The US president is close to announcing another big release of US oil reserves, int’l media reports. Brent crude dropped 3.7% to US$109.30. Bit will bounce back as it has on recent days. It fell because of China’s expected slowdown because of Covid-19.
Analysts said the impact of any release of US oil reserves might prove limited
No, not from S’poreans, but from Sleepy Joe.
U.S. President Joe Biden is highlighting what countries can gain if they stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House is hosting Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Tuesday after the city-state backed sanctions against Russia. Lee’s visit could also include announcements on expanded U.S. economic ties, a nice carrot.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/singapore-gets-dc-gold-medal-treatment-2022-03-29/
Grandpa Xi will not be happy. Will he send the Wolf Warriors to blow up buildings here? Someone from FB is suggesting this:
Hopefully Singapore PM and his entourage will not be pressured into agreeing to new demands by Biden and Company. This may become detrimental to our People’s safety.
Do remember that it’s less then 50 years (1974) when the Japanese Red Army (JRA) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attacked Pulau Bukom’s She’ll Refinery before hijacking the ferry Laju and allowed by Singapore Government to fly to Kuwait into freedom.
The then raging war between South and North Vietnam has a connection.
Instead of Esso, She’ll got hit.
The above is an interesting subject and bring back lots of memories.
FB post by someone who spells “Shell” as “She’ll”.
Regulators in America authorised a fourth dose of the covid-19 vaccine made by Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech for anyone older than 50, reports the int’l media.
On the day that I read a wannabe Sith Lord now a wannabe Jedi {Or juz pretending to be one?) KPKBing about the forthcoming S$100 payout each for all those who have done NS, I also read
Many feel that conscription during peacetime not only forces people to fight against their will, but also makes little economic sense. It costs a fortune and pulls people away from their preferred jobs. That line of thinking helped persuade America to end conscription in 1972. (Of course, it was not fighting a war of survival against a larger invader.)
https://www.economist.com/europe/the-strange-role-of-conscription-in-ukraines-war/21808446
Despite Xi saying China’s friendship with Russia has no limits, it’s the mamas who are buying Russian oil. Related post: Mamas love a cheap sale/ Xi scared of US?
The Chinese people have stood up.
And the economy is outperforming the American one:
The Chinese economy has expanded by 10.5% in the past two years, compared with 2.4% in America and 0.4% in advanced economies generally.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/03/26/china-must-eventually-learn-to-live-with-the-coronavirus
And so
China’s covid controls “demonstrate the advantages” of the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership and the socialist system, boasts Xi Jinping, the president. All the signs are that his people tend to agree.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/03/26/china-must-eventually-learn-to-live-with-the-coronavirus
But HK shows what can go wrong: What HK-based anti-vaxxer Goh Meng Seng doesn’t tell us.
And there’s the example of S’pore. At one stage, the PAP millionaire ministers were lauded here and abroad for the way they were handling the pandemic: Covid-19: Relax S’poreans, PAP govt is doing a good job and Covid-19: HK and S’pore tops in slowing spread.
Then the Indian variant came along: PAP govt squandered our efforts in obeying the Covid-19 rules and PAP govt’s idea of living with Covid-19.
Remember this?
Whenever the PAP government gives you a chicken wing before the elections, you can be sure they will try and take the whole chicken back
SDP version of a S’porean joke that S’poreans have to Pay And Pay
Well in the UK, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister for u plebs) has introduced a new version of the PAP trick.
He takes away the whole chicken and then gives back a wing, a year later, claiming that he’s giving away chicken wings (i.e. tax cuts):
As the official number crunchers at the OBR put it: “The chancellor has undone just over a quarter of the overall value of the personal tax rises he announced last year, and around a sixth of the overall net tax rises he has announced since becoming chancellor.”
In other words, he’s giving a pound back for every six that he’s already taken.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-60846553
Even Tory leaning newspapers like the Telegraph, Express and Mail are unhappy with his antics: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-the-papers-60856333
OK, OK, he’s no billionaire. He married a billionaire’s daughter.
In Russia,
holding a blank piece of paper can land you in jail. A handful of such cases have been documented, in which people have been arrested at anti-war protests for carrying empty placards, deemed to be symbols against the invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/03/22/more-than-15000-russians-have-been-arrested-in-anti-war-protests
Related post: PAP S’pore “R” Putin’s Russia
If aliens came to earth they’d think that mobile phones are the superior species controlling human beings. And it’s not going to stop, it’s only going to get worse.
Kaiwei Tang https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60763168
2%, Hong Kong’s covid-19 case-fatality rate. For unvaccinated people over 80 it is 12%.
And
Hong Kong, which was previously almost untouched by the virus, is now seeing 30,000 cases and more than 200 deaths a day. The city’s healthcare system has been overrun, with shocking images of people in need of hospital care receiving rudimentary treatment outside medical facilities.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60762032
He’s in HK. He ran to HK because he was afraid of catching Covid here (Anti-vaxxer Goh Meng Seng regretting leaving S’pore). And until recently, he was praising how well HK was coping with Covid-19. He was forever dissing S’pore’s efforts in getting us vaxxed.
Now all he posts on FB is the effectiveness of TCM in combatting Covid-19.
Nothing about the pandemic in HK.
With enemies like him, the PAP doesn’t need friends.
Contrary to Cheap Russian oil for China, it’s the Indians who are buying cheap Russian oil,
not the Chinese.
Russian oil exports to India have quadrupled this month in a sign of the vast reshaping of global energy flows since the invasion of Ukraine. Russia has exported 360,000 barrels a day of oil to India in March so far, nearly four times the 2021 average. Historically, Russian crude oil has constituted below 5% of India’s total imports.
As For China, Chinese banks and companies do not want to risk losing much more valuable business elsewhere by flouting sanctions or doing unsanctioned business with the Russians that the West doesn’t like. The energy trade is not sanctioned but Western cos are avoiding it, hence the discounts in oil.
Time to remind the ang mohs about the racist ethnic Chinese story about whether to kill the Indian or the snake?
But Tuesday’s recovery is continuing: +95.41 (2.24%) last night, despite “(or because?) of hawkish signals by the Fed. It raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range between 0.25% to 0.5%, and hawkishly signalled six more rate increases in 2022.
Powell added fuel to the rally saying he saw the US economy as being in strong shape and that the probability of a recession was “not particularly elevated”.
Coming back to the “death cross”. It’s when the index’s 50-day moving average falls below the 200-day number. It’s usually read as a very, very bearish sign.
Time to panic? Time to cut losses? Time to sell into a rally? Time to buy the big dip? Time to sit tight?
Read this piece (and the comments) from Barron’s: https://www.barrons.com/articles/stocks-death-cross-s-p-500-51647278854
The comments are just as interesting as the article.
May the Force be with you. Make money but don’t cherish it:
Dr. John ‘Doc’ Holliday : I’m a gambler. Money’s just a tool of my trade.
Wyatt Earp : Of course, you will guarantee you won’t lose.
Dr. John ‘Doc’ Holliday : I never lose. You see, poker’s played by desperate men who cherish money. I don’t lose because I have nothing to lose, including my life.
https://atans1.wordpress.com/2022/
One-person protest is “unauthorised public event”.
S’pore: Jolovan’s latest problem shows Sylvia Lim’s and my prescience
Russia:
Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Russia’s Channel One who interrupted a news programme on Monday to hold up a placard reading “Stop the war”, was fined 30,000 roubles ($280) for “organising an unauthorised public event”.
Economist Expresso
Related posts:
Russia and Ukraine export a lot of wheat and corn. Russia and Ukraine are respectively the largest and fifth-largest wheat exporters, together account for 29% of international annual sales. They account for a fifth of the international corn trade. Corn is used as animal feed. as is low quality wheat.
Still want to raise GST, millionaire ministers?
Apposite to Buffett trumps S&P again after having lost his way for years, is Terry Smith.
He’s another value investor like Buffett and has sometimes been described as the British Warren Buffett. His investment policy is “buy good companies, don’t overpay, do nothing”. “Do nothing” refers to minimising portfolio turnover to keep down costs.
He tends to focus more on faster-growing companies, even if they are often more expensive than the bargains that cheap skate Buffett likes.
This got him into trouble.
H2O’s chief executive Bruno Crastes: “There is a very simple rule in investment: if you are not able to get poor, you will never get richer.” and “When you don’t want to lose, you will never make money.”
Its flagship Multibonds fund is now down 40% from the middle of February, having lost 9.5% in a single day on Monday, because of a massive bet on the Rouble.
And H20 is suffering massive outflows in the wake of repeated scandals over the last few years.
Its funds are open to retail investors but it takes big hedge fund bets.
Maybe Bruno Crastes should think like this fellow gambler?
Dr. John ‘Doc’ Holliday : I’m a gambler. Money’s just a tool of my trade.
Wyatt Earp : Of course, you will guarantee you won’t lose.
Dr. John ‘Doc’ Holliday : I never lose. You see, poker’s played by desperate men who cherish money. I don’t lose because I have nothing to lose, including my life.
Sounds like Bruno Crastes and H2O cherish money.
‘Fire burn and cauldron bubble’.
The turmoil in energy markets explained in three charts
Oil at US$300? Taz what the Russians say if they cannot or don’t export oil to the rest of the world. Opec’s sectary general says ,“no capacity in the world at the moment that can replace 7mn barrels [a day] of exports” from Russia.”. For Germany, Russian petrol makes up 30% of imports. A quarter of the EU’s oil imports come from Russia. 60% of Russia’s oil exports go to Europe.
Russia has EU by the balls (Related article: (Why Russia has the EU by the balls). Moscow said it could cut natural gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in response to western sanctions.
See the gap between US and EU prices. US LNG producers are shipping all they can. And if Moscow cuts gas to Europe, prices will really fly.
(Amended at 5.30pm after publication)
“Oil’s rally will accelerate inflation, rates will go much higher, financial conditions will tighten significantly, consumers will be squeezed and corporate activity will be jolted. Recessionary territory is on the horizon.” .
FT quoting a head of research
Btw. oil intensive industries such as aviation will also be hit hard
Or
The war in Ukraine is “a global stagflationary shock, with Europe being the most exposed region”
FT quoting Barclays head of economics research
Whatever
(Added after first publication the following pix on US price rises)
[G]overnments can mitigate the shock, just as they did then. They can shield the poorest in society from surging food and heating costs by increasing payouts to the unemployed and to low-income households. Finance ministers can reduce taxes on energy and food products or on a range of consumer goods.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/stagflation-like-worst-pandemic-is-avoidable-2022-03-07/
But come Hell or High Water, the PAP die, die want to make us Pay And Pay by raising GST and by making us pay for plastic bags:
Shoppers at any of the major supermarket chains here can expect to pay at least five cents for each disposable bag, regardless of material, they take from around the middle of next year.
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/shoppers-must-pay-least-5-cents-disposable-carrier-bag-mid-2023-all-major-supermarkets-1832491
“We will provoke the collapse of the Russian economy,” France’s finance minister said. The West is waging “total economic and financial war against Russia, Putin and his government,” he added.
Experts say the Western financial sanctions amount to full-scale financial warfare of an unheard-of nature and scope.
The package will squeeze living standards.
These sanctions have already disrupted day-to-day life in Russia badly.
There are queues to withdraw money from ATMs. There will soon be runs on the banks.
The sanctions against some Russian banks include cutting them off from Visa and Mastercard, and consequently Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Buying foreign currency costs Russians about 30% more (this is a recovery from 50% than before the invasion), assuming they can get hold of it at all.
At the start of 202, one dollar traded for about 75 roubles and a euro for 80. But the war has helped set new records – at one point a dollar cost 113 roubles and a euro, 127.
People can’t pay mortgages because interest rates have doubled to 20%.
Russian oil is cheap, really cheap.
The int’l media reports that two-thirds of crude buyers appear to be avoiding buying Russian oil partly because many western banks, refineries and shipowners don’t want to finance, refine or ship Russian oil. The West has avoided sanctioning the oil and gas trade but traders are afraid that this will change.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are Russia’s “no limits” strategic partner and can avoid using the dollar to pay for the oil. They have Chinese-owned tankers and refineries to tpt and refine the crude.
Western media reports that a Pentagon official said that the Pentagon had not detected any change in Russia’s nuclear force posture after Putin declared Russian nuclear alert
In addition to higher oil prices (Why most of our gas supply, piped from Indonesia, is tied to the price of oil: Rising electricity prices: Tell us the truth. Note since 2012, when article was published, the trade in LNG has grown exponentially.), with Brent crude rising as much as 9% to an eight year high of above $113 a barrel before trading at US$112.93. (Related post: Oil prices aren’t all that high),
gas prices have flown
Given Europe’s reliance on Russian gas (Why Russia has the EU by the balls), European natural gas prices surged 50% on Wednesday to an all-time high of €185 a megawatt hour. They traded at around €15 a year ago. Asian LNG prices are being dragged upwards, as Europeans try to source gas from traditional Asian suppliers (Oz and Qatar) by offering more money.
Seriously, PAP govt still wants to make us Pay And Pay via higher GST? The Wankers and TCB’s gang are right to oppose GST rises even if the prices are delayed.
Chill out: go have a Kitcat.
Seriously, PAP govt still wants to make us Pay And Pay? The Wankers and TCB’s gang are right to oppose GST rises even if they are delayed.
Wall St isn’t afraid that Putin is threatening to go nuclear (Putin only hinting of going nuclear, the West has gone “nuclear”). S&P 500 closed 0.24% down and NASDAQ 0.41% up (albeit after wild swings). Remember Wall St had a good friday: Russian markets tank while US markets say “What’s the big deal?”
America is Great Again.
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 