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Tuesday 19th of October 2021
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Oil advanced in Asian trading after an eighth weekly gain with the market facing a global energy crunch ahead of winter. @business World Of Finance |
Futures in New York climbed toward $84 a barrel after adding 3.7% last week, capping the longest run of weekly gains since 2015.
A shortage of natural gas and coal from Asia to Europe is driving additional demand for oil products in power generation.
That’s coincided with key economies rebounding from the pandemic, leading to a significant tightening of the market.
Oil has rallied to the highest level since October 2014, in part also due to a supply disruption in the Gulf of Mexico from Hurricane Ida, following a period of demand uncertainty stemming from the delta variant of the virus.
Asian demand for U.S. crude is rising as the energy crisis boosts prices for other grades that are priced against global benchmark Brent.
“Crude is now in a full speculative rally and buying frenzy” on the back of coal and gas shortages, said Vandana Hari, the founder of energy consultant Vanda Insights.
The usual relief valves on the supply-side such as OPEC+ action or a spurt in shale output have been ruled out for now, with the only check on momentum being the demand response to higher prices, she added.
West Texas Intermediate for November delivery rose 1.3% to $83.34 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 7:30 a.m. in London after climbing 1.2% on Friday.
Brent for December settlement added 0.9% to $85.61 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange after gaining 1% on Friday.
The energy crisis has contributed to China’s economy weakening in the third quarter, as electricity shortages in September forced factories to curb output or shut completely.
The power outages also impacted crude processing last month, with refining rates dropping to the lowest level since May 2020.
India’s diesel consumption, meanwhile, is gathering pace with the onset of annual festivals, increasing sales to about pre-virus levels in the first half of October.
The battered aviation sector is also poised for a boost, with the U.S. set to open its borders to vaccinated foreigners on Nov. 8.
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These became known as the “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur. Misc. |
Wikipedia has an article on: halcyon days and it reads thus,
From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers).
When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs.
These became known as the “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successfuL |
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How to Read "Gilgamesh" @NewYorker Misc. |
A carnelian tree was in fruit,
hung with bunches of grapes, lovely to look on.
A lapis lazuli tree bore foliage,
in full fruit and gorgeous to gaze on.
To me, this is the most dazzling passage in the poem: the engulfing darkness, in which Gilgamesh can see nothing for hours—he is just an organism, in a hole—and then, suddenly, light, color, beautiful globes of purple and red hanging from the trees. God’s world, made for us, or so we thought.
Gilgamesh does not linger in the garden. He at last finds Uta-napishti, the man who gazed on death and survived. Gilgamesh wants to know, How did you do this? Unhelpfully, Uta-napishti explains:
“No one at all sees Death,
no one at all sees the face [of Death,]
no one at all [hears] the voice of Death,
Death so savage, who hacks men down. . . .
Ever the river has risen and brought us the flood,
the mayfly floating on the water.
On the face of the sun its countenance gazes,
then all of a sudden nothing is there!” |
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8 SEP 17 :: :"A screaming comes across the sky", North Korea. Law & Politics |
Gravity’s Rainbow is a 1973 novel by Thomas Pynchon which is about the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military.
In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the “Schwarzgerät” slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number “00000”.
As the world watches PyongYang, I cannot help wondering if Kim Jong-Un has read Pynchon which speaks of “A screaming comes across the sky”
“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refused to believe -that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return.’’
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Netflix's 'Squid Game' estimated to be worth about $900 mln - Bloomberg News @Reuters World Of Finance |
Oct 17 (Reuters) - "Squid Game," Netflix Inc's (NFLX.O) biggest original series launch, is estimated to be worth almost $900 million for the streaming giant, Bloomberg News reported late on Saturday, citing figures from an internal Netflix document.
The nine-episode thriller, in which cash-strapped contestants play childhood games with deadly consequences in a bid to win 45.6 billion won ($38.58 million), became an international hit after it launched last month.
In comparison to its estimated net worth, the show cost just $21.4 million to produce, Bloomberg said.
According to the report, about 132 million had watched at least two minutes of the show in its first 23 days, easily breaking the record set by U.K. costume drama "Bridgerton," which was streamed by 82 million accounts in its first 28 days.
Netflix had earlier announced the show had amassed 111 million fans, but Bloomberg said those figures were based on slightly older data.
Los Gatos, California-based Netflix estimated that 89% of people who started the show watched more than one episode, the news agency said, and 66% of the viewers finished watching the series in the first 23 days.
Netflix declined to comment on the report. An attorney for the company told Bloomberg that it would be inappropriate for Bloomberg to disclose the confidential data contained in the documents that it had reviewed.
The series is also the first Korean drama to snatch the top spot on Netflix in the United States, and has even spurred interest among people in learning Korean.
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Reed Hastings: ‘ @netflix is still in challenger status’ @FT World Of Finance |
Reed Hastings is the billionaire founder of Netflix, the crusher of Blockbuster, and the one who turned Hollywood upside down with streaming tech
Netflix launched 1997 a service offering DVD hire by post, aiming to bring internet savvy to the ever-frustrating, damn-the-late-fees world of video rental.
“Covid could have been an internet virus taking down all the routers of the world and our business would be out and restaurants would be in,”
“And instead tragically it is a biological one, so everybody is locked up and we had the greatest growth in the first half of this year that we ever had.”
“If you just say no rules, then it is kind of anarchy,” he replies. “The question is, can you manage through values and context, so everyone is doing the right thing without central co-ordination? It’s the jazz metaphor versus the orchestra.”
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SEP-2019 a ‘’conviction’’ Buy at Friday’s closing price of $270.75. $NFLX World Of Finance |
My Mind kept going back to an Article I read in 2012 ‘’Annals of Technology Streaming Dreams’’ by John Seabrook January 16, 2012.
“People went from broad to narrow,” he said, “and we think they will continue to go that way—spend more and more time in the niches— because now the distribution landscape allows for more narrowness’’
Netflix is not a US business, it is a global business. The Majority of Analysts are in the US and in my opinion, these same Analysts have an international ‘’blind spot’’
Once Investors appreciate that the Story is an international one and not a US one anymore, we will see the price ramp to fresh all-time highs.
I, therefore, am putting out a ‘’conviction’’ Buy on Netflix at Friday’s closing price of $270.75.
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U.S. envoy to visit Sudan as "most dangerous" crisis intensifies @Axios Africa |
U.S. envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman will visit Khartoum this week amid what Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has called the “worst and most dangerous" crisis of Sudan’s transition to democracy
Feltman will arrive in Khartoum later this week for his second visit in three weeks. He also called Hamdok and Burhan last week to stress “the importance of adhering to the transitional order.” The State Department declined to comment for this story.
Egypt has been deepening its engagement with the Sudanese military, while the UAE and Saudi Arabia are allied with the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group that is also vying for power in Khartoum, says Yezid Sayigh, who runs the Carnegie Endowment’s program on program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States.
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Rating Action: @MoodysInvSvc changes the Democratic Republic of the Congo's outlook to positive; rating affirmed at Caa1 Africa |
Moody's Investors Service has today changed the outlook to positive from stable and affirmed the Caa1 long-term issuer ratings of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The positive outlook recognises the DRC's robust economic prospects driven by the mining sector and potential for improved economic resiliency from the implementation of structural reforms under the current IMF program.
The positive outlook also reflects the increase in official foreign currency reserves which are set to continue to accrue over the coming years, may reduce the exposure to downturns in commodity prices and the severe episodes of macroeconomic volatility associated with them.
Moody's expects the DRC's extractive sector to continue play a pivotal role in the economy as a main source of growth in the future amid strong global demand for the DRC's main exports, namely copper and cobalt.
This follows the strong performance in the past year, with the mining sector growing 9.7% and more than compensating for the 1.3% contraction of the rest of the economy in the wake of the coronavirus shock.
Copper production reached a record level at almost 1.6 million tons last year compared to 1.1 million in 2017. With the Kamoa-Kakula mine -- the continent's largest copper mine project already ahead of schedule -- the DRC's copper production is set to exceed 2.5 million tons over the next decade.
Supported by the rapid development of its mining sector and conducive prices for DRC's main exports, Moody's expects that the DRC's real GDP growth is likely to exceed 6% on average over the 2021-2025 period.
Furthermore, the authorities' commitment to implement the structural reforms included in the three-year $1.5 billion IMF program will support growth further and help to strengthen economic resilience overall.
The improvement in the DRC's external position is evident in the stabilization of the exchange rate and growing foreign exchange reserves.
FX reserves now stand above $3 billion as of end-September, up from $0.7 billion in 2020, having increased by close to $700 million during the first nine months of 2021 mainly due to the performance of the mining sector and further benefitting from the $1.5 billion SDR transfer from the recent increased allocation for all IMF members.
Moody's expects DRC's gross official foreign exchange reserves to reach at least $5 billion at the end of 2025 (corresponding to around 5 months of imports cover) and the current account deficit, which has been narrowing in the years since 2013 with the development of the mining sector and was estimated around 2.3% of GDP in 2020, to continue to narrow.
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