July 2024
Please be advised, Trade Platforms and Trade Desks will be shutting down in mid July for their summer vacations/holidays.
New files can still be submitted to boomfii.com for PPP but the files will take a little longer to allocate and process.
Jul 29
Fortescue, an Australian energy and metals corporation, has abandoned its commitment to produce 15 tons of “green hydrogen” annually for the ammonia industry by 2030. Founder, Andrew Forrest has realized the goal is unrealistic. Hydrogen is a key ingredient in making ammonia.
Jul 25
U.K. and France both elected new parliaments this month and the new governments already face seemingly impossible tasks: fulfilling their mandates for dramatic changes while struggling with massive public debt, while candidates for office promised more services to please voters.
Jul 23
TRADERS, HEDGE FUNDS GO BIG IN ELECTRICITY Lured by the vision of an electrified future, hedge funds and other speculators are betting big on rising electricity prices and the fuel that enlivens the spreading network of AI data centers.
Jul 19
It’s global. The numbers are there for all to see. From developed to underdeveloped nations, economies are slowing down and/or contracting.
Weaker demand due to high interest rates and economic conditions have affected industries across the board.
Jul 17
U.S. factory activity contracted as manufacturers cost of materials fell their most in more than a year.
The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index (PMI) rated 48.5 in June, slightly below May’s 48.7. Ratings below 50 signal a contraction in business activity.
Jul 15
Investors who bought securities made up of bundles of commercial mortgage loans bought them in part because the securities earned top credit ratings.
Now those investors face losses, the first time since the Great Recession that commercial mortgage-backed securities rated so highly are turning negative, the Financial Times said.
Jul 11
TOYOTA GOES FULL RETRO, RE-ENGINEERS PISTON ENGINE
Alone among major auto companies, Toyota still refuses to fully commit its future to all-electric mobility. Instead, it has introduced a redesigned piston engine for gas-electric hybrid vehicles.
Jul 9
Megamergers are back in vogue, climbing by 22% & booking $1.5 trillion in new deals in this year’s first six months, the London Stock Exchange Group reported, as the number of takeovers in the U.S. surged.
The number of deals worth more than $10 billion jumped 70%, year on year.
Jul 5
The People’s Bank of China is reducing the availability of money to lend, bank governor Pan Gongsheng said in a speech last week in Shanghai.
Real estate & government spending have accounted for a significant share of China’s $34.5 trillion in outstanding loans, he noted.
Jul 3
Central banks in 13 percent of the world’s advanced economies plan to add to their gold reserves over the next 12 months, compared to 8 percent a year ago, according to a survey by the World Gold Council.
Roughly 60 percent of rich countries’ central banks see gold claiming a larger portion of global asset reserves over the next five years, the survey found. A year earlier, 38 percent held that view.
Jul 1
New AI research sponsored in part by Meta has again shown how AI developers are intent on inculcating their preferred biases into generative AI systems.
The paper, released 18 June, titled “Consistency-diversity-realism Pareto fronts of conditional image generative models,” suggests that when it comes to generative AI imagers, you can have the real world, or ideological diversity—but not both.
Posts
Jul 31
Coalition for a Prosperous America The coalition is a group bringing together producers—farmers, manufacturers, ranchers, & workers—“to rebuild America. We value quality employment, national security, and domestic self-sufficiency over cheap consumption,” the group’s website says.
Jul 30
“Global net wealth staged a significant recovery in 2023, growing by 4.3% after a difficult year in 2022,” according to the annual Global Wealth Report prepared by the Boston Consulting Group. Assets of the 73,000 UHNWI rose to about $400 trillion.
Jul 26
Bond buyers are trading out of the riskiest of junk bonds in favor of higher-rated securities as a rise in U.S. bankruptcies has raised concerns over the survival of highly-leveraged businesses during a prolonged period of high interest rates.
Jul 24
German auto companies BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen reported fewer sales in this year’s second quarter than during the same period last year. The drop was due significantly to decreased sales in China, which has become a key market for the companies in recent years.
Jul 22
U.S. banks are holding about $517 billion in unrealized losses, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. These are losses on bad mortgages, credit cards, and other accounts that the banks are unlikely to collect but that they haven’t yet recorded as losses on their books
Jul 18
European retailers and manufacturers are discounting consumer goods in an attempt to revive sales but the results are falling short of hopes. “Promotional intensity” (PI) measures the proportion of goods sold that are discounted or part of a special promotion.
PI rose 15 percent in this year’s first quarter, year on year, for fast-moving consumer goods in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.K, data service Circana reported.
Jul 16
A few stock market strategists continue to warn that stocks are overpriced and are extremely vulnerable.
In June, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and UBS increased their year-end market forecasts. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index already has grown by about 15 percent this year.
Jul 12
CHINA’S ECONOMY SLOWS AGAIN IN JUNE China’s manufacturing sector weakened further in June, with the National Bureau of Statistics’ purchasing managers index (PMI) remaining flat from May at 49.5, equalling analysts’ forecasts in a Reuters poll.
Jul 10
Bankruptcies in Canada rose 3.1 % in May from April and a stunning 19.2 % year on year, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy. Household bankruptcies grew at a monthly rate of 3.4 % during May and an annual rate of 11.3 % - CAIRP reported.
Jul 8
Home sales & capital goods orders both declined in May due to lingering inflation & high interest rates, Bloomberg reported. Capital goods shipments dropped by 0.5%, the sharpest dip in 3 months.
The U.S. monthly trade deficit set a 2-year record in May, widening to $100.6 BN.
Jul 4
Poor nations are being crushed by debt and advanced economies need to do more to relieve the burden, Pope Francis told the Vatican’s conference on the global debt crisis earlier this month.
Emerging nations are staggering under $29 trillion in governments’ debt. U.N. Conference.
Jul 2
WIRED SURPRISED TO FIND META USING FACEBOOK MEMORIES & PHOTOS TO TRAIN THEIR AI
Wholesale theft of human creative content & knowledge by tech companies to drive profits to themselves via generative AI, is still something that even tech savvy news outlets are coming to grips with.
