Copper is at a key level and its direction may indicate where global equity and risk markets are headed in the next few weeks. A break through short-term support may signal deeper problems in China’s economy.
We’re pretty bearish short-term on China’s prospects to make the transition to a domestic demand driven economy, but do remain flexible. At the end of the day, it’s not what we think but what the markets think.
Our bet is the official data will come in better than the HSBC Flash PMI and the markets will once again get lathered up about a soft landing. Not that simple and too sheepish, in our opinion. Watch if that rally fizzles. This makes for very tricky entry points.
The political and business elite of Hong Kong elected a real estate surveyor with close ties to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party on Sunday to become the territory’s next chief executive.
Crowds of pro-democracy protesters tried to march into the convention center where the voting was held; when the police stopped them, some charged the police lines and were turned back with pepper spray.
The victor, Leung Chun-ying, 57, won 689 of the 1,132 votes cast by members of the city’s Election Committee. He quickly tried to allay fears that he would restrict civil liberties in the former British colony or interrupt its gradual progress toward greater democracy.
At a news conference soon after winning a five-year term that will start on July 1, Mr. Leung said that freedom of the press and freedom of assembly were “core values” of Hong Kong and that he would protect them. He promised to focus on giving the people of Hong Kong better access to housing, education and medical care and added that “the freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong people will not change.”
But in a measure of the concern and even fear that Mr. Leung’s ascension to the job has generated, his election was immediately denounced by the pro-business Liberal Party, which has been a staunch ally of the local government and Beijing until now.
Keep politics on your radar. Potential big leadership changes coming in China, France, and the United States, among others.
After looking at many global equity index charts today, we get a sense that stocks are staring to, or trying to rollover. U.S. markets look the strongest and Asia the weakest.
We don’t know where the markets are headed next week, but we’ll be taking our ques from these key levels.
1386.93 – Friday’s low. Even though the S&P500 made an impressive low and was able to close in the green for the day, the index made a higher low and lower high than the prior day;
1399.68– Thursday’s high. Only a couple points higher, but a close above this level will pave the way to test the 1414 recent high;
1381.13 – 20-day moving average. The S&P500 has only pierced the 20-day oncesince the latest leg of the rally began on December 19th.
1378.04 –February 29th high and resistance of prior trading range, which is now a support level.
1352.0 – 5o-day moving average. The last time the S&P500 closed, or was even close to, the 50-day was on December 19th. 1340.03 – The March 6th low a relatively strong area support, which was reinforced in the first few weeks of February.
Two of our favorite thinkers, Niall Ferguson and Peter Thiel, discuss many of the most important issues of the day. Good stuff!
A conversation with: Peter Thiel, founding CEO of PayPal; Member, Board of Directors, Facebook; entrepreneur; and venture capitalist and Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School.
Hugh Hendry is one of our favorite hedge fund managers and OSD — one smart dude. Watch how H-squared gives facials to the academics in the video, especially Jeffrey Sachs. Stiglitz was soooo wrong on Greece!
Even you don’t like the guy or disagree with his market views, you must concede he’s not afraid to speak his mind without pulling punches.
Here are 6-10 of MIT’s Technology Review’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2011. We’re posting in increments of five every few days as not to overwhelm you with info and required reading.
Click here for 1-5 of TR’s most innovation companies of 2011.
Technology Review uses the following criteria to choose the most innovative companies,
What is a TR50 company? It is a business whose innovations force other businesses to alter their strategic course. TR50 members are nominated by Technology Review’s editors, who look for companies that over the last year have demonstrated original and valuable technology, are bringing that technology to market at a significant scale, and are clearly influencing their competitors.
6) Athenahealth
Why: Its systems help doctors and patients with the morass of medical records and billing paperwork.
Key innovation: Developed cloud-based software for electronic health records and practice management.
7) Babcock & Wilcox
Why: The company is developing cheaper nuclear reactors.
Key innovation: A simplified modular reactor design decreases size and cost.
8) Better Place
Why: Its new infrastructure extends the effective range of electric vehicles.
Key innovation: Has designed and installed battery swap stations, a charging network, and a central control station to manage a fleet of electric cars in Israel.
9) Bluefin Labs
Why: It mines social-media sites to gauge the audience response to television shows and advertising.
Key innovation: Natural-language analysis of comments on social-media sites provides fine-grained information about audience size and sentiment.
10) Cellular Dynamics International
Why: Using human iPS cells in drug screening could accelerate the development of new therapies.
Key innovation: Its new product derived from iPS cells is meant for use in vascular targeted drug discovery, tissue regeneration, and life science research.
Apartment blocks in Sesena in the Toledo Provence near Madrid, Spain, seen on February 9, 2012. Only a 45-minute drive from downtown Madrid, towering vacant apartment blocks loom over empty streets and weed-filled lots. Apartments galore are for sale and rent, and prices are plunging. More than 13,000 apartments were supposed to go up here to create a mini-city for 30,000 people. But only 5,100 were built, many are uninhabited and most commercial storefronts in the mega-development are bricked shut. Spain’s phenomenal real estate crash and economic implosion has turned what was supposed to become a vibrant suburban paradise for young Spanish couples and their children into one of the most visible monuments of the country’s real estate boom gone bust.
(AP Photo/Paul White)
(click here if chart is not observable)
