY SET TO BLOW UP FINANCIALLY)
GREAT BRITAIN/10 YEAR YIELD: UP 1 BASIS PTS AT 4.040
end
2.a Overnight: Newsquawk and Zero hedge
Futures Rise To New Record High Ahead Of Data Deluge
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 08:19 AM
Another day, another all time high on deck. US equity futures are higher ahead of today’s PPI / Retail sales data, which we expect to be a big miss to expectations based on real-time card spending data. As of 8:00am, S&P futures were 0.3% higher trading around 5,250 while Nasdaq futures gained 0.4%, led by tech with the Mag7 stocks higher premarket (ex-NVDA, TSLA) as semis outperform pre-market. Europe trades mainly higher led by France while Asia is mixed on light overnight news. The yield curve is seeing some bear steepening with 10Y yield unchanged at 4.19%; keep an eye on the backend of the curve as we approach next week’s BOJ. The USD is stronger and commodities are mixed: energy is leading as WTI crude futures rise higher by almost 1% on the day after IEA projected a supply deficit for the rest of 2024. Today’s macro data focus includes Retail Sales (consensus +0.4%, last -0.4%), PPI (cons +0.2%, last +0.5% core PPI m/m) and Jobless Claims (exp. 218k, last 217k).
In premarket trading, Netflix and Meta Platforms rose with analysts flagging potential benefits to social-media and streaming companies from legislation targeting TikTok. Dollar General jumped after an upbeat forecast. Here are some other notable premarket movers:
- Citigroup shares rise 1.9% as Goldman Sachs raised the recommendation on the lender to buy from neutral. The broker sees “a realistic path” to higher returns and “compelling valuation support.”
- Hello Group the parent firm of Chinese dating apps Momo and Tantan, trades 16% lower after reporting a drop in paying users for both apps.
- Fisker shares plunge 38% after the Wall Street Journal reported the electric-vehicle startup has hired advisers to assist with a possible bankruptcy filing.
- Robinhood shares rise 12% after the online brokerage platform reported positive operating data in February including rising assets under custody and surging trading volume.
- SentinelOne shares drop 11% after the security software company gave a full-year revenue forecast that was weaker than expected at the midpoint of the range.
- Turtle Beach shares soar 27% after the sound technology company reported its fourth-quarter results and said it would buy PDP at an enterprise value of $118 million.
- UiPath shares rise 7.0% after the automation software company reported fourth-quarter results that beat expectations.
- Under Armour shares are down 7.2% after the company announced the return of Kevin Plank as chief executive officer, replacing Stephanie Linnartz, who was in the role for just over a year. Jefferies said the surprise change in leadership suggests uncertainty on the strategic direction of the sportswear maker.
- Weibo ADRs climb 5.5% after the Chinese social media company declared its second special cash dividend of $200m in a year, offsetting adjusted earnings and active users that missed analyst expectations.
While traders have been trimming bets on deep and imminent rate cuts, that hasn’t dampened enthusiasm for stocks, with the S&P 500 setting new records in its longest stretch since 2018 without a decline of at least 2%, according to Bloomberg data. Today’s PPI data will be the final inflation report before next week’s Fed policy meeting. Officials are expected to hold interest rates steady for a fifth straight meeting, but the question is when they’ll start lowering borrowing costs.
“We’ve just upgraded our price target on the S&P 500, European stocks and Japanese equities because underlying data continues to be pretty resilient,” said Grace Peters, head of global investment strategy at JPMorgan Private Bank, who sees the US benchmark reaching 5,600 in a bull-case scenario. “The most realistic bull case is that corporate profits are stronger than expected.”
In politics, Donald Trump floated hedge fund titan John Paulson as possible Treasury secretary if he wins the November presidential election, and has held a series of meetings with other potential cabinet picks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it’s “unlikely” that market interest rates will return to levels that prevailed before the Covid-19 pandemic.
ECB Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras recommended two interest-rate cuts before the August summer break, and another two by the end of the year. Money markets maintained wagers on the scope for rate cuts this year, with the first quarter-point move seen by June, followed by two more and a 70% chance of a fourth. Bunds trimmed a small decline and the euro was steady.
Sentiment remained fragile in Chinese markets despite officials pledging central government funds to encourage consumers and businesses to replace old equipment and goods. Shares linked to Asian copper miners advanced after the metal jumped to an 11-month high on likely capacity cuts at Chinese smelters.
European stocks rose for a third day as Stoxx 600 touches a fresh record even as tech firms extend their decline for a second session. The mood points to a sector rotation in the background as retail, real estate and consumer products lead this month’s Stoxx 600 gains. Here are some of the biggest movers on Thursday:
- Encavis gains as much as 28% and trades slightly below the value of KKR’s recommended cash offer for the renewable-energy producer. Analysts see a high likelihood of deal completion, even as the offer price is below their respective PTs.
- Trainline shares jump as much as 12%, reaching the highest intraday since September 2022, after the train-ticketing platform reported full-year net ticket sales that topped estimates. Morgan Stanley highlighted the company’s performance in the UK, which was a main driver of the beat to net ticket sales.
- K+S shares rise as much as 9% after the German agricultural chemicals firm posted results which Citi called “encouraging” and guidance that showed scope for further earnings growth. Analysts pointed to the cash flow outlook as bringing some relief.
- NEL shares rise as much as 5.9% after the Norwegian hydrogen technology firm received $84 million of funding from the State of Michigan and the US Department of Energy, which RBC said confirms the company as a key green hydrogen player.
- IG Group rises as much as 4.9% after the UK trading platform reported third-quarter earnings which RBC said were better-than-expected and showed resilient trading revenues, client numbers and cash balances.
- RWE gains as much as 3.7% after the German utility reiterated its guidance, which Morgan Stanley said will trigger renewed interest in the stock. The company also expects to raise its dividend for the current fiscal year.
- OSB Group shares slump as much as 30%, the biggest drop since July, as the British banking group’s weaker-than-expected guidance for net interest margin overshadowed a full-year results beat.
- Basic-Fit drops as much as 16% as the health and fitness club operator’s growth plans disappoint.
- Lanxess shares fall as much as 11% after the German specialty chemicals firm’s 2023 sales and margins fell short of estimates, while its first-quarter adjusted Ebitda outlook also undershot consensus.
Earlier in the session, Asian stocks edged lower, with the regional gauge on track for its first weekly drop in two months, weighed down by losses in Chinese technology shares and Australian banks. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell as much as 0.2% amid choppy trading. Financial names including Westpac Banking and ANZ were among the biggest drags on the index after Macquarie downgraded the Australian lenders. Copper miners were a bright spot in the region after the metal jumped to an 11-month high. BHP was the top positive contributor to the Asian gauge as Citigroup raised the stock to buy.
Equities in mainland China and Hong Kong ended lower, with the Hang Seng Tech Index falling more than 1% despite officials pledging central government funds to encourage consumers and businesses to replace old equipment and goods. Shares linked to Asian copper miners advanced after the metal jumped to an 11-month high on likely capacity cuts at Chinese smelters. The US House of Representatives passed a bill to ban TikTok in the country unless its Chinese owner sells the video-sharing app.
In FX, bloomberg dollar spot index gained 0.1% to erase Wednesday’s decline. The yen reversed an initial gain as Treasury yields turned higher and ahead of Rengo wage outcomes on Friday, which may affect the Bank of Japan’s policy decision. SEK and CHF are the weakest performers in G-10 FX, NZD and GBP outperform.
In rates, treasuries were narrowly mixed after yields edged to new weekly highs ahead of economic data slate including PPI and retail sales. US yields slightly richer from front-end out to belly of the curve and slightly cheaper across long-end, steepening 2s10s by almost 1bp on the day; 10-year yields around 4.19% with gilts outperforming by 1.2bp in the sector. Gilts outperform slightly, and core European rates drew support from comments by ECB’s Yannis Stournaras, who recommended two interest-rate cuts before the summer break in August. S&P 500 futures advance toward last week’s all-time high and WTI crude oil futures top $80/bbl; peripheral spreads tighten to Germany with 10y BTP/Bund narrowing 2.9bps to 119.8bps amid dovish remarks from ECB speakers. German, gilt and Treasury 10-year yields are steady as traders await US producer-price data, which comes after a sticky consumer reading earlier this week.
In commodities, crude oil added to the biggest gain in about five weeks after the International Energy Agency said global oil markets face a supply deficit throughout 2024 as OPEC+ looks set to continue output cuts. Iron ore extended its decline toward $100 a ton, with few signs of a turnaround in Chinese steel demand. Gold edged lower. Spot gold falls roughly $5 to trade near $2,170/oz.
Bitcoin took a breather after soaring to highs yesterday, and currently holds just shy of USD 73.5k.
The US economic data calendar includes February retail sales and PPI and weekly jobless claims (8:30am) and January business inventories (10am). No scheduled Fed speakers due before March 20 policy decision. From central banks, we’ll hear from ECB Vice President de Guindos, along with the ECB’s de Cos, Schnabel, Knot and Stournaras.
Market Snapshot
- S&P 500 futures up 0.3% to 5,184.75
- STOXX Europe 600 up 0.2% to 508.44
- MXAP up 0.2% to 176.55
- MXAPJ little changed at 540.98
- Nikkei up 0.3% to 38,807.38
- Topix up 0.5% to 2,661.59
- Hang Seng Index down 0.7% to 16,961.66
- Shanghai Composite down 0.2% to 3,038.23
- Sensex up 0.3% to 73,006.82
- Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.2% to 7,713.63
- Kospi up 0.9% to 2,718.76
- German 10Y yield little changed at 2.38%
- Euro little changed at $1.0941
- Brent Futures up 0.2% to $84.19/bbl
- Gold spot down 0.2% to $2,169.72
- US Dollar Index little changed at 102.85
Top Overnight News
- US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it’s “unlikely” that market interest rates will return to levels that prevailed before the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a wave of inflation and higher yields. BBG
- BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda will likely take his time normalizing ultra-loose monetary policy after ending negative interest rates, former central bank executive Hideo Hayakawa said on Thursday. RTRS
- Japan’s largest industrial union said on Thursday the average pay rise offered by 231 firms for both full-time and part-time employees was the biggest since 2013, amid signs wage hikes were broadening. RTRS
- Chinese wheat importers have cancelled or postponed about one million metric tons of Australian wheat cargoes, trade sources with direct knowledge of the deals said, as growing world stockpiles drag down prices. RTRS
- The crude market faces a supply deficit throughout 2024 — instead of the surplus previously expected — as OPEC+ looks set to continue output cuts in the second half, the IEA said. The agency bolstered forecasts for global demand growth by 9% to 1.3 million barrels a day, on a stronger US outlook. BBG
- The ECB must lower borrowing costs twice before its August summer break and two more times before the end of the year, without being swayed by the US Federal Reserve, according to Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras. BBG
- The US has held secret talks with Iran this year in a bid to convince Tehran to use its influence over Yemen’s Houthi movement to end attacks on ships in the Red Sea, according to US and Iranian officials. FT
- Tuesday’s CPI report shouldn’t fundamentally alter expectations that the Fed will cut rates around three times this year because it isn’t likely to justify a meaningful revision in officials’ forecasts for inflation as measured by that index, said Eric Rosengren, who headed the Boston Fed from 2007 to 2021. WSJ
- Donald Trump has talked about hedge fund titan John Paulson as Treasury secretary if he wins the November presidential election, and has held a series of meetings with potential cabinet picks. Other potential names in the mix for the top Treasury post, should Trump defeat incumbent President Joe Biden, include former US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, Susquehanna International Group LLP founder Jeff Yass and Key Square Group LP founder Scott Bessent. BBG
- Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) expand partnership to satisfy global demand for oracle database Azure.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (MSTR) – The crypto investor announced its intention to offer USD 500mln of convertible senior notes due 2031, with an additional option for purchasers to buy up to USD 75mln more. MSTR intended to use the proceeds to purchase additional bitcoin and for general corporate purposes. Shares +4.5 pre-market trade - Under Armour (UAA) – Kevin Plank will assume the roles of President and CEO from April 1st, succeeding Stephanie Linnartz. Mohamed El-Erian will become the non-executive Chair of the Board. Plank, founder of Under Armour, transitions from the Executive Chair role, while Linnartz will remain to advise until April 30th. Shares -4.5% in pre-market trade
A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk
APAC stocks were mixed after the indecisive performance stateside amid light catalysts and tech weakness, with participants lacking conviction ahead of next week’s central bank bonanza. ASX 200 was subdued as losses in financials and tech overshadowed the gains in the commodity-related sectors. Nikkei 225 traded indecisively after a slew of BoJ-related source reports suggesting a policy shift next week. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were somewhat varied with the Hong Kong benchmark pressured amid tech-related headwinds after the US House approved the bill which threatens to ban TikTok, while the mainland was indecisive with downside initially cushioned after China issued plans to promote trading in consumer goods and equipment upgrades.
Top Asian news
- BoJ will discuss whether to end its negative interest rate policy as pay hikes by major companies bring the central bank’s 2% price stability target within reach. Furthermore, with more BoJ policymakers embracing the idea, the decision is seen coming down to the results of Japan’s annual wage negotiations, to be published by top labour confederation Rengo on Friday, according to Nikkei.
- Japanese Federation of Textile, Chemical, Commerce, Food and General Services Workers’ Unions which is the largest industrial union and known as UA Zensen stated that the average pay increase offered by 231 firms reached the biggest on record since 2013 compared with the same period last year.
- Taiwan Central Bank Governor said they are concerned potential electricity price hikes will result in a chain reaction effect on inflation expectations and they will be very prudent about discussions on interest rates this time, while he added that they will not likely cut interest rates before June, according to Reuters.
- Foxconn (2317 TT) sees 2024 revenue to increase significantly Y/Y; sees Q1 revenue to slightly decline Y/Y, sees Q1 revenue for smart consumer electronics to slightly decline Y/Y. Q4 net profit TWD 53.14bln (exp. 43.5bln; prev. 43.1bln Q/Q). Sees Q1 revenue for cloud and networking products to be flat Y/Y. Sees Q1 revenue for computing products to be flat Y/Y. Says major growth momentum this year will be AI servers, expects the servers business to grow strongly this year; sees very strong demand in AI from clients. AI server growth in 2023-25 could be stronger than the market average, potentially above 30% or higher annually. Semiconductor revenue will surpass TWD 100bln this year.
- China’s Commerce Ministry on the review into Australian wine tariffs says the final ruling will be made in accordance with the investigation procedures.
- Chinese State Planner has issued a draft rules to support high-quality firms to take on medium and long-term foreign debt.
European bourses are mostly in the green, with sentiment lifted after dovish remarks from ECB’s Stournaras. The SMI (-0.3%) underperforms, hampered by post-earnings weakness in Swiss Life (-5.7%). European sectors are mixed, with Basic Resources found at the foot of the pile, hampered by broader weakness in base metals, whilst Energy benefits from firmer crude prices. US equity futures (ES +0.2%, NQ +0.5%, RTY +0.2) are trading on a firmer footing, with slight outperformance in the NQ, attempting to pare back some of its losses from the prior session.
Top European news
- ECB’s Stournaras says they have to cut rates twice prior to the summer break, via Bloomberg; four cuts in 2024 seems reasonable. Need to begin cutting soon; policy must not become too restrictive. Dismisses the idea that the ECB cannot cut before the Fed. Don’t exaggerate the risk of a wage-price-spiral. Structural portfolio will include government bonds. Remarks which sparked a modest uptick in EGBs.
- ECB Chief Economist Lane says the ECB has a bit more confidence that they are heading towards the inflation goal, more data will help gain more confidence, via CNBC; Better not to analyse whether it is April or June when it comes to lowering rates
- Norges Bank Regional Network Report Q1 2024 : Expects overall activity to remain virtually unchanged in the first half of 2024. Prospects have been revised up somewhat since the previous survey.Employment plans for 2024 Q1 have been revised up slightly since the previous survey. Contacts expect annual wage growth of 4.9% in 2024, which is an upward revision from the 4.5% estimate in November.
FX
- DXY is broadly flat vs. peers ahead of a slew of Tier 1 US data, with the index contained within yesterday’s 102.66-103.02 range. Strong data could see DXY reclaim 103 and approach the weekly high at 103.17. A soft release could see the index approach the post-NFP low at 102.35.
- EUR is steady vs. the USD and contained within yesterday’s 1.0920-1.0963 range. ECB’s Stournaras sparked modest pressure for the Single-Currency, though the move quickly faded.
- JPY is a touch softer vs. the USD but ultimately contained within yesterday’s 147.23-148.05 range. Markets are on tenterhooks ahead of tomorrow’s Rengo announcement which will likely shape expectations for next week’s BoJ decision.
- AUD/USD is flat vs. the USD in what has been a week of contained price action, and currently sits within yesterday’s 0.6599-0.6635 range. NZD is trivially firmer vs. USD after edging above yesterday’s peak at 0.6170.
- SEK is weaker vs. peers given soft inflation metrics which has seen odds of a May cut creep higher. EUR/SEK made a new high for the week at 11.218 but still some way off March highs.
Fixed Income
- Once again, USTs are marginally in the red within the European morning. Specifics since the 30yr auction (strong) have been light and USTs are now back to pre-auction levels of 110-30; data and 20yr announcement due.
- Gilts are the relative laggard as they continue to pare from the outperformance seen on Tuesday’s labour data, with few fresh drivers able to change the narrative. Gilts hold towards the lower end of a 99.01-98.80 range.
- Bunds are in the red but off the 132.42 trough after remarks from ECB’s Stournaras who said that two cuts are needed before the summer break and four for 2024 is reasonable. Commentary which has helped to lift Bunds to a 132.66 high. Comments from ECB’s Lane failed to spark any price action in Bunds.
Commodities
- Crude is firmer with gains facilitated by Russian facility outages, bullish US energy inventory data and several geological updates. Brent May rose from support at USD 83.98/bbl and currently holds just shy of USD 84.75/bbl.
- A subdued morning thus far for precious metals and with overall trade rangebound, awaiting impetus from US Tier 1 data. XAU trades within a tight range between USD 2,167.47-2,177.05/oz.
- Base metals are mostly subdued as a function of the Dollar and quiet macro updates. Copper holds onto a bulk of the prior day’s gains (following reports that major Chinese copper smelters agreed to curb output) whilst iron ore overnight continued trundling lower amid ongoing Chinese demand woes.
- IEA OMR: Raises 2024 oil demand growth forecast by 110k BPD to 1.3mln BPD; says if OPEC+ voluntary cuts remain in place through 2024, market is seen in a slight deficit rather than a surplus. While 2024 growth has been revised up by 110 kb/d from last month’s Report, the pace of expansion is on track to slow from 2.3 mb/d in 2023 to 1.3 mb/d, as demand growth returns to its historical trend while efficiency gains and EVs reduce use. World oil production is projected to fall by 870 kb/d in 1Q24 vs 4Q23 due to heavy weather-related shut-ins and new curbs from the OPEC+ bloc. Refining margins improved through mid-February before receding, with the US Midcontinent and Gulf Coast as well as Europe leading the gains. In this Report, we are now holding OPEC+ voluntary cuts in place through 2024 – unwinding them only when such a move is confirmed by the producer alliance (see OPEC+ cuts extended). On that basis, our balance for the year shifts from a surplus to a slight deficit, but oil tanks may get some relief as the massive volumes of oil on water reach their final destination.
Geopolitics: Middle East
- US Secretary of State Blinken held a video call with officials from Cyprus, Britain, UAE, Qatar, EU and the UN to discuss getting a new maritime corridor for delivering humanitarian aid into Gaza up and running, according to Reuters.
- US is expected to impose new sanctions on two illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank that were used as a base for attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians, according to three US officials cited by Axios.
- US CENTCOM said Iranian-backed Houthis fired one anti-ship ballistic missile in the Gulf of Aden although the missile did not impact any vessels and there was no damage reported, while its forces successfully engaged and destroyed four unmanned aerial systems and one surface-to-air missile in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
Geopolitics: Other
- Taiwan and China authorities both dispatched teams to join a rescue mission after a Chinese fishing boat capsized near Taiwan-controlled Kinmen Islands on Thursday morning, according to Taiwanese press.
- Philippines President Marcos and US Secretary of State Blinken to meet on March 19th to discuss cooperation and security matters, while Marcos vowed to defend maritime rights in the face of a ‘more active attempt by China to annex some territories’.
- North Korean leader Kim guided a military demonstration involving a tank unit on Wednesday, according to KCNA.
US Event Calendar
- 08:30: Feb. Retail Sales Ex Auto and Gas, est. 0.3%, prior -0.5%
- Feb. Retail Sales Control Group, est. 0.4%, prior -0.4%
- Feb. Retail Sales Ex Auto MoM, est. 0.5%, prior -0.6%
- 08:30: March Initial Claims, est. 218K, prior 217K
- March Continuing Claims, est. 1.91m, prior 1.91m
- 08:30: Feb. PPI Final Demand MoM, est. 0..3%, prior 0.3%
- Feb. PPI Final Demand YoY, est. 1.2%, prior 0.9%
- Feb. PPI Ex Food and Energy YoY, est. 1.9%, prior 2.0%
- Feb. PPI Ex Food and Energy MoM, est. 0.2%, prior 0.5%
- 10:00: Jan. Business Inventories, est. 0.2%, prior 0.4%
DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
Markets struggled to keep up their momentum yesterday, with the S&P 500 (-0.19%) falling back from its all-time high, whilst yields on 10yr Treasuries (+3.9bps) moved up for a third day running. That came amidst growing concern about how stretched the rally was becoming, with the S&P 500 having risen by more than +25% in less than 100 trading days. Moreover, there’s still quite a bit of focus on inflation, and the US CPI release this week has led to some scepticism about whether the Fed will be able to cut rates by June after all.
That focus on inflation is likely to remain today, as we’ll get the US PPI release at 12:30 London time. That’s an important one, because several components from the PPI feed into the PCE measure of inflation, which is the one that the Fed officially targets. According to our US economists, one category to focus on will be portfolio management and investment advice, which tends to follow equity prices with a one-month lag, and added about 8bps to the core PCE print in January. So even though we won’t get the PCE inflation data until March 29th, the reading today will offer a better sense of what that’s likely to be.
Ahead of that release, there was a further selloff for sovereign bonds, which came as investors dialled back the chance of near-term rate cuts again. For instance, the chance of a rate cut by June was down to 73%, down from 78% the previous day. And for the year as a whole, the number of cuts priced by the December meeting came down by -4.9bps to 80bps, the lowest in a couple of weeks. In turn, that helped yields rise further, and the 2yr yield rose +4.8bps to 4.63%, whilst the 10yr Treasury yield was up +3.9bps to 4.19%. The sell-off in Treasuries came despite a strong 30yr auction, which saw $22bn of bonds issued 2bps below the pre-sale yield, with the highest bid-to-cover ratio since last June. And in overnight trading, the 10yr Treasury yield has risen by another +1.2bps, and is currently at 4.20%.
Over in Europe, there were also losses for sovereign bonds across most of the continent. That was led by gilts, where the 10yr yield rose +7.4bps after data showed UK GDP rose by +0.2% in January, up from a -0.1% contraction in December. Elsewhere, 10yr yields on bunds (+3.7bps) and OATs (+2.7bps) also moved higher. But I talian BTPs (-1.2bps) continued to outperform, and their spread over 10yr bund yields tightened to 123bps, the lowest since November 2021. Speaking of spreads, there was also a further tightening in credit spreads yesterday, with both European and US HY spreads down to their lowest since January 2022.
Elsewhere in Europe, one notable event in the central bank space was the outcome of the ECB’s operational framework review. In line with expectations, the ECB will take a hybrid approach to providing the liquidity needed to operate a floor-type system. Among the details, it will shrink the gap between the depo and the refi rate from 50bp to 15bp starting in September, while keeping banks’ required minimum reserves (which earn zero interest) at 1% of eligible deposits. The review has few immediate market implications, but will have long-term ramifications for the direction of ECB balance sheet policy and functioning of Euro Area money markets. See our economists’ reaction note here for more.
For equities, there was a mixed performance yesterday, with the S&P 500 (-0.19%) moving off from its all-time high the previous day. However, that was driven by weakness among tech stocks, with the NASDAQ down -0.54%, whilst the Magnificent 7 fell -0.74%. The latter was led by a -4.54% decline for Tesla, which overtook Boeing as the weakest performer in the S&P 500 year-to-date with a -31.79% decline. Otherwise though, there was a better performance, with the equal-weighted S&P 500 marginally up by +0.01% to an all-time high, and the small-cap Russell 2000 rose +0.30%. Meanwhile in Europe there were further all-time highs, with new records for the STOXX 600 (+0.16%) and the CAC 40 (+0.62%).
Overnight in Asia we’ve also seen a divergent performance for equities. On the one hand, there’ve been gains for the Nikkei (+0.21%) and the KOSPI (+0.86%). But the CSI 300 (-0.10%), the Shanghai Comp (-0.09%) and the Hang Seng (-0.87%) have all lost ground. Elsewhere, US equity futures are indicating a positive start, with those on the S&P 500 up +0.12%.
Finally in the commodity space, Brent crude oil prices rose to their highest level since November, up +2.58% to $84.03/bbl, while WTI rose +2.78% to $79.72/bbl. The moves came amid Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian oil refineries and with data showing that US crude stockpiles declined for the first time in seven weeks. Higher oil prices have been filtering through to consumer prices since the start of the year, and the AAA’s measure of US daily gasoline prices has already risen from $3.110 per gallon at the end of 2023 to $3.396 per gallon yesterday.
To the day ahead now, and data releases include US PPI and retail sales for February, along with the weekly initial jobless claims. From central banks, we’ll hear from ECB Vice President de Guindos, along with the ECB’s de Cos, Schnabel, Knot and Stournaras.
2 B) NOW NEWSQUAWK (EUROPE/REPORT)
Equities firmer & Dollar flat ahead of Tier 1 US data and ECB speak, Crude at session highs – Newsquawk US Market Open
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 06:37 AM
- Equities are mostly firmer with slight outperformance in the NQ, paring some of the prior days losses
- Dollar is contained and G10s are mostly flat with slight strength seen in the NZD & GBP
- Bonds hold a bearish tilt, continuing price action seen in the prior few days; Bunds caught a slight bid following dovish remarks from ECB’s Stournaras
- Crude is firmer and near session highs, base metals are entirely in the red
- Looking ahead, US IJC, PPI, Retail Sales, NZ Manufacturing PMI, Comments from ECB’s Schnabel, Knot, de Guindos, Supply from the US, Earnings from Dollar General
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EUROPEAN TRADE
EQUITIES
- European bourses are mostly in the green, with sentiment lifted after dovish remarks from ECB’s Stournaras. The SMI (-0.3%) underperforms, hampered by post-earnings weakness in Swiss Life (-5.7%).
- European sectors are mixed, with Basic Resources found at the foot of the pile, hampered by broader weakness in base metals, whilst Energy benefits from firmer crude prices.
- US equity futures (ES +0.2%, NQ +0.5%, RTY +0.2) are trading on a firmer footing, with slight outperformance in the NQ, attempting to pare back some of its losses from the prior session.
- Click here and here for the sessions European pre-market equity newsflow, including earnings.
- Click here for more details.
FX
- DXY is broadly flat vs. peers ahead of a slew of Tier 1 US data, with the index contained within yesterday’s 102.66-103.02 range. Strong data could see DXY reclaim 103 and approach the weekly high at 103.17. A soft release could see the index approach the post-NFP low at 102.35.
- EUR is steady vs. the USD and contained within yesterday’s 1.0920-1.0963 range. ECB’s Stournaras sparked modest pressure for the Single-Currency, though the move quickly faded.
- JPY is a touch softer vs. the USD but ultimately contained within yesterday’s 147.23-148.05 range. Markets are on tenterhooks ahead of tomorrow’s Rengo announcement which will likely shape expectations for next week’s BoJ decision.
- AUD/USD is flat vs. the USD in what has been a week of contained price action, and currently sits within yesterday’s 0.6599-0.6635 range. NZD is trivially firmer vs. USD after edging above yesterday’s peak at 0.6170.
- SEK is weaker vs. peers given soft inflation metrics which has seen odds of a May cut creep higher. EUR/SEK made a new high for the week at 11.218 but still some way off March highs.
- Click here for more details.
FIXED INCOME
- Once again, USTs are marginally in the red within the European morning. Specifics since the 30yr auction (strong) have been light and USTs are now back to pre-auction levels of 110-30; data and 20yr announcement due.
- Gilts are the relative laggard as they continue to pare from the outperformance seen on Tuesday’s labour data, with few fresh drivers able to change the narrative. Gilts hold towards the lower end of a 99.01-98.80 range.
- Bunds are in the red but off the 132.42 trough after remarks from ECB’s Stournaras who said that two cuts are needed before the summer break and four for 2024 is reasonable. Commentary which has helped to lift Bunds to a 132.66 high. Comments from ECB’s Lane failed to spark any price action in Bunds.
- Click here for more details.
COMMODITIES
- Crude is firmer with gains facilitated by Russian facility outages, bullish US energy inventory data and several geological updates. Brent May rose from support at USD 83.98/bbl and currently holds just shy of USD 84.75/bbl.
- A subdued morning thus far for precious metals and with overall trade rangebound, awaiting impetus from US Tier 1 data. XAU trades within a tight range between USD 2,167.47-2,177.05/oz.
- Base metals are mostly subdued as a function of the Dollar and quiet macro updates. Copper holds onto a bulk of the prior day’s gains (following reports that major Chinese copper smelters agreed to curb output) whilst iron ore overnight continued trundling lower amid ongoing Chinese demand woes.
- IEA OMR: Raises 2024 oil demand growth forecast by 110k BPD to 1.3mln BPD; says if OPEC+ voluntary cuts remain in place through 2024, market is seen in a slight deficit rather than a surplus. While 2024 growth has been revised up by 110 kb/d from last month’s Report, the pace of expansion is on track to slow from 2.3 mb/d in 2023 to 1.3 mb/d, as demand growth returns to its historical trend while efficiency gains and EVs reduce use. World oil production is projected to fall by 870 kb/d in 1Q24 vs 4Q23 due to heavy weather-related shut-ins and new curbs from the OPEC+ bloc. Refining margins improved through mid-February before receding, with the US Midcontinent and Gulf Coast as well as Europe leading the gains. In this Report, we are now holding OPEC+ voluntary cuts in place through 2024 – unwinding them only when such a move is confirmed by the producer alliance (see OPEC+ cuts extended). On that basis, our balance for the year shifts from a surplus to a slight deficit, but oil tanks may get some relief as the massive volumes of oil on water reach their final destination.
- Click here for more details.
NOTABLE EUROPEAN HEADLINES
- ECB’s Stournaras says they have to cut rates twice prior to the summer break, via Bloomberg; four cuts in 2024 seems reasonable. Need to begin cutting soon; policy must not become too restrictive. Dismisses the idea that the ECB cannot cut before the Fed. Don’t exaggerate the risk of a wage-price-spiral. Structural portfolio will include government bonds. Remarks which sparked a modest uptick in EGBs.
- ECB Chief Economist Lane says the ECB has a bit more confidence that they are heading towards the inflation goal, more data will help gain more confidence, via CNBC; Better not to analyse whether it is April or June when it comes to lowering rates
- Norges Bank Regional Network Report Q1 2024 : Expects overall activity to remain virtually unchanged in the first half of 2024. Prospects have been revised up somewhat since the previous survey.Employment plans for 2024 Q1 have been revised up slightly since the previous survey. Contacts expect annual wage growth of 4.9% in 2024, which is an upward revision from the 4.5% estimate in November.
DATA RECAP
- UK RICS Housing Survey (Feb) -10.0 vs. Exp. -11.0 (Prev. -18.0)
- Swedish CPIF Ex Energy YY (Feb) 3.5% vs. Exp. 3.6% (Prev. 4.4%, Riksbank 3.7%); CPIF Ex Energy MM (Feb) 0.6% vs. Exp. 0.7% (Prev. -0.5%); CPIF YY (Feb) 2.5% vs. Exp. 2.8% (Prev. 3.3%, Riksbank 2.9%); CPIF MM (Feb) 0.2% vs. Exp. 0.3% (Prev. -0.3%); CPI MM (Feb) 0.2% vs. Exp. 0.4% (Prev. -0.1%); CPI YY (Feb) 4.5% vs. Exp. 4.7% (Prev. 5.4%, Riksbank 5.3%)
- Spanish CPI MM Final NSA (Feb) 0.4% vs. Exp. 0.3% (Prev. 0.3%); CPI YY Final NSA (Feb) 2.8% vs. Exp. 2.8% (Prev. 2.8%); HICP Final YY (Feb) 2.9% vs. Exp. 2.9% (Prev. 2.9%); HICP Final MM (Feb) 0.4% vs. Exp. 0.4% (Prev. 0.4%)
- Swiss Producer/Import Price YY (Feb) -2.0% (Prev. -2.3%); Producer/Import Price MM (Feb) 0.1% (Prev. -0.5%)
NOTABLE US HEADLINES
- Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) expand partnership to satisfy global demand for oracle database Azure.
- MicroStrategy Incorporated (MSTR) – The crypto investor announced its intention to offer USD 500mln of convertible senior notes due 2031, with an additional option for purchasers to buy up to USD 75mln more. MSTR intended to use the proceeds to purchase additional bitcoin and for general corporate purposes. Shares +4.5 pre-market trade
- Under Armour (UAA) – Kevin Plank will assume the roles of President and CEO from April 1st, succeeding Stephanie Linnartz. Mohamed El-Erian will become the non-executive Chair of the Board. Plank, founder of Under Armour, transitions from the Executive Chair role, while Linnartz will remain to advise until April 30th. Shares -4.5% in pre-market trade
- Fisker Inc (FSR) Is considering a bankruptcy filing, according to WSJ sources. Shares -36% in pre-market trade
GEOPOLITICS
MIDDLE EAST
- US Secretary of State Blinken held a video call with officials from Cyprus, Britain, UAE, Qatar, EU and the UN to discuss getting a new maritime corridor for delivering humanitarian aid into Gaza up and running, according to Reuters.
- US is expected to impose new sanctions on two illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank that were used as a base for attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians, according to three US officials cited by Axios.
- US CENTCOM said Iranian-backed Houthis fired one anti-ship ballistic missile in the Gulf of Aden although the missile did not impact any vessels and there was no damage reported, while its forces successfully engaged and destroyed four unmanned aerial systems and one surface-to-air missile in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
OTHER
- Taiwan and China authorities both dispatched teams to join a rescue mission after a Chinese fishing boat capsized near Taiwan-controlled Kinmen Islands on Thursday morning, according to Taiwanese press.
- Philippines President Marcos and US Secretary of State Blinken to meet on March 19th to discuss cooperation and security matters, while Marcos vowed to defend maritime rights in the face of a ‘more active attempt by China to annex some territories’.
- North Korean leader Kim guided a military demonstration involving a tank unit on Wednesday, according to KCNA.
CRYPTO
- Bitcoin takes a breather after soaring to highs yesterday, and currently holds just shy of USD 73.5k.
APAC TRADE
- APAC stocks were mixed after the indecisive performance stateside amid light catalysts and tech weakness, with participants lacking conviction ahead of next week’s central bank bonanza.
- ASX 200 was subdued as losses in financials and tech overshadowed the gains in the commodity-related sectors.
- Nikkei 225 traded indecisively after a slew of BoJ-related source reports suggesting a policy shift next week.
- Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were somewhat varied with the Hong Kong benchmark pressured amid tech-related headwinds after the US House approved the bill which threatens to ban TikTok, while the mainland was indecisive with downside initially cushioned after China issued plans to promote trading in consumer goods and equipment upgrades.
NOTABLE ASIA-PAC HEADLINES
- BoJ will discuss whether to end its negative interest rate policy as pay hikes by major companies bring the central bank’s 2% price stability target within reach. Furthermore, with more BoJ policymakers embracing the idea, the decision is seen coming down to the results of Japan’s annual wage negotiations, to be published by top labour confederation Rengo on Friday, according to Nikkei.
- Japanese Federation of Textile, Chemical, Commerce, Food and General Services Workers’ Unions which is the largest industrial union and known as UA Zensen stated that the average pay increase offered by 231 firms reached the biggest on record since 2013 compared with the same period last year.
- Taiwan Central Bank Governor said they are concerned potential electricity price hikes will result in a chain reaction effect on inflation expectations and they will be very prudent about discussions on interest rates this time, while he added that they will not likely cut interest rates before June, according to Reuters.
- Foxconn (2317 TT) sees 2024 revenue to increase significantly Y/Y; sees Q1 revenue to slightly decline Y/Y, sees Q1 revenue for smart consumer electronics to slightly decline Y/Y. Q4 net profit TWD 53.14bln (exp. 43.5bln; prev. 43.1bln Q/Q). Sees Q1 revenue for cloud and networking products to be flat Y/Y. Sees Q1 revenue for computing products to be flat Y/Y. Says major growth momentum this year will be AI servers, expects the servers business to grow strongly this year; sees very strong demand in AI from clients. AI server growth in 2023-25 could be stronger than the market average, potentially above 30% or higher annually. Semiconductor revenue will surpass TWD 100bln this year.
- China’s Commerce Ministry on the review into Australian wine tariffs says the final ruling will be made in accordance with the investigation procedures.
- Chinese State Planner has issued a draft rules to support high-quality firms to take on medium and long-term foreign debt.
DATA RECAP
- Indian WPI Inflation YY (Feb) 0.2% vs. Exp. 0.25% (Prev. 0.27%); WPI Food Articles YY (Feb) 6.95% (Prev. 6.85%); WPI Mfg Inflation (Feb) -1.27% (Prev. -1.13%); WPI Fuel YY (Feb) -1.59% (Prev. -0.51%); WPI Food Index (Feb) 4.09% (Prev. 3.79%)
2C ASIA AFFAIRS
THURSDAY MORNING/WEDNESDAY NIGHT
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.60 PTS OR 0.18% //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 120.45 PTS OR 0.71% / Nikkei CLOSED UP 1121.41 PTS OR 0.29%//Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.19% /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed UP 7.1894 //OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN CLOSED UP TO 7.1943 /Oil UP TO 80.37 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT UP AT 84,55/ Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL GREEN// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN STRONGER
2 d./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA/
NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA
END
2e) JAPAN
JAPAN
3 CHINA
CHINA/
END
4.EUROPEAN AFFAIRS//UK /SCANDINAVIAN AFFAIRS
FRANCE
This is what is going on in France right now:
“She Thought She Was Going To Die” – French Stars And Wealthy Terrorized In Wave Of Violent Home-jackings
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 06:30 AM
By John Cody of RemixNews
Celebrities are being targeted across France in an unprecedented wave of “home-jackings,” which are burglaries accompanied by violence and kidnapping. The cases often involve “youths” recruited by experienced ringleaders, such as Kamel Z., who keep their distance from their criminal underlings to insulate themselves from any prosecution.
The country has a history of these violent home invasions, but recent months have seen an explosion of such cases, including well-known French figures, such as Vitaa, Bruno Guillon, Jean-François Piège, Anne-Sophie Lapix, and Nikos Aliagas.
2023 marks a new milestone
In a special television report by BFMTV, the French news outlet reviewed the most recent cases. On July 21, 2023, a gang broke into the Paris home of PSG’s Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and his partner, with the perpetrators tying up and stripping both victims. Then, on Sept. 27, the same type of home invasion, with the victims also being stripped, occurred against Bruno Guillon in the Paris region. Guillon, a host on French TV, was threatened with a handgun while his wife was tied up, gagged, and threatened with a hammer. Their 14-year-old son was also tied up inside his room and clamped in place.
On Dec. 18, the home of Alexandre Letelier, who serves as the backup goalkeeper for PSG, was invaded. Both he and his partner were threatened with death in front of their two children, aged two and six. Just two days later, on Dec. 20, the singer Vitaa was kidnapped, along with her husband and three children, after being targeted inside their home in Rueil-Malmaison.
Just a few weeks later, on Feb. 6, 2024, a team broke into Aya Nakumra’s home in Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris. They beat him to the point of hospitalization and robbed his residence.
Other celebrities, such as Nikos Alliagas, a Greek-French entertainer and journalist, as well as journalist Anne-Sophie Lapix, have also been targeted by burglary teams, but those attempts were foiled.
As BMFTV reports, many of these celebrities are targeted due to their presence on social media, where they show off their luxury watches, handbags, and other items.
“They are known for having money and property,” said Laurent Nuñez, the Paris police chief. “You just have to follow certain Facebook or Instagram profiles. We find a lot of information, both about the property held by future victims, and then obviously on their addresses and lifestyle.”
Once the information has been collected, the criminals can take action. In most cases, they “pose as a fake deliveryman, from La Poste or Amazon (…) with a parcel in hand,” explains Djassim Belkourchia, a delegate of the Alliance Police Nationale union.
“Committing a home-jacking in the presence of the occupants often allows them to ask for information on the whereabouts of the goods that are sought, jewelry, luxury watches or computer equipment,” estimates Laurent Nuñez.
France powerless to stop the crimes
Although these crimes have picked up steam in recent months, they have long plagued France. In July 2021, Guillaume Pley, a television presenter, learned that his wife and son, along with their nanny, had been victims of a violent house-jacking while he was flying to the Cannes Film Festival.
In that case, three men barged into the house when the mother, Agathe, had opened the door expecting the nanny.
They pointed a gun at her son’s head, and told Agathe, “If you make any noise, you know what will happen.”
“It’s difficult for a mother, it’s a scene that she won’t forget,” he said about the incident.
The burglars were looking for a luxury watch they had seen the French host wearing on social media, but he had the watch on him during his flight.
“She thought she was going to die because they were very hard on her when they couldn’t find the safe. It made them a little crazy,” he said.
The burglars fled with a counterfeit version of the watch worth a few hundred euros.
Most of the criminals are minors
Following the home invasion of Guillon, two minors and two others who were barely adults were arrested.
“What characterizes the profile of these young perpetrators is that they are essentially all minors. They are perfectly known to the police and justice for acts of violence (…) sometimes even violence with drug trafficking weapons, and they have already been condemned by the judicial authorities,” said Philippe Franchet, the commissioner of the Versailles banditry repression police unit.
However, despite participating in these high-profile crimes, many of these youths have little experience with home-jackings. In most cases, they are recruited by professionals, such as the 27-year-old Kamel Z., who is well known to police and has seven convictions.
He is accused of recruiting young men across Paris, and in many cases, he pays them just a few thousand euros. These underlings do not know each other and often know very little about their targets.
“They already have some experience in the world of banditry and police techniques. They think they will protect themselves from investigations and criminal liability by using young people who are a little less experienced,” explains Philippe Franchet.
Kamel Z. has been indicted for home-jacking at Bruno Guillon’s house, but investigators are also exploring his role in other violent house-jackings.
The BFMTV report notes that these home-jackings are not just targeting celebrities, but also families with no public-facing role. The Merlin family, for instance, was targeted in Calais in April 2023. The mother, Aurelie, was confronted while sleeping on the sofa by a man wearing a white mask and a black hood.
“He started hitting me in the face. I was so paralyzed that I didn’t even feel the blows. I was not in pain, but I could feel the blood starting to flow down my cheek. He hit me again, he asked me for money and he ran away,” says the mother.
She described it as a traumatic event that has left her checking her windows every night out of fear someone could slip into the house.
One psychologist described these home-jackings as one of the most traumatic crimes anyone can experience.
“It’s someone who enters into their private space… The victim is marked in her mind, she knows that this is where the trauma took place and for her, to go back to rebuild herself, she needs to turn the page and therefore change homes very often,” said Marjorie Sueur, a psychologist.
In many cases, the victims are advised to change their homes and start over someplace else.
Continue reading at rmxnews.com
end
5. RUSSIA AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS.
ISRAEL HAMAS/USA
White House walks back Biden’s red line re Israel statement. He just figured out that he needs the Jewish vote
(Dave De Camp)
White House Walks Back Biden’s ‘Red Line’ For Israel Statement
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 05:00 AM
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Tuesday refuted a report from POLITICO that said President Biden was considering conditioning military aid to Israel if it invades Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip city that’s packed with 1.5 million Palestinians.
“We’re not going to engage in hypotheticals about what comes down the line and the reports that purport to describe the president’s thinking are uninformed speculation,” Sullivan said.
A full-scale attack on Rafah would incur a huge number of civilian casualties as most Palestinians in the city, which has a pre-war population of 275,000, are sheltering in tents on the streets.
The assault would also disrupt the small flow of aid going into Gaza, as the only border crossing into Egypt is located in the city, and Palestinians are already starving to death in Gaza due to the Israeli siege.
Sullivan also denied the idea that President Biden set a red line for Israel. In an interview over the weekend, Biden suggested an assault on Rafah was a red line but quickly walked back the comment.
“The president didn’t make any declarations or pronouncements or announcements,” Sullivan said. However, Biden days ago said when asked about Israel’s impending ground operation against Rafah…
Also on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again vowed to invade Rafah. “We will finish the job in Rafah while enabling the civilian population to get out of harm’s way,” he said in comments to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group in the US.
The State Department said on Monday that Israel hasn’t presented a plan to protect civilians if it invades Rafah. “The Government of Israel has said that they will implement a humanitarian assistance plan,” said State Department spokesman Matt Miller. “We haven’t seen such a plan yet.”
In the below exchange yesterday, press pool journalists called out Sullivan over what were clearly Biden’s own words:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/white-house-walks-back-bidens-red-line-israel-statement
So far, the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza has killed over 31,000 people, mostly women and children. The US has supported the massacre by approving over 100 arms deals for Israel since October 7.
END
ISRAEL/HAMAS/AID
A powerful leader of the Doghmush clan in central gaza was executed for working with Israel providing aid to Gaza citizens.
(Times of Israel)
Arab media reports: Hamas ‘executed’ local clan member in Gaza City
Today, 1:26 pm
Hamas has killed the leader of the powerful Doghmush clan in Gaza City, for allegedly stealing humanitarian aid and being in contact with Israel, according to unconfirmed Arab media reports.
The reports said that the clan leader, who was not named, was “executed” in the family compound along with two others.
Earlier this week, a Hamas-linked website warned Palestinian individuals or groups against cooperating with Israel to provide security for aid convoys amid the spiraling humanitarian crisis as war rages in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s October 7 attack.
END
ISRAEL HAMAS/GAZA/
Gazans loot aid trucks that enter Gaza through the new Israeli northern crossing. It is now impossible to provide aid to Gazans because Hamas raids the trucks
(Jerusalem Post)
Gazans loot aid trucks that entered Gaza through new Israeli crossing – report
MARCH 13, 2024 22:12
The six aid trucks that entered the Gaza Strip through a new crossing on Tuesday were looted by local Gazans, KAN News reported on Wednesday night.
The truck entered Gaza as part of a pilot to test new ways to deliver aid without Hamas taking control of it, COGAT said.
END
ISRAEL/HAMAS/
IDF kills Hamas key unit commander, Abu Hasna, in a strike on Rafah
(Jerusalem Post)
IDF kills Hamas’s Operations Unit commander in Rafah airstrike
Hamas units’ actions were also coordinated by Hasna, and communicated with field operatives belonging to the terrorist organization.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFMARCH 13, 2024 20:51Updated:
MARCH 13, 2024 21:3
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-791815
An IDF aircraft strike, in collaboration with the Shin Bet intelligence, killed Muhammad Abu Hasna, a commander in Hamas’ Operations Unit in Rafah on Wednesday.
Hasna was an operative in Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, and was involved in stealing humanitarian aid entering Gaza that was meant for Palestinian civilians and instead distributed it to other Hamas terrorists.
Hamas units’ actions were also coordinated by Hasna, and communicated with field operatives belonging to the terrorist organization.
Other actions Hasna has taken
The commander of the terror organization also ran an operations room that provided information on IDF positions that would be used in Hamas attacks.
Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant conducted an assessment of the situation deep in the Gaza Strip and said that “even those who think we are delaying will soon see that we will reach everywhere. Everyone who was involved in the events of October 7 will be brought to justice, either we will eliminate him, or we will put them on trial in Israel. There is no safe place, not here, not outside of Gaza, and not throughout the Middle East, we will put them all in their place.
“The humanitarian issue that will soon be on the agenda with the expected landing of vessels is a central issue that will allow supplies to civilians and not to Hamas. Every act weakens Hamas strengthens our hold, and improves our ability to continue the fighting,” he continued.
end
ISRAEL/HAMAS/RAFAH
The plan: civilians will be evacuated to humanitarian islands before the ground operation begins
(Times of Israel)
IDF: Civilians in Rafah will be evacuated to ‘humanitarian islands’ before ground op
Army says it killed Hamas commander in strike on UNRWA warehouse in Gaza’s southernmost city, where Gallant hints troops could soon enter: ‘We will reach everyone’
By EMANUEL FABIAN FOLLOW
and TOI STAFFToday, 12:47 am
Palestinians line up for a meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (AP/Fatima Shbair)
The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday it plans to direct a significant portion of the 1.4 million displaced Gazans in Rafah toward “humanitarian islands” in the center of the territory, ahead of a planned ground operation in the southernmost Gazan city.
The fate of civilians in Rafah has been a major area of concern for Israel’s allies. Humanitarian groups have warned that an offensive in the southern city on the border with Egypt, believed to be the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the Strip, would be a catastrophe. Israel has said it is needed if the country is to achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said moving those in Rafah to the designated areas, which he stressed will be carried out in coordination with international actors, was a key part of the military’s preparations for its anticipated offensive on Rafah, where Hamas maintains four battalions that Israel says it wants to destroy.
Hagari said those “islands” will provide temporary housing, food, water, and other necessities to civilians fleeing war. He did not say when Rafah’s evacuation will occur, nor when the offensive on the city will begin, explaining that Israel wants the timing to be right operationally and to be coordinated with neighboring Egypt, which has said it does not want an influx of displaced Palestinians crossing its border.
The remarks by the military’s top spokesman came hours after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant hinted Israel could soon launch the ground offensive in Rafah.
“Extraordinary work is being done here above and below ground, the forces reach everywhere and the conclusion is that there is no safe place in Gaza for terrorists,” Gallant said while visiting Gaza City, according to comments provided by his office.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (in black) visits the western edge of Gaza City in the Strip on March 13, 2024. (Elad Malka/Defense Ministry)
“Even those who think that we are delaying will soon see that we will reach everyone,” he added. “We will bring to justice anyone who was involved in October 7 — either we will eliminate them or bring them to trial in Israel. There is no safe place, not here, not outside of Gaza, not anywhere across the Middle East — we will bring everyone to their place.”
Gallant also addressed the humanitarian situation in the Strip and the new maritime corridor for aid, saying that it will allow assistance to reach “citizens and not Hamas,” and will weaken the terror group and “strengthen our hold and improve our ability to continue fighting.”
UNRWA warehouse strike
As Israel faces increased pressure to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza, the military on Wednesday carried out a strike on an UNRWA warehouse in Rafah, which it said killed a top Hamas commander.
Hamas claimed that five people were killed in the strike, and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said at least one of its staff members was killed.
The IDF the Hamas operative as Muhammad Abu Hasna, a commander in the terror group’s operations unit. According to a joint IDF and Shin Bet statement, he was involved in “integrating extensive activity of the various Hamas units, was in contact with the field operatives of Hamas and directed them.”
The statement said Abu Hasna was also tasked with a Hamas intelligence war room that collected information on IDF movements in the Strip.
מוקדם יותר היום כלי טיס חיסל באופן ממוקד את מחמד אבו חסנה, מחבל חמאס במחלקת המבצעים של מרחב רפיח. התקיפה בוצעה בעקבות מידע מודיעיני מדויק של אמ״ן ושב״כ. חסנה תכלל פעילות נרחבת של יחידות חמאס השונות, היה בקשר עם פעילי השטח של חמאס והפעיל אותם>>
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The IDF and Shin Bet also accused Hasna of involvement in seizing humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip and distributing it to Hamas operatives, adding that his elimination “significantly harms the functioning of various Hamas units in Rafah.”
Israel has accused at least a dozen UNRWA staffers of being active Hamas members involved in the October 7 massacre, and many others of being tied to the terror group, leading many countries to freeze aid to the UN agency.
IDF presses on in Khan Younis, central Gaza
Before turning to Rafah, the IDF has continued to carry out operations in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, where the military said the 98th Division has killed more than 100 Hamas operatives in the Hamad Town residential complex over the past week and a half.
The troops have been raiding the multi-story buildings in the Qatari-funded neighborhood, where the IDF says there is Hamas infrastructure.
Around 100 airstrikes were carried out during the operation in Hamad, according to the IDF.
The division’s Maglan and Egoz commando units, along with the Givati recon unit, captured several operatives in Hamad, including a commander in Hamas’s elite Nukhba force, the IDF said.
The IDF said captured operatives have provided the IDF intelligence on the locations of tunnels, booby traps, gunmen and other infrastructure.
In one case, the IDF says a captured Hamas fighter provided information on a building where 15 gunmen were holed up. The site was then struck and the operatives were killed, the IDF said.
Along with Hamad Town, troops also operated in the Khan Younis suburbs of al-Qarara and Abasan.
Meanwhile, the IDF said it eliminated a Hamas terrorist responsible for “many” rocket attacks on Israel, including on October 7. He was killed in an airstrike.
The Israeli Air Force also carried out “widespread” wave of strikes against Hamas sites in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, targeting tunnels, missile launching positions, and staging grounds, the IDF says.
A Palestinian man checks a pool of blood at an UNRWA warehouse in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, following an Israeli airstrike on March 13, 2024. (MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
Also in central Gaza, the IDF said the Nahal Brigade was continuing to battle Hamas operatives in the area. In one incident, Nahal troops spotted an operative entering a building known to belong to a Hamas member and called in an airstrike, the IDF said.
Separately, the military said two suspects in diving gear were spotted by the IDF entering the sea in northern Gaza earlier Wednesday.
Navy vessels tracked the pair and fired warning shots, after which they fled back to the coast, the IDF said
end
ISRAEL/.LEBANON/HEZBOLLAH /
IAF jets targeted Hezbollah terror infrastructure in the Konin region in Lebanon, the military announced on Thursday. Following siren alerts in the Kfar Blum area, IDF troops intercepted a suspicious aerial target that crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon, the military added.IAF jets strike Hezbollah targets in Lebanon
end
WESTBANK/GAZA/ISRAEL
another terror attack in the south in Beit Kama near Beersheva, close to the West Bank
(Jerusalem Post)
Terror in Israel: One critically wounded in Beit Kama stabbing attack
The knife-wielding terrorist was thwarted, the police added. Magen David Adom (MDA) said at least one person was critically wounded.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFMARCH 14, 2024 14:16Updated: MARCH 14, 2024 15:16
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-791954
A terrorist carried out a stabbing attack on Thursday in the Beit Kama junction in Israel’s South, Israel Police said.
The knife-wielding terrorist was killed on the scene, police added. Magen David Adom (MDA) said at least one person was critically wounded.
The victim, a man in his 50s, was being treated by paramedics who were performing CPR treatment on him while he was being rushed to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, MDA further said.
“We arrived at the scene with large forces. We saw a lot of commotion, and near one of the shops, a 50-year-old man was lying unconscious and suffering from penetrating wounds to his body.
“We immediately put him in an MDA intensive care vehicle and evacuated him to the hospital in critical condition while CPR was being performed,” the MDA statement read.
This is a developing story.
END
HOUTHIS/USA
END
/RUSSIA/FINLAND
I guess this is what we should expect with Finland in NATO. Putin deploying troops along Finland border.
(zerohedge)
Putin Deploys Troops Along Finland Border In Response To NATO Accession
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 02:45 AM
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in fresh remarks that Finland and Sweden’s entry into NATO are “a meaningless step” but that in response Moscow will still deploy troops and “systems of destruction” to the Finnish border after Finland joined the alliance.
“Frankly speaking, I don’t understand why they need this. This is an absolutely meaningless step from the point of view of ensuring their own national interests,” Putin said.
“We generally had ideal relations with Finland, simply ideal. We did not have a single claim against each other, especially territorial ones,” Putin continued, before saying that Finland’s NATO accession was really born out of a desire to “join the Western club”.
“We didn’t even have troops; we removed all the troops from there, from the Russian-Finnish border,” he said. “However, it is up to them to decide. That’s what they decided. But we didn’t have troops there, now we will.”
Finland became the 31st member of the alliance last April, but it was on Monday that Sweden formally became the 32nd at a flag raising ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said expressly at the ceremony that his country abandoned historic neutrality as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The Russian, brutal, full-scale invasion against Ukraine united Sweden behind the conclusion that a full-fledged NATO membership is the only reasonable choice,” Kristersson said.
On Wednesday soaring tensions between Russia and Nordic countries were on display during new remarks of Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo.
He claimed in a speech before European Parliament that Moscow is preparing for a “long conflict with the West” and “represents a permanent and essential military threat to Europe.”
“If we, as a united Europe, fail to respond sufficiently to this challenge, the coming years will be filled with danger and the looming threat of attack,” he said, before adding: “Russia is not invincible.”
Denmark too is among those calling for increased defense spending and greater coordination on European defense. This has been a persistent talking point over the last months as Ukraine forces are not fairing well on the battlefield, and as Washington funds have dried up. European leaders are urgently trying to fill the gap of stalled US funds to Kiev.
end
end
6.Global Issues//COVID ISSUES
COVID ISSUES/VACCINE ISSUES//DRUG ISSUES
GLOBAL ISSUES
MARK CRISPIN MILLER
n memory of those who “died suddenly” in the United States and worldwide, March 5-March 11, 2024
Athletes: US (2), CA, Brazil, Uruguay, Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Spain, Italy (2), S. Africa, Russia, Japan; musicians: US (3), CA, UK (3), Germany, Croatia, Italy, Morocco, Cameroon; & more
| MARK CRISPIN MILLERMAR 14 |
United States:
United States:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-5fc
News from Underground by Mark Crispin Miller is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
United States:
Canada:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-8ea
Mexico:
Mexico, Jamaica, Brazil and Argentina:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-e7e
United Kingdom and Ireland:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-94f
Spain:
France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Finland, Croatia and Spain:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-003
Italy:
Italy:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-d08
Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, S. Africa, Kuwait, Turkey, Russia, India, Sri Lanka, Japan, Australia and New Zealand:
https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-d90
Australia:
DR PAUL ALEXANDER
Robert Kennedy Jr. has Biden & Trump by the nuts…why? one man has 2 POTUS in trouble at the same time because on that stage he can make 45 say that the vaccine is safe & effective when all of us
sitting watching will look on, even if (and I do) support 45 or even Biden, we will say ‘come on, its one thing for me to pretend but I can’t sit here listening to that shit, you are in la la land’
| DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAR 13 |
I for one will be listening to how Biden and 45 reacts to Kennedy Jr. This will be interesting. This could hurt both POTUS and you know what, if both can stand up there straight faced and say ‘safe and effective’ and want praise, then Kennedy Jr. has to be the one to school them then. All we want is admission of how fucked the Malone Bourla mRNA vaccine was and what you going to do about it to make Americans ‘whole’ again.
We want the gams, the lies, the shit to end.
end
Harvard fires Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an outspoken critic of COVID-19 lockdown policies, school closures and vaccine mandates; many of these scientists are money whore leeches, vermin
latched onto COVID to make money, fame…I know Martin personally, this man is different, he I will defend, HARVARD made a mistake here; it keeps antisemite GAY but fires Kulldorff?
| DR. PAUL ALEXANDERMAR 13 |
How far Harvard has fallen. You would keep GAY on salary but not him? Bullshit anti-education, academically rotten, politized university, its degree is now worth USED toilet paper.
I attended an enclave with Kulldorff, Jeff Tucker, Jan Jekielek (also a good human being, gentle soul, we were like brothers before EPOCH sold out to Malone, not Jan, EPOCH) and other serious thinkers at Dr. Naomi Wolf’s home in New York, a weekend of serious high-level debate early in the pandemic and I got to see Martin with his kids, deal with him naturally. This is a superb human being, wants and wanted only the best for humanity.
I will do all I can to help him. This is one of the COVID people you stand by. Smart, real patriot, simple, quiet, and sought to help mitigate harm from the madness of COVID. We are almost on same page on all…of course we do not agree on all but he I will have in a foxhole with me.
I hang my head in shame and disgust of Harvard and will do all I can to educate people as to why their sons and daughters must not step foot in that leftist bastion of academic rot today.
SLAY NEWS
| The latest reports from Slay News |
| Canada to Sentence Citizens to ‘Life Imprisonment’ for ‘Hate’The Canadian government is rapidly advancing plans to usher in full-blown tyranny and will soon begin sentencing citizens to life in prison if they are found guilty of committing the “crime” of so-called “hate”READ MORE |
| CDC Forced to Release Report on Study Linking Heart Failure to Covid Shots – Every Single Page Is RedactedDemocrat President Joe Biden’s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been forced to release a 148-page report on a study that sought to investigate any potential links between soaring rates of heart failure and Covid mRNA shots.READ MORE |
| West Point Removes ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from Mission Statement ValuesThe United States Military Academy in West Point, New York has caused outrage with a new super-woke update of its mission statement.READ MORE |
| Biden’s DOJ Imposed Gag Order on Immigration Judges to Shut Down Criticism of Massive Backlog of CasesDemocrat President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a gag order to prevent immigration judges from voicing their criticisms about the massive backlog of illegal border crosser cases they are dealing with.READ MORE |
| Trump Celebrates after Democrats’ False Jan 6 Narrative Falls ApartPresident Donald Trump is taking a victory lap after a bombshell new congressional report has exposed the Democrats’ false narrative regarding Jan. 6.READ MORE |
| Top Granite State Democrat Issues Warning to Biden, DNC: ‘I Haven’t Forgotten How New Hampshire Was Treated’Several top New Hampshire Democrats appear to be harboring resentment against President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after the Granite State was snubbed in this year’s presidential primary cycle.READ MORE |
| Taco Bell Bans Cash Payments, Closes All Dining Rooms in California City Due to CrimeFast food chain Taco Bell has announced it has taken drastic measures to tackle soaring crime in Oakland, California.READ MORE |
| RNC Fires over 60 Staffers amid Trump Takeover ReshuffleThe Republican National Committee (RNC) is undergoing a major reshuffle of staff amid President Donald Trump’s takeover of the organization.READ MORE |
| Epstein Accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell Asks Court to Overturn Trafficking Conviction, Cites ‘Non-Prosecution Agreement’Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell has requested that the courts overturn her conviction by citing a prior “non-prosecution agreement” that she says she secured from prosecutors.READ MORE |
| AT&T Hit with Congressional Subpoena for Hunter Biden’s Phone RecordsThe House Oversight Committee has issued a congressional subpoena to telecommunications company AT&T to demand the phone records of Democrat President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.READ MORE |
| GOP Rep Ken Buck Quits Congress Suddenly, Leaves Next WeekRepublican Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) has just made a shock announcement that he is retiring from Congress suddenly.READ MORE |
| Fani Willis Colluded with Anti-Trump ‘Jan 6’ Committee to Fabricate Narrative, Destroy EvidenceA bombshell new congressional report has been published that shows Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secretly colluded with the Democrats’ “Jan. 6” Committee to fabricate a narrative against President Donald Trump and destroy exonerating evidence before Republicans could review it.READ MORE |
| EVOL NEWS: |
NEWS ADDICT
| LATEST REPORTS FOR NEWS JUNKIES |
| Doctor Who Shamed Unvaxxed Online Dies Suddenly at 43A pro-vaccine doctor, who used social media to shame people who were vaccinated with Covid mRNA shots, has died suddenly at just 43 years old.READ THE FULL REPORT |
| Sanctuary City Migrant Camps Trigger ‘Major Measles Outbreak’ across the CountryAuthorities across the country have issued an alert over a “major measles outbreak” which has been triggered by multiple migrant camps in so-called “sanctuary cities” across the country.READ THE FULL REPORT |
| Adam Schiff SNAPS During Congressional MeetingThe House Judiciary Committee is currently receiving testimony from Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.READ THE FULL REPORT |
| NFL Star Tim Tebow Makes HUGE AnnouncementTim Tebow, the former National Football League (NFL) quarterback, has recently launched a new initiative aimed at combating what he describes as “one of the most heinous atrocities in existence.”READ THE FULL REPORT |
| Leaked Transcript Catches Biden In BIG LieThe interview transcript between Special Counsel Robert Hur and President Joe Biden has substantiated a crucial aspect of the report.READ THE FULL REPORT |
end
MICHAEL EVERY/PHIL MAREY/OR OTHER EXECS //RABOBANK
END
7//OIL ISSUES//NATURAL GAS ISSUES//ELECTRICAL GRID ISSUES// RENEWABLE ENERGY ISSUES//USA AND GLOBE//GLOBAL SHIPPING
END
8. EMERGING MARKETS//AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND ISSUES//
END
YOUR EARLY CURRENCY/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN CLOSING MARKETS AND EUROPEAN BOURSE OPENING AND CLOSING/ INTEREST RATE SETTINGS THURSDAY MORNING 7;30AM//OPENING AND CLOSING
EURO VS USA DOLLAR: 1.0943 DOWN .0010
USA/ YEN 147.67 UP 0.082 NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT 1.00% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…//YEN STILL FALLS//
GBP/USA 1.2813 UP .0012
USA/CAN DOLLAR: 1.3465 DOWN .0006 (CDN DOLLAR UP 6 BASIS PTS)
Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 5.60 PTS OR 0.13%
Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 120.45 POINTS OR 0.71%
AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN .19% // EUROPEAN BOURSE: ALL GREEN
Trading from Europe and ASIA
I) EUROPEAN BOURSES: ALL GREEN
2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SENG CLOSED DOWN 120.45 PTS OR 0.71%
/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.60 PTS OR 0.13%
AUSTRALIA BOURSE CLOSED DOWN .19%
(Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED UP 111.41 PTS OR 0.29%
INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE GREEN
Gold very early morning trading: 2169.60
silver:$25.05
USA dollar index early THURSDAY morning: 102.45 UP 5 BASIS POINTS FROM WEDNESDAY’s CLOSE.
THURSDAY MORNING NUMBERS ENDS
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And now your closing THURSDAY NUMBERS 1: 30 AM
Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 3.042% UP 7 in basis point(s) yield
JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +0.772% UP 1 AND 7//100 BASIS POINTS /JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/
SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.205 UP 6 in basis points yield
ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD 3.648 UP 6 points in basis points yield ./ THE ECB IS QE’ ING ITALIAN BONDS (BUYING ITALIAN BONDS/SELLING GERMAN BUNDS)
GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 2.4215 UP 6 BASIS PTS
END
IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES FOR THURSDAY
Closing currency crosses for day /USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/1:00 PM
Euro/USA 1.0883 DOWN 0.0069 or 69 basis points
USA/Japan: 148.23 UP 0.650 OR YEN IS DOWN 65 BASIS PTS
Great Britain/USA 1.2735 DOWN .0066 OR 66 BASIS POINTS //
Canadian dollar DOWN .0064 OR 64 BASIS pts to 1.3529
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The USA/Yuan, CNY: closed ON SHORE CLOSED DOWN AT 7.1940
THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE: (YUAN CLOSED (UP)…. (7.2029)
TURKISH LIRA: 32.12 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WATCH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.//ON DEATH WATCH
the 10 yr Japanese bond yield at +0.772…
Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 10 in basis points from WEDNESDAY at 4.290% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic
USA 30 yr bond yield 4.432 UP 8 in basis points /12.00 PM
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.694 UP 7 BASIS PTS.
GOLD AT 11;30 AM 2158.40
SILVER AT 11;30: 24.88
Your 12:00 AM bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates: THURSDAY CLOSING TIME 12:00 PM//
London: CLOSED DOWN 38.31 PTS OR 0.51%
German Dax : CLOSED DOWN 31.36 PTS OR 0.17%
Paris CAC CLOSED UP 22.39 PTS OR 0.27%
Spain IBEX CLOSED DOWN 79.80 PTS OR 0.78%
Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 127.65 PTS OR 0.38%
WTI Oil price 81.04 12: EST/
Brent Oil: 85.07 12:00 EST
USA /RUSSIAN ROUBLE /// AT: 91.71; ROUBLE DOWN 0 AND 21/100
GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD; +2.4235 UP 7 BASIS PTS
UK 10 YR YIELD: 4.114 UP 7 BASIS POINTS
CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM
Euro vs USA: 1.0893 DOWN .0070 OR 70 BASIS POINTS
British Pound: 1.2747 DOWN .0054 or 54 basis pts
BRITISH 10 YR GILT BOND YIELD: 4.1360 UP 8 BASIS PTS//
JAPAN 10 YR YIELD: 0.770%
USA dollar vs Japanese Yen: 148.27 UP 0.677//YEN DOWN 68 BASIS PTS//
USA dollar vs Canadian dollar: 1.3539 UP .0074 CDN dollar DOWN 74 basis pts)
West Texas intermediate oil: 81.19
Brent OIL: 85.23
USA 10 yr bond yield UP 11 BASIS pts to 4.296%
USA 30 yr bond yield UP 9 BASIS PTS to 4.440%
USA 2 YR BOND: UP 7 PTS AT 4.697%
USA dollar index: 103.02 UP 62 BASIS POINTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 32.13 (GETTING QUITE CLOSE TO BLOWING UP/
USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIA//// ROUBLE: 92.72 DOWN 0 AND 22/100 roubles
GOLD 2162.20 3:30 PM
SILVER: 24.81 3:30 PM
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: DOWN 136.61 PTS OR 0.35%
NASDAQ DOWN 53.66 PTS OR 0.30%
VOLATILITY INDEX: 14.76 UP 1.01 PTS OR 7.35%
GLD: $200.35 DOWN 0.34 OR 1.09%
SLV/ $22,72 DOWN 0,065 OR 0.29%
end
USA AFFAIRS
TODAY’S TRADING IN GRAPH FORM
‘Bad News’ Is Bad News For Stocks, Bonds, Crypto, & Gold
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 04:00 PM
A lof of macro bad news… Softer-than-expected Retail Sales, hotter-than-expected Producer Prices, Jobless Claims up (from dramatically revised-down levels)… sending rate-cut expectations lower…
Source: Bloomberg
…and tomorrow’s big OpEx gamma unclenching left the ‘bad news is good news’ narrative in the dust, wiping the smiles off many faces…
Bond yields were higher – notably higher – with the long-end significantly underperforming on the day (30Y +10bps, 2Y +5bps)…
Source: Bloomberg
That left 10Y yields back up near their highs of the year…
Source: Bloomberg
And for the second day in a row – higher yields mattered for long-duration stocks…
Source: Bloomberg
Small Caps were monkeyhammered lower today (as were all the majors). Today was the biggest RTY underperformance relative to NQ in a month. A late-day panic-melt-up put some lipstick on an otherwise pg of a day…
Banks were buggered, erasing all the post-NYCB bailout gains…
Another down-day for NVDA!! That’s 4 straight days without a new record high…
Meme stocks and unprofitable tech were dumped…
Source: Bloomberg
‘Most Shorted’ stocks tumbled once again (with no squeeze attempt at all)…
Source: Bloomberg
VIX topped 15 again today…
Source: Bloomberg
Stocks remain in a world of their own compared to Fed expectations…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar soared today – its best day in a month – retracing all the pre-payrolls slide…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin was clubbed like a bay seal back below $70,000 (with no bounce yet)..
Source: Bloomberg
After another big ETF inflow day yesterday…
Source: Bloomberg
Once again, it was the perps that spanked crypto lower…
Ethereum was also hit hard today, back at two-week lows, below $3800 as the Dencun upgrade completed successfully…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar’s gains were gold’s losses…
Source: Bloomberg
Oil prices extended their gains to the highest since Nov 6th (WTI back above $81)…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, as you’re re-mortgaging the house to pile into more levered bets on NVDA, one thing to bear in mind is that more companies have defaulted around the world since January than in any start to the year since the financial crisis, according to rating agency S&P Global.
This year’s tally of corporate defaults stands at 29, the highest year-to-date count since the 36 recorded during the same period in 2009, according to S&P. There have been 17 defaults in the US, with eight in Europe. The average number of defaults for the same period in the years 2010-23 was slightly more than 16, according to the S&P data.
END
MORNING TRADING/
AFTERNOON TRADING/
II USA DATA/
PPI is the forerunner of consumer prices. It surged again in February as energy costs re- accelerated
at .6% m/m instead of .3% m/m
Not good!
Producer Prices Surged Again In February As Energy Costs Re-Accelerated
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 08:53 AM
After the hotter-than-expected consumer price data, February Producer Prices were expected to slow their surge from January but they did not… with headline Final Demand PPI rising 0.6% MoM (double the 0.3% rise expected) – the hottest print since June 2022. That lifted the YoY PPI to +1.6%, its highest since September…
Source: Bloomberg
That was the second big beat for PPI in a row with Energy costs leading the MoM charge. 70% of the rise in February Goods PPI can be attributed to the index for energy, which jumped 4.4% (one-third of the February advance in the index for final demand goods can be traced to a 6.8% increase in prices for gasoline.)
Source: Bloomberg
PPI: Final demand goods
- Prices for final demand goods advanced 1.2 percent in February, the largest increase since moving up 1.7% in August 2023. Nearly 70 percent of the broad-based rise in February can be attributed to the index for final demand energy, which jumped 4.4%.
- Prices for final demand goods less foods and energy and for final demand foods also increased, moving up 0.3 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively.
Product detail:
- One-third of the February advance in the index for final demand goods can be traced to a 6.8- percent increase in prices for gasoline. The indexes for diesel fuel, chicken eggs, jet fuel, beef and veal, and tobacco products also rose. Conversely, prices for hay, hayseeds, and oilseeds decreased 8.3 percent. The indexes for iron and steel scrap and for asphalt also fell.
PPI: Final demand services
- Prices for final demand services moved up 0.3 percent in February after rising 0.5 percent in January. Leading the February increase, the index for final demand services less trade, transportation, and warehousing advanced 0.5 percent. Prices for final demand transportation and warehousing services rose 0.9 percent.
- In contrast, margins for final demand trade services declined 0.3 percent. (Trade indexes measure changes in margins received by wholesalers and retailers.)
Product detail:
- A quarter of the February increase in the index for final demand services can be attributed to a 3.8-percent rise in prices for traveler accommodation services.
- The indexes for outpatient care (partial); airline passenger services; loan services (partial); securities brokerage, dealing, and investment advice; and alcohol retailing also moved up.
- Conversely, margins for chemicals and allied products wholesaling fell 6.4 percent.
- The indexes for automobiles and parts retailing and for services related to securities brokerage and dealing (partial) also decreased.
This is not good news for the disinflationistas. And it will stop President Biden’s narrative that ‘prices are coming down’ or refocus his blame-game that ‘Big Corporate’ greed is driving ‘shrinkflation’…?
END
Nominal retail sales tumble for the second straight month. If you deduct for inflation, the retail sales report is awful
(zerohedge)
‘Real’ Retail Sales Tumbled For Second Straight Month In February
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 08:44 AM
Following January’s majorly disappointing decline in US retail sales, BofA’s omniscient analysts forecast another disappointment in February, as we detailed last night…
…and they were right… again (10th month in a row)… as headline retail sales rose 0.6% MoM (vs +0.8% exp) and January’s 0.7% tumble was revised even lower to a 1.1% plunge…
Source: Bloomberg
A mixed bag…
Motor Vehicle & Parts dealers were the biggest contributors to the MoM gains in retail sales while clothing and personal healthcare stores saw sales decline (and internet retailers saw sale decline too – very unusual)…
Source: Bloomberg
Core retail sales also disappointed (+0.3% MoM vs +0.5% exp), which held the YoY levels down near their weakest since COVID lockdowns…
Source: Bloomberg
Gasoline stations sales were the biggest drag on a YoY basis (albeit small) while internet retailers and food services saw the largest YoY gains…
Source: Bloomberg
Adjusted (crudely) for inflation, this was a huge drop in ‘real’ retail sales. REAL retail sales have declined for 12 of the last 16 months – in other words, on a crude basis (Ret Sales – CPI), Americans aren’t buying more shit.
Source: Bloomberg
Soft-landing morphing into a stagflationary crash-landing?
Garbage!
Jobless Claims Data Goes From The Sublime To The Ridiculous!!
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 09:04 AM
As a reminder, in the real world labor market, 2024 has been a shitshow of layoffs…
1. Everybuddy: 100% of workforce
2. Wisense: 100% of workforce
3. CodeSee: 100% of workforce
4. Twig: 100% of workforce
5. Twitch: 35% of workforce
6. Roomba: 31% of workforce
7. Bumble: 30% of workforce
8. Farfetch: 25% of workforce
9. Away: 25% of workforce
10. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
11. LA Times: 20% of workforce
12. Wint Wealth: 20% of workforce
13. Finder: 17% of workforce
14. Spotify: 17% of workforce
15. Buzzfeed: 16% of workforce
16. Levi’s: 15% of workforce
17. Xerox: 15% of workforce
18. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
19. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
20. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
21. Rivian: 10% of workforce
22. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
23. Snap: 10% of workforce
24. eBay: 9% of workforce
25. Sony Interactive: 8% of workforce
26. Expedia: 8% of workforce
27. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
28. Instacart: 7% of workforce
29. Paypal: 7% of workforce
30. Okta: 7% of workforce
31. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
32. Docusign: 6% of workforce
33. Riskified: 6% of workforce
34. EA: 5% of workforce
35. Motional: 5% of workforce
36. Mozilla: 5% of workforce
37. Vacasa: 5% of workforce
38. CISCO: 5% of workforce
39. UPS: 2% of workforce
40. Nike: 2% of workforce
41. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
42. Paramount: 3% of workforce
43. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
44. ThyssenKrupp: 5,000 employees
45. Best Buy: 3,500 employees
46. Barry Callebaut: 2,500 employees
47. Outback Steakhouse: 1,000
48. Northrop Grumman: 1,000 employees
49. Pixar: 1,300 employees
50. Perrigo: 500 employees
But, according to the government-supplied data…
The number of American filing for jobless benefits for the first time last week dropped to 209k (vs 218k exp) with the NSA number tumbling to 200k…
Source: Bloomberg
How is this possible, you may ask… well let us show you the ways… New York State claims that its jobless benefits rolls collapsed last week. New York accounted for 99.75% of the weekly change in initial claims across the entire US as shown below…
Source: Bloomberg
Continuing Claims was a shit show – with a massive 112k person downward revision for last week from 1.906 million to 1.794mm. That is the 5th straight weekly downward revision of continuing claims…
Source: Bloomberg
But thanks to the adjustments, it all looks ‘normal’ and ‘stable’ at around 1.8 million Americans…
Source: Bloomberg
And WARN numbers are rising rapidly…
Source: Bloomberg
As a reminder, if you doubt the accuracy of the Biden admin’s data, here’s what the most recent FOMC Minutes said:
“While the recent trends prior to the meeting had been remarkably positive, Fed officials judged that some of the recent improvement “reflected idiosyncratic movements in a few series.”
Even they aren’t buying it, and neither should you!
TUCKER CARLSON….
Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response
BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 04:20 PM
As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded experimental vaccines were hastily developed for a virus which primarily killed the old and fat (and those with other obvious comorbidities), and an aggressive, global campaign to coerce billions into injecting them ensued.
Then there were the lockdowns – with some countries (New Zealand, for example) building internment camps for those who tested positive for Covid-19, and others such as China welding entire apartment buildings shut to trap people inside.
It was an egregious and unnecessary response to a virus that, while highly virulent, was survivable by the vast majority of the general population.
Oh, and the vaccines, which governments are still pushing, didn’t work as advertised to the point where health officials changed the definition of “vaccine” multiple times.
Tucker Carlson recently sat down with Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist and vocal critic of vaccines. The two had a wide-ranging discussion, which included vaccine safety and efficacy, excess mortality, demographic impacts of the virus, big pharma, and the professional price Kory has paid for speaking out.
Keep reading below, or if you have roughly 50 minutes, watch it in its entirety for free on X:
·
Ep. 81 They’re still claiming the Covid vax is safe and effective. Yet somehow Dr. Pierre Kory treats hundreds of patients who’ve been badly injured by it. Why is no one in the public health establishment paying attention?
57.1KSee the latest COVID-19 information on X
“Do we have any real sense of what the cost, the physical cost to the country and world has been of those vaccines?” Carlson asked, kicking off the interview.
“I do think we have some understanding of the cost. I mean, I think, you know, you’re aware of the work of of Ed Dowd, who’s put together a team and looked, analytically at a lot of the epidemiologic data,” Kory replied. “I mean, time with that vaccination rollout is when all of the numbers started going sideways, the excess mortality started to skyrocket.”
When asked “what kind of death toll are we looking at?”, Kory responded “…in 2023 alone, in the first nine months, we had what’s called an excess mortality of 158,000 Americans,” adding “But this is in 2023. I mean, we’ve had Omicron now for two years, which is a mild variant. Not that many go to the hospital.“
‘Safe and Effective’
Tucker also asked Kory why the people who claimed the vaccine were “safe and effective” aren’t being held criminally liable for abetting the “killing of all these Americans,” to which Kory replied: “It’s my kind of belief, looking back, that [safe and effective] was a predetermined conclusion. There was no data to support that, but it was agreed upon that it would be presented as safe and effective.”
Tucker Carlson Asks the Forbidden Question He wants to know why the people who made the claim “safe and effective” aren’t being held to criminal liability for abetting the “killing of all these Americans.” DR. PIERRE KORY: “It’s my kind of belief, looking back, that [safe and effective] was a predetermined conclusion. There was no data to support that, but it was agreed upon that it would be presented as safe and effective. And for those of us who were a little bit more skeptical, more data driven, we saw that it was based on really no data. And the data started going sideways, south, but the refrain got louder and more pervasive, and then they doubled down. They started to demonize the unvaccinated.” TUCKER CARLSON: “That’s a criminal act that you’re describing. I could ask you so many different questions about why the people who made that claim and abetted the killing of all these Americans aren’t being held to criminal liability for that. But neither of us is a lawyer.”
0:40
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Zerohedge.com/medical/excess-mortality-skyrocketed-tucker-carlson-and-dr-pierre-kory-unpack-criminal-covid
Carlson and Kory then discussed the different segments of the population that experienced vaccine side effects, with Kory noting an “explosion in dying in the youngest and healthiest sectors of society,” adding “And why did the employed fare far worse than those that weren’t? And this particularly white collar, white collar, more than gray collar, more than blue collar.”
Kory also said that Big Pharma is ‘terrified’ of Vitamin D because it “threatens the disease model.” As journalist The Vigilant Fox notes on X, “Vitamin D showed about a 60% effectiveness against the incidence of COVID-19 in randomized control trials,” and “showed about 40-50% effectiveness in reducing the incidence of COVID-19 in observational studies.”
Professional costs
Kory – while risking professional suicide by speaking out, has undoubtedly helped save countless lives by advocating for alternate treatments such as Ivermectin.
Kory shared his own experiences of job loss and censorship, highlighting the challenges of advocating for a more nuanced understanding of vaccine safety in an environment often resistant to dissenting voices.
“I wrote a book called The War on Ivermectin and the the genesis of that book,” he said, adding “Not only is my expertise on Ivermectin and my vast clinical experience, but and I tell the story before, but I got an email, during this journey from a guy named William B Grant, who’s a professor out in California, and he wrote to me this email just one day, my life was going totally sideways because our protocols focused on Ivermectin. I was using a lot in my practice, as were tens of thousands of doctors around the world, to really good benefits. And I was getting attacked, hit jobs in the media, and he wrote me this email on and he said, Dear Dr. Kory, what they’re doing to Ivermectin, they’ve been doing to vitamin D for decades…”
“And it’s got five tactics. And these are the five tactics that all industries employ when science emerges, that’s inconvenient to their interests. And so I’m just going to give you an example. Ivermectin science was extremely inconvenient to the interests of the pharmaceutical industrial complex. I mean, it threatened the vaccine campaign. It threatened vaccine hesitancy, which was public enemy number one. We know that, that everything, all the propaganda censorship was literally going after something called vaccine hesitancy.”
Money makes the world go ’round
Carlson then hit on perhaps the most devious aspect of the relationship between drug companies and the medical establishment, and how special interests completely taint science to the point where public distrust of institutions has spiked in recent years.
“I think all of it starts at the level the medical journals,” said Kory. “Because once you have something established in the medical journals as a, let’s say, a proven fact or a generally accepted consensus, consensus comes out of the journals.”
“I have dozens of rejection letters from investigators around the world who did good trials on ivermectin, tried to publish it. No thank you, no thank you, no thank you. And then the ones that do get in all purportedly prove that ivermectin didn’t work,” Kory continued.
“So and then when you look at the ones that actually got in and this is where like probably my biggest estrangement and why I don’t recognize science and don’t trust it anymore, is the trials that flew to publication in the top journals in the world were so brazenly manipulated and corrupted in the design and conduct in, many of us wrote about it. But they flew to publication, and then every time they were published, you saw these huge PR campaigns in the media. New York Times, Boston Globe, L.A. times, ivermectin doesn’t work. Latest high quality, rigorous study says. I’m sitting here in my office watching these lies just ripple throughout the media sphere based on fraudulent studies published in the top journals. And that’s that’s that has changed. Now that’s why I say I’m estranged and I don’t know what to trust anymore.”
Vaccine Injuries
Carlson asked Kory about his clinical experience with vaccine injuries.
“So how this is how I divide, this is just kind of my perception of vaccine injury is that when I use the term vaccine injury, I’m usually referring to what I call a single organ problem, like pericarditis, myocarditis, stroke, something like that. An autoimmune disease,” he replied.
“What I specialize in my practice, is I treat patients with what we call a long Covid long vaxx. It’s the same disease, just different triggers, right? One is triggered by Covid, the other one is triggered by the spike protein from the vaccine. Much more common is long vax. The only real differences between the two conditions is that the vaccinated are, on average, sicker and more disabled than the long Covids, with some pretty prominent exceptions to that.”
Watch the entire interview above, and you can support Tucker Carlson’s endeavors by joining the Tucker Carlson Network here…
III USA ECONOMIC COMMENTARIES
US Steel is not as efficient as Nippon Steel. The high USA dollar hurts export sales
(zerohedge)
US Steel Plunges After Biden Opposes Acquisition Of “Vital, Iconic” Company By Nippon Steel
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 03:00 PM
As leaked yesterday, Joe Biden has come out against Nippon Steel’s proposed purchase of US Steel, saying it is “vital” for the “iconic American steel company” to remain “domestically owned and operated”.
In a statement on Thursday, Biden said that “it is important that we maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers.”
“US Steel has been an iconic American steel company for more than a century, and it is vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated. It is important that we maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers. I told our steel workers I have their backs, and I meant it.”
Biden’s statement marks a rare presidential intervention in a transaction that outside an election year would have drawn less public scrutiny. Despite its storied history, US Steel’s role in the economy has diminished over several decades, a period during which producers in Asia have risen to dominate the global steel market. And while Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.1 billion acquisition targets an iconic business name, a takeover in the US commodities industry by a company based in a friendly country is hardly unusual.
Biden’s intervention came one day after the Financial Times first reported that he was preparing to voice concerns about the Japanese group’s proposed $14.9bn acquisition of the Pennsylvania-based steelmaker, which sent the stock of the company (with the ticker X which Elon Musk would love to get his hands on for IPO time) lower.
It also comes less than a month before Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is due to arrive in Washington for a state visit on April 10. The US president has looked to Japan as a bulwark against China in the Asia-Pacific region, but the senile president’s opposition to the deal deal could strain the two countries’ relationship.
The White House issued Biden’s statement as he campaigns in Michigan and Wisconsin, two Midwestern industrial strongholds that are crucial for him to win in November. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is vying for the same blue-collar workers in those states as Biden and has pledged to block the deal outright.
US Steel’s shares fell 2.5% on Thursday after tumbling 13% on Wednesday when news first broke that Biden would “express concern” about the deal.
The shares are now trading at levels last seen before the Nippon deal was announced in December, suggesting investors are increasingly skeptical about its chances of success amid an ongoing federal review.
According to Bloomberg, Biden was silent on the pending review of the deal by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, and stopped short of an outright pledge to block it. CFIUS is led by the Treasury Department, and has the power to approve, block or amend the deal on national security grounds, or send it to Biden for a decision.
Timna Tanners, an analyst at Wolfe Research LLC, said the deal suffered from the “unfortunate timing” of being brokered in the midst of an election in which both candidates have vowed to bolster domestic manufacturing and use their power to stop jobs from going overseas.
“The deal is facing a much more difficult chance of going through now that Biden has come out against it,” she said. “It’s an alarming precedent that the US government is setting.”
Of course, this particular government has set so many “alarming precedents”, it has become impossible to keep count.
IIIB USA COMMENTARIES RE ISRAEL/HAMAS WAR/ and PERVASIVE ANTISEMITISM/WOKISM…
iiiC USA COVID //VACCINE ISSUES
END
FREIGHT ISSUES/USA
END
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
END
SWAMP STORIES
This would be awful
(zerohedge)
Republican Warns Of Biden Order Allowing Illegal Immigrants, Felons To Vote
WEDNESDAY, MAR 13, 2024 – 11:00 PM
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A Republican secretary of state sent a letter this week to the Department of Justice (DOJ) alerting it to an executive order signed in 2021 that he says will allow felons and illegal aliens to register to vote in elections.
In the letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Republican Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote that a Biden-signed executive order has led to agencies under Mr. Garland’s charge “attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
The order, which the White House described as an effort to promote “access to voting,” suggested that it was designed to eliminate racial discrimination at the polls. It told federal agencies, including the DOJ, to “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”
Mr. Watson took issue with one provision that directed the DOJ to ensure that the U.S. Marshals Service change jail and “intergovernmental agreements” to mandate that the facilities “provide educational materials related to voter registration and voting,” and “facilitate voting by mail, to the extent practicable and appropriate.”
The problem, according to Mr. Watson, is that those materials may be given to people who can’t vote such as felons and illegal aliens. State officials are also essentially being forced to comply with the rules, he said.
“Our understanding is that everyone in the Marshals’ custody is given a form advising them of their right to register and vote,” his letter said, according to Fox News. “Providing ineligible non-citizens with information on how to register to vote undoubtedly encourages them to illegally register to vote, exposing them to legal jeopardy beyond their immigration status.”
The letter said that the secretary of state’s office believes that providing a form to illegal immigrants who are jailed to advise them of their right to vote “undoubtedly encourages them to illegally” do so and exposes them to “legal jeopardy.”
It also noted that some individuals in jail custody “only have fleeting ties to Mississippi and do not meet the residency requirements necessary to be a Mississippi voter.”
“Many outside groups performing voter registration and vote harvesting services are partisan entities with a history of being unreliable. There have been documented instances of these groups providing incorrect directions to voters,” the Republican official warned. “It is not proper for the Federal government to push partisan groups into the voting process in Mississippi or any other state.”
The Epoch Times contacted the DOJ for comment but didn’t receive a reply by press time.
Speaking to Fox News, Mr. Watson said the issue should be immediately considered because the 2024 election is just months away. Citing the significant number of illegal border crossings in recent years, the secretary said they could try to register to vote and cast ballots in the coming months, while other Republican officials in recent years have warned that illegal immigrants could register to vote and cast ballots in favor of Democratic candidates.
“If you look at what’s going on at the border when you’ve got so many illegal aliens pouring into our country, imagine the efforts used to get them to register to vote and that’s what this is all about,” he told the outlet on March 11. “It’s about control, it’s about continuing their power, and unfortunately that puts our country in a terrible position, so it’s immediate and it’s something where we hope they will respect our request to stop the program.”
With just eight months to go before the November election, illegal immigration has increasingly become a focus among American voters, according to recent opinion polls. A poll released in late February showed that about six in 10 Americans believe illegal immigration is now a serious problem and a majority now back the construction of a border wall, which former President Donald Trump has championed.
During President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech to Congress, he made reference to an illegal immigrant who allegedly murdered a college student, using the term “illegal” to describe the individual.
But he later retracted his comments over the weekend, telling MSNBC that he “shouldn’t have used the term illegal.” Instead, the president said he would use the term “undocumented” immigrant—a term that has risen to prominence among Democratic politicians and legacy news outlets in recent years.
When asked the same question last week, the president replied, “Technically, he’s not supposed to be” in the United States.
The president also said on March 9 that “they built the country,” referring to illegal immigrants. “The reason our economy is growing. We have to control the border and more orderly flow,” he said.
END
The action of this judge is causing a deluge of citizens to depart New York
(zerohedge)
Justice Arthur Engoron ‘Shot’ New York With ‘Absurd Decision’
WEDNESDAY, MAR 13, 2024 – 09:00 PM
Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
It remains to be seen to what extent New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron put a stake in the heart of the once-great, now-beleaguered, city of New York, but he certainly didn’t help when he issued his draconian judgment against Donald J. Trump, ruling that the former president and his family must pay a staggering $350 million-plus in penalties and forbidding them from doing business in the state for several years.
Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary for President George W. Bush, was the first I heard to acknowledge the disastrous protentional economic repercussions on cable news, but I imagine that businessmen across the city and state had anticipated this and have been making plans to exit New York for some time.
That state already has the biggest population outflow, outnumbering even California’s.
The mind-blowing size of Justice Engoron’s decision was just rancid icing on an already unpalatable cake.
But it was enough to inspire the ire of truckers across the United States who, like their peers in Canada and farmers in Europe, had had enough nonsense from the Engorons of the world.
We can only wish them well because they are the allies of freedom.
Meanwhile, what businessperson—high or low—wants to incorporate in a state where a wanton judge can suddenly decree his or her estimates of their real estate valuations to obtain a loan to be inflated, impose ridiculous fines, and then shut them down—possibly forever?
In President Trump’s case, as those same businesspersons surely noted, not a soul had been damaged by the former president’s estimates, inflated or not. All the loans had been repaid and the banks involved, of course, made money. There were no victims.
As the late Los Angeles Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn would say, “No harm. No foul.”
Except to the likes of Justice Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James, for whom Trump Derangement Syndrome is an illness more irreversible than pancreatic cancer.
Whether President Trump succeeds in overturning the absurd decision is in some senses irrelevant because the damage is already done.
Welcome to Florida, Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and so forth, Mr. and Mrs. New York.
I should be grateful to Justice Engoron and Ms. James for selling copies of my new book on the exodus to red states from blue states, “American Refugees,” as a guide for where to move, but I’m not.
I would prefer such people go away because I love New York, the city I grew up in, and they are destroying it in the most reactionary manner, although they think of themselves as “progressives.” Go figure.
The onslaught on the business community means fewer jobs for the working class, including minorities, all classes actually, not that that has ever deterred the new Democratic Party that seems to care little for working men and women.
Although many remain oblivious, this has tremendous ramifications for what is nauseatingly termed “elitist” liberal and progressive Democrats who love, as I do, the magnificent cultural benefits that New York has always offered.
But with the economic base fleeing, with manufacturing nearly a thing of the past, who will pay for all the monumental museums, the Lincoln Center, the theater on and off Broadway, the many parks, the Bronx Zoo, and so forth, not to mention the plethora of world-class restaurants in any cuisine imaginable that depend on a well-to-do clientele?
The state?
As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put it so succinctly years ago, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Not that that would mean much to Justice Engoron or Ms. James, so lost in their lust to destroy Donald Trump that the fate of any of the classes in the city of New York, even the outside world itself, is of little consequence to them.
This is par for the course for much of the Democratic Party these days, with the exception of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose intelligence and good sense they can no longer countenance.
They have switched roles with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, composed of actual everyday, hardworking Americans, whom they disdain.
In a sense, the two parties are in the midst of what could be termed a political sex change operation. They are having a form of gender reassignment surgery.
This particular episode led me to consider, not for the first time, of course, why people such as Justice Engoron think the way they do.
That they have replaced religious faith with unquestioning leftist politics has become a cliché, but like many clichés, there’s some, in this case considerable, truth to it.
But other things are at work.
I have been rereading Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” It’s all about race, greed, and the justice system in New York in those days.
One thing that struck me is how pathetic the justice system was, as portrayed by Wolfe, and how its denizens were rife with jealousy of characters such as the book’s principal protagonist, Wall Street bond trader Sherman McCoy, even though McCoy gets his comeuppance in the story.
This made me think of the way that Justice Engoron must regard President Trump. Justice Engoron, though he is a Manhattan Supreme Court justice, is basically a lowly civil servant and inhabits what was in essence the lower ranks of the Manhattan hierarchy, especially as compared to real estate magnates, hedge fund managers, CEOs, media giants, successful entertainers, and even doctors and lawyers.
No wonder he despises President Trump, who is a genuine “Master of the Universe,” as Wolfe characterized it, albeit a truly successful one, unlike Wolfe’s protagonist.
No wonder Justice Engoron wants nothing more than to bring President Trump down and is highly offended, or claims he is, when President Trump talks back to him.
As we all know, older—way older than the Democratic or Republican parties—is that document, chiseled in stone from on high, known as the Ten Commandments.
Number 10 is, of course, “Thou shalt not covet.” More completely: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17).
How much coveting has been going on in our culture, do you think, lately—not just in obvious places such as Justice Engoron’s courtroom? I would say an incomprehensible amount.
On top of all that, Justice Engoron as well as Ms. James are both tried-and-true members of the judicial division within the government.
If Mr. Trump succeeds in November’s election, it’s their jobs—not those of the working class and the populace in general—that will be in jeopardy.
One of the benefits of believing in leftist politics, despite its notoriously failed efficacy and historical danger to human life in several continents, is that, by atheistically replacing religious faith with political ideology, you are free to covet anything you want and destroy anybody in the process.
I think, however, to President Trump, Justice Engoron’s covetous decision, in the end, will be no more than a glancing blow.
To the city of New York, however, one of the monuments of Western civilization, it could prove yet one more step, and perhaps a fatal one, in a rapid decline that we have been witnessing for several years now—or, thanks to the truckers and other freedom lovers, an actual, long-awaited wake-up call.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
end
Trump Lawyers Prepare For Thursday Showdown Over Classified Docs
THURSDAY, MAR 14, 2024 – 12:20 PM
Attorneys for Donald Trump are in a fierce courtroom showdown special counsel Jack Smith’s team in a Thursday hearing in the former president’s classified documents case.
Trump has argued in previous court filings that the case should be dismissed because he used his authority as president to declassify documents brought home from the White House.
His attorneys, citing the Personal Records Act (PRA), have argued that Trump, while president, was the chief classification officer, and could mark any documents “personal” as he saw fit. This allowed him to legally take said documents with him when he left office.
The PRA governs how documents from an outgoing presidential administration are handled. It describes personal records as things such as personal notes, materials related to private political associations, or materials related the the president’s own election.
The judge in the Trump case, Aileen Cannon, has set aside the entire day to hear both sides. Following the hearing, Cannon is expected to rule on several big issues in the case – including setting a new trial date which may or may not come before the November election, as well as whether Trump will receive an evidentiary hearing over additional discovery he’s requested from the current White House, the FBI, and more.
And according to journalist Julie Kelly, who is there, Cannon may toss the case.
NEW: From FLA courthouse in Trump’s classified documents case with a prediction. Robert Hur report and testimony is the biggest elephant in the room. The term “arbitrary enforcement” used frequently by both the defense and Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon hammered the fact no former president or vice president has been charged under Espionage Act for taking and keeping classified records including national defense information–which represents 32 counts against Trump in Jack Smith’s indictment. Prediction: Cannon won’t dismiss the case based on the motions debated today–vagueness of Espionage Act and protection under the Presidential Records Act. But it’s very likely she will dismiss the case based on selective prosecution, a motion still pending before her.
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Prediction: Cannon won’t dismiss the case based on the motions debated today–vagueness of Espionage Act and protection under the Presidential Records Act. But it’s very likely she will dismiss the case based on selective prosecution, a motion still pending before her. -Julie Kelly
Trump has pleaded not guilty to dozens of charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents. He has also been accused of obstructing the DOJ’s investigation.
President Biden, meanwhile, did not have the authority as Vice President to declassify documents found in various locations, and illegally shared with his biographer – for which special counsel Robert Hur felt he was too senile to prosecute.
KING REPORT
| The King Report March 14, 2024 Issue 7200 | Independent View of the News |
| Japanese wage hikes impaired the designs of traders that had positioned themselves to play for the Weird Wednesday upward manipulation to squeeze expiring March call options. Toyota agrees to biggest wage hike in 25 years, paves way for BOJ shiftPanasonic, Nippon Steel also respond in full to union demandsWage hikes could be highest in decadesOutcome of talks key to deciding timing of BOJ policy shiftBOJ to hold next policy-setting meeting on March 18-19Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker and traditionally a bellwether of the annual talks, said it agreed to the demands of monthly pay increases of as much as 28,440 yen ($193) and record bonus payments. Keeping with past practice, the company did not provide a percentage figure for the salary rise… https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japan-inc-set-offer-big-wage-hikes-paving-way-end-negative-rates-2024-03-12/ BOJ “Has Made Up Its Mind to Hike Rates” after Union Wage Negotations Lead to Surge in PayNippon Steel agreed to an 11.8% increase in base salary, exceeding its trade union’s request for the biggest jump in monthly pay since 1979.ANA gave its workers an average wage increase of 5.6% on Monday, the highest for the airline since 1991.Honda last month agreed to a 5.6% annual pay bump, the highest since 1989.NEC granted a 4.3% rise in base pay, the highest ever since the current wage negotiation system began in 1998.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries agreed to an 8.3% annual pay hike, its highest since 2005.https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/boj-has-made-its-mind-hike-rates-after-union-wage-negotations-lead-surge-pay BOJ TO DISCUSS NEGATIVE RATE EXIT NEXT WEEK – NIKKEI @lisaabramowicz1: The Atlanta Fed’s gauge of sticky inflation has risen to about 5% on a 3-month annualized basis. Inflation is moving in the wrong direction for the Fed, so it’s interesting that the market’s base case is still that the Fed is going to cut rates by about 100bp by January 2025. https://twitter.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1767839607884796161 Janet Yellen warns inflation decline might not be ‘smooth’ Yellen discusses inflation, credit card debt, higher taxes in exclusive interview “I wouldn’t expect this to be a smooth path month to month, but the trend is clearly favorable,” she said. “That said, President Biden’s top priority is addressing the issue of high costs that concerns so many Americans.”… https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/janet-yellen-warns-inflation-decline-might-not-be-smooth Yellen: I Regret Saying Inflation Was Transitory https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1767949000139768219 ESHs oscillated between moderate gains and losses during Asian trading. The global equity euphoria and fears of BoJ rate hikes were in conflict. ESHs jumped higher when Europe opened; They hit a daily high of 5238.75 at 3:23 ET. Selling pushed ESHs back into the trading range of moderate gains and losses. Ten minutes after the NYSE opening, ESHs broke down and hit a daily low of 5228.75 near 10:00 ET. But it was Weird Wednesday, and no stinking central bank was going to usurp the expiring manipulation! Traders poured into ESHs, driving them to 5240.00 at 10:44 ET. Sellers reappeared; ESHs and stocks vacillated in a large range until the afternoon rally commenced at 13:00 ET. ESHs hit 5245.25 and then returned to vacillating in a moderate range. ESHs broke lower at 15:00 ET, and eventually tumbled to a daily low of 5217.50 at 15:29 ET. The usual suspects then aggressively bought ESHs to save their long positions. ESHs bounced to 5231.50, 14 handles in one minute! ESHs then retreated and traded sideways until they moved higher at 15:43 ET. The late manipulation took ESHs to 5236.26 at 15:46 ET. ESHs did a slow rollover but rallied modestly near the close. Some traders and pundits opined that the ESH collapse during the final hour of NYSE trading was due to a leak of today’s February PPI Report. Sanders Introduces Legislation to Enact a 32-Hour Workweek with No Loss in Pay Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) today announced that this Thursday he will introduce legislation to establish a standard 32-hour workweek in America with no loss in pay… https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-introduces-legislation-to-enact-a-32-hour-workweek-with-no-loss-in-pay/ Family Dollar and Dollar Tree to close 1,000 stores after $1.71 billion net loss The company opened 641 new stores last year, but it is closing 1,000 stores. The company also said that it suffered a decline in gross profit margins, which was “driven by elevated shrink, product cost inflation, unfavorable sales mix, and higher distribution and markdown costs,” and partially offset by factors such as lower freight costs… (Bidenomics!) https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/finance/family-dollar-and-dollar-tree-close-1000-stores-after-171-billion-net-loss @TheInsiderPaper: Boeing overwrote surveillance footage from the repair facility where a door plug was reinstalled ahead of the blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year, NTSB chair says Positive aspects of previous session Weird Wednesday, expiry-related buying kept stocks buoyant; the DJIA gained 37.83 points Negative aspects of previous session Gasoline hit a 4-month high on buying ahead of drive season and low inventories Bonds declined moderately; Precious metals rallied sharply Major US equity indices declined ex-the DJIA * DJUA Ambiguous aspects of previous session Will the Fed have the integrity to arrest inflation and the stock bubble? First Hour/Last Hour Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour from NYSE Open: Down; Last Hour: Up Pivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to traders]: 5165.44 Previous session S&P 500 Index High/Low: 5179.14; 5151.88 @Cernovich: The latest Ukraine aid package funds pensions for Ukrainians. @RobertKennedyJr: The so-called “Tik Tok ban” is actually a Trojan Horse that could allow the President to ban any website or app merely by asserting that it is “controlled or guided” by a foreign adversary. Trump and Biden have each secured the requisite delegates to secure their parties’ nominations. No post-State of the Union bump for Biden, even as he clinches Dem nomination, polls show https://trib.al/5yvnALq White House in turmoil over claims of ‘toxicity’ and ‘bullying’ as Biden clinches nomination Travel aide resigns over claims he called staffers ‘worthless’ while inner circle denies harassment claims against Jill Biden’s ‘work husband’… https://trib.al/8tOxjuw By 44% to 30%, Israelis prefer Trump to Biden as next US president: The Times of Israel (How can 30% prefer Biden, considering what he is doing & espousing?) https://t.co/38LiuRuMAf Biden’s Dangerous Mideast Fantasy President Biden looked at this (Oct 7 Massacre) and concludes — the Palestinians deserve a state of their own so they can live in peace with Israel. Deluded, foolish, dangerous fantasy!… His statements about the Israel-Hamas war were remarkably unfriendly to Israel, descending into condensation, conceit and braggadocio (Biden traits) in remarks captured in an open-mike moment… Biden reserved his tough language, his demands, his diktats for the Israelis… No, his demands were directed at “the leadership of Israel.”… Why didn’t he engage in a little straight talk for the Palestinians? He could have told them that their only hope for the future, the only real solution to bettering their lives, is accepting the existence of Israel and living side by side in peace with the Israelis. But he didn’t do that… No peace partner Palestinians voted Hamas into power in Gaza. Polling by the Arab World for Research and Development showed that majorities of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank support the Oct. 7 atrocities (75 percent) and oppose any two-state peace with Israel (80 percent)… https://johnkassnews.com/bidens-dangerous-mideast-fantasy/ “Major Measles Outbreak” Reported in US as Migrant Shelters Become Infectious Disease Breeding Grounds https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/major-measles-outbreak-reported-us-migrant-shelters-become-infectious-disease-breeding Putin Says Ukraine Deal Requires Security Pledges for Russia President reiterates deal must reflect ‘realities’ on ground Putin spoke to state media ahead of presidential election Putin said Russia would demand security guarantees to consider talks to end the war in Ukraine, telling a state news agency that “realities on the ground” should be the basis of any negotiations… https://t.co/PJ00qa90tK BBG: Russia’s Putin has said it will deploy troops, military equipment to the Finnish border after Finland enters NATO. The US Held Secret Talks with Iran over Red Sea Attacks – FT (Obamaites dote on Iran!) Today – An expected change in BoJ policy and rates thwarted expiry manipulators yesterday. A possible rumor or leak about February PPI weighed on ESHs and stocks during late trading. Ergo, if PPI is in-line or lower than expected, there will be a spirited rally. If PPI is a tad higher than expected, there will likely be a rally after an initial decline. Traders of various classes are very long and expect the usual expiry manipulation to appear. ‘They’ will try to force stuff higher to squeeze expiry March call options. Expected economic data: Feb Retail Sales 0.8% m/m, Ex-Autos 0.5%, Ex-Autos & Gas 0.3%; Feb PPI 0,3% m/m & 1.2% y/y, Core PPI 0.2% m/m & 1.9% y/y; Initial Jobless Claims 218k, Continuing Claims 1.906m; Jan Business Inventories 0.2% ESUs are +3.50; NQHs are +28.50; USHs are +4/32 at 20:30 ET. S&P Index 50-day MA: 4947; 100-day MA: 4725; 150-day MA: 4615; 200-day MA: 4567 DJIA 50-day MA: 38,342; 100-day MA: 36,817; 150-day MA: 35,964, 200-day MA: 35,566 (Green is positive slope; Red is negative slope) S&P 500 Index (5165.31) – Trender BBG trading model and MACD for key time frames Monthly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4455.17 triggers a sell signal Weekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4901.55 triggers a sell signal Daily: Trender is positive; MACD is negative – a close below 5047.76 triggers a sell signal Hourly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 5140.83 triggers a sell signal @GOPoversight: Chairman Comer’s Statement on Next Week’s Hearing on the Bidens’ Corruption “The House Oversight Committee has called Hunter Biden’s bluff. Hunter Biden for months stated he wanted a public hearing, but now that one has been offered alongside his business associates that he worked with for years, he is refusing to come. “During our deposition and interview phase of our investigation, Hunter Biden confirmed key evidence, including evidence that his father, President Joe Biden, lied to the American people about his family’s business dealings and in fact attended meetings, spoke on speakerphone, and had coffee with his foreign business associates who collectively funneled millions to the Bidens. However, parts of Hunter Biden’s testimony contradict the testimonies of Devon Archer, Jason Galanis, and Tony Bobulinski. “Next week’s hearing with Hunter Biden and his associates is moving forward and we fully expect Hunter Biden to participate. The American people demand the truth and accountability for the Bidens’ corruption.” @mirandadevine: What a surprise – not. The deposition didn’t go well and there’s no way Hunter’s lawyers would allow him to be fact-checked in real time by Tony Bobulinski, Devon Archer or IRS investigators Joe Ziegler and Gary Shapley. @mazemoore: Biden and the media claimed that Robert Hur brought up his son Beau’s death. Biden brought it up, like he has before when cornered. https://twitter.com/mazemoore/status/1767632060494004512 @charliekirk11: Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee has dropped six counts in the Georgia criminal election interference case against former President Donald Trump and five other defendants, writing: “The lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned opinion, fatal.” @JonathanTurley: Judge McAfee dismissal of the six counts presents a difficult question for the prosecution. If they try to secure a superseding indictment to correct the earlier mistakes, it will make it difficult to try the case before the election. The defense is allowed discovery and time to prepare for the new alleged crimes. That will take time off the clock. The court has indicated that they can still rely on the underlying conduct to make out the general racketeering charge. However, that theory was alreadly thin. Part of the value of the multiplicity of counts was to convey a pattern criminality as a foundation for the more serious racketeering charges. This does not disable the case, but it adds yet another set back for the prosecution as it awaits the disqualification decision. @jsolomonReports: Speaker Johnson says he ‘didn’t know’ about Colorado Rep. Buck resigning. Maryland city equity official says she wants US to burn to the ground: ‘MY ideology can rise from the ashes’ – The equity officer tasked with eliminating racism in College Park called to ‘BURN IT ALL DOWN’ but also says, ‘I don’t want to work’ https://www.foxnews.com/media/maryland-city-equity-official-says-wants-us-burn-ground-ideology-rise-ashes @WhitlockJason: Wanted to share some additional thoughts about the tragedy at Hazelwood East High School, where a child’s head was beaten into concrete during a fight. Many are wondering what produced the rage inside the other child. Why did the fight escalate to such a barbaric level? Victimhood produces rage and animus. It’s a cancer of the mind. Modern American culture preaches and rewards the victimhood mentality. It’s a lucrative and effective tool to seize power… We teach victimhood and grievance. Our young people are more callous and savage than previous generations because we’ve convinced them they’re all victims of sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, fat-shaming, transphobia, poverty, pronoun injustice, you-name-it, etc. They’re all owed a debt. Unpaid debts foment anger… I’ve been poor. Me and my father shared a 400-square foot, one-bedroom apartment in the ‘hood in 1984-85… I was never angry. In fact, I was happy. I didn’t dwell much on our situation. I wasn’t a victim. I had two parents who cared about me… Poverty does not produce rage. A victim mentality, a lack of hope, the belief that the world owes you a debt, and the absence of parental love produce an endless supply of rage. The causes of what is ailing our children are obvious. It’s the absence of a heavenly Father and an earthly Father. Those two fathers are the cure for the cancer of victimhood. It’s really that simple… Victimhood is a mental disease. https://twitter.com/WhitlockJason/status/1767825639984218426 “Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.” – Thomas Sowell “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.” — Albert Einstein @WarClandestine: FLASHBACK 2010 – The Clinton Foundation were in charge of the $13+ billion in aid to rebuild Haiti. Bill Clinton used the phrase “build Haiti back better”. The Haitian People never saw that money, and now their country is ruled by cannibal gangs. This is what the Dems mean when they say “build back better”. They do not care about helping the needy. They are only interested in enriching themselves under the guise of “foreign aid”. All the money went to Clinton-affiliated contractors, who kicked it back to the Clintons via donations and other means. The Clintons DESTROYED Haiti, and the lives of millions, all for their own gain. The state of that country is a direct result of their greed and deception. They have the same plan for us. Chicago failed to take Catholic archdiocese up on offers to house migrants for free Instead of using the church properties, the city opened shelters at private properties for costs that were initially undisclosed… (Millions of dollars wasted; but it’s all about the skim!) https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2024/03/12/migrant-shelters-archdiocese-offers-brandon-johnson West Point Drops ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ From Mission Statement The phrase, which was highlighted in a famous speech by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1962, will be replaced by a line that includes the words, “Army Values.”… https://www.newsmax.com/us/u-s-army-west-point-duty/2024/03/13/id/1157085/ | |
GREG HUNTER
SEE YOU ON THURSDAY
harveyorganblog.com 
