Eoin Treacy's view

A link to this week's Big Picture Long-Term video commentary is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

“Our research has found that China’s PPI has a high positive correlation with CPI in the U.S.,” said Raymond Yeung, chief economist for Greater China at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. “The higher-than-expected PPI data could impact people’s judgment of inflation pressure in the U.S. and globally, and this impact shouldn’t be underestimated.”

And

Surging commodity prices have gained the attention of China’s top policy makers, with the Financial Stability and Development Committee -- chaired by Vice Premier Liu He -- calling this week for efforts to stabilize prices. Authorities should “keep a close eye on commodities prices,” the committee said in a statement Thursday evening.

The inflation data show consumption remains subdued, giving the central bank reason not to tighten monetary policy anytime soon, according to ANZ’s Yeung.

“If inflation pressure starts to manifest in consumer prices, policy could begin to tighten,” he said.

Eoin Treacy's view

China’s massive stimulus bailed out the world following the Global Financial Crisis. It also contributed to a significant credit expansion, a bubble in shadow banking and risked asset prices turning into the mania. They have spent much of the last decade attempting to unwind the over stimulus which has contributed to rising defaults, stricter lending criteria and more market controls.

Here we look at the 2019 share of global production and at the share of global reserves for countries around the world. We use data from the United States Geological Survey’s Mineral Resources Program, and the World Nuclear Association. While production data are considered relatively accurate, reserves data is imperfect, given lack of exploration is some areas. However, we take a view that if countries have reserves, but have zero production currently, then there are likely to be technical, financial and/or institutional factors to overcome to allow production in the near future. (Note that we were unable to access reserves data for the commodities Indium and Gallium, and only included production numbers). We create a blended metric for production and reserves values for these commodities (weighting them all equally), in order to score and rank countries in this area. South Africa is ranked first here, followed by China and Chile. Australia comes in fourth, making it the highest ranking DM country on this indicator.

Eoin Treacy's view

Government policy, everywhere, is increasingly skewing towards the assumption that sea level rise, water insecurity, global warming and climate change are inevitable. Renewable energy assets are increasingly also being priced on the assumption that a migration to carbon-free economies is also inevitable.

Trillions of Dollars are being committed to building out carbon-free infrastructure, whether than is solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear or hydrogen. As that buildout gets under way it will require massive fiscal support, regulatory bypasses for permitting and taxation supports in the form of carbon credits. It will also result in a significant near-term boost in demand for all manner of resources from copper to lithium and from coal to oil.

Some interesting points made such as the unlikelihood of attaining herd immunity; the virus becoming endemic in society; no phase 3 China vaccine data published as of yet; and the acknowledgement that if we do have to live with this virus, then the treatments for Covid, once you have the pneumonia, are still not very good.

Eoin Treacy's view

Thank for this educative podcast transcript which I’m sure will be of interest to the Collective. The simple fact is that 78% of people admitted to hospital for COVID were obese. That suggests the best advice for people is to live an active healthy lifestyle and to minimise sugar consumption. That’s a sound regimen regardless of what else is happening.  

Eoin Treacy's view

One of the most commonly asked questions by subscribers is how to find details of my open traders. To make it easier I will simply repost the latest summary daily until there is a change.