Beyond The Pale -- We're Heading Headlong Into A Recession -- LA TImes Writer Reports -- February 26, 2018

Without question, the best thing on Twitter right now is "TeslaCharts." I mentioned this the other day.

The most recent chart, posted earlier today (and we will see many more before the day is over). Those following Tesla know the importance of Norway to Tesla:

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Beyond The Pale

This story was beyond the pale, even for The Los Angeles Times.

I saw this headline around midnight late last night over at The Los Angeles Times and noted the other headline stories. This morning the story was gone (it's still at The Los Angeles Times; it's just been removed from the "headline" stories) but the other headline stories were still there. Even for the LA Times, this article was beyond the pale, and once the morning editor arrived on scene, saw the Dow futures, moved the story off the front page. Pretty funny. Here's the screen shot:

I think I may spend the rest of the hour just pointing how bad this headline / story really is.

From CNBC, December 18, 2017: the Dow rises 5,000 points in one year; first time ever.

The correction and the recovery:

Today, the Dow is up for the third consecutive day; up around 200 points for the day. If recent history is any guide (to coin a phrase), the Dow will pull back, possibly even have a "down" day but right now, Dow action certainly does not fit the LA Times story.

The one-year Dow, Trump's first year as president:

Recession: no one is predicting a recession except, apparently, some folks on the fringe. In fact, for the Times story, the writer relied on one analyst who spoke at Harvard the other day suggesting that Trump's policies could result in recession. The irony is that the tea leaves, a year ago, suggested that another administration with Obama's policies would have pushed the US into a recession.

This is the 100-year Dow chart. If you look really, really closely, you might be able to see the "correction" that the LA Times writer used to suggest a) the sky is falling; and, b) we are headed straight into a recession, link here. Note that the x-axis is not linear; if it were, the graph would be even more striking:

The LA Times writer? One of the newspaper's (LA Times) most accomplished business writers. No wonder the newspaper is going broke.

I'm sure all the brokers in southern California just loved this article, as if they don't have enough problems with investors spooked by the volatility.

Speaking of volatility: it's obvious even experienced business analysts and writers are uncomfortable with statistics; humans prefer raw data. I see that everywhere (especially when it comes to atmospheric CO2 data, but that's another story for another day). The change in the Dow on a daily basis is now "striking" because the Dow is up to 26,000 points. But the actual swings, in percentage terms, is very, very small. At 26,000 points, any move less than 100 points on the Dow is simply white noise. Exhibit A: 100/26,000 = 0.4% (think atmospheric CO2: 0.04% but 400 parts per million sounds a lot scarier).

The guys that actually know something about volatility? Not so worried.

Perhaps more later; time to move on.

Good luck to all.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. The LA Times is suggesting, based on what I'm reading, that we are headed straight toward a recession. Others are not suggesting that.

By the way, I think most reasonable investors were getting worried about the Dow this past year with no correction. The correction was very, very welcome for investors, for at least two reasons:

• it suggested that the market was still working (fear vs greed); and, 
• the correction gave a lot of folks an opportunity to buy shares at a discounted price

Trump Suffers "Major Setback" Before The End Of His First Year In Office -- Bloomberg -- July 6, 2017

From Bloomberg:

A seven-year, $7.5 billion effort to build a first-of-its-kind “clean coal” power plant in Mississippi is officially over.

Mississippi regulators ordered utility owner Southern Co. on Thursday to come up with a deal that’ll have the Kemper plant -- once hailed by the Obama administration as the future of coal -- running as a natural gas-fired generator instead. That ratified Southern’s June 28 proposal to pull the plug on using coal there.

The ruling seals the fate of the Kemper plant, and memorializes the state utility commission’s call last month for the company to give up on “unproven” technologies at the plant. It also assures that customers won’t pay for the failure.

Almost three years after the plant began generating power with gas, Southern has been unable to put crucial coal-gasifiers into service.

The death of Kemper’s “clean coal” component represents a major setback for the very technologies that President Donald Trump has promoted as a way to help save mining jobs. It also marks the end of a high-profile project that was plagued by construction slowdowns, equipment failures and sliding gas prices. Kemper is already years behind schedule and more than $4 billion over budget.

Yup, a major setback for President Donald Trump.

By the way, under which president was this project started? Whatever.

The Kemper story is tracked here.

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And This Is The Problem, Folks --

Getting Caught With A Hand In The Proverbial Cookie Jar

From Joannenova.com:

The BOM got caught this week auto-adjusting cold extremes to be less cold. Lance Pidgeon of the unofficial BOM audit team noticed that the thermometer at Goulburn airport recorded – 10.4°C at 6.17am on Sunday morning, but the official BOM climate records said it was -10.0°C. (What’s the point of that decimal place?) Either way this was a new record for Goulburn in July. (The previous coldest ever July morning was -9.1°C. The oldest day in Goulburn was in August 1994 when it reached -10.9°C).

Apparently this was an automated event where the thermometer recorded something beyond a set limit, and the value put into the official database was the artificial limit. Since colder temperatures have already been recorded in Goulburn, who thought it was a good idea to trim all future minus-ten-point-somethings as if they were automatically “spurious”?

Yesterday, the BOM have acknowledged the error and at first deleted the -10.0 figure, replacing it with a blank space. Then today, after Jennifer Marohasy’s post, they’ve corrected it.

Fake News -- Global Warming -- Food & WIne -- March 19, 2017

Updates

July 14, 2017: Lobster boom on CNBC, record lobster catch being reported on the US Atlantic Coast. From Boston.com: Maine fishermen set lobster record for seventh straight year. Regular readers know my fascination with this subject. So much for global warming hurting the lobster.

Original Post

 

From Food & Wine last autumn, after six consecutive years of new US lobster records:

From Fox Business today:

By the way, this is a huge success story due to dedicated marine biologists working with lobster men on the US east coast.

I blogged about the stunning comeback of the lobster industry back on May 7, 2011. From that post:

Link here.

PORTLAND, Maine — On the heels of last year’s (2010) record-shattering catch, another bountiful lobster harvest is expected this year (2011) in Maine.

Last year, Maine fishermen caught more than 90 million pounds of lobster, breaking the record of 81.2 million pounds in 2009. Even though the resource is in strong shape and signs are pointing to another whopper of a harvest, lobstermen are approaching the season ahead with caution.

For those interested in reading about the comeback of the lobster fishing industry, read The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean. Biologists saved the industry and lobster fishermen are indebted to them. Getting there was not easy for either party, however.

I read that book a few years ago. Incredible. It was a gift from my daughter when we visited her family in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They now live in Boston area where we spend much of our time. As mentioned earlier, these are my ports o' call: Boston, the Bakken, San Pedro (California), and San Antonio (Texas).

I expect "fake news" in the political media like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and, especially, The Los Angeles Times, but in Food and Wine? Give me a break.

By the way, I visit our local grocery store about four or five times a week. It's about a 2-minute bike ride. Yesterday as I walked past the fresh seafood I thought to myself: wow, I've never seen it so well-stocked, The Alaskan king crab is incredible. I can't believe how much they ad. Same with lobster. There certainly is no shortage of lobster in the DFW area. For years there have been restrictions on the size of lobster that could be harvested, but apparently those restrictions have been relaxed: I am seeing larger and larger fresh / living lobster for sale. It's really quite remarkable, especially considering that fifteen years ago there really was a concern about declining lobster populations. But it certainly was not due to global temperatures.

Memo to self: I haven't been to a Red Lobster Restaurant in decades. Literally decades. 

Putting The Bakken Decline Rate In Perspective -- December 26, 2016

This is a link to an old article sent in by a reader. The story is from The [London] Telegraph four years ago, December 30, 2012. It has to do with wind farms, wind turbines, and economics. Data points:

• the wind industry and most analysts base wind energy economics on 20- to 25-year lifespan of the turbines
• the question is whether analysts factor in a decline rate 
• onshore wind farms generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years
• offshore: the decline rate is even worse
• blades and/or turbines will need to be replaced more quickly than the industry estimates
• (yes, Virginia, the costs will be passed on to the consumer -- by regulation and by law)
• the "load factor" for wind turbines:
  24% in the first 12 months of operation
• 11% after 15 years
• "load factor": an efficiency rating; percentage of electricity actually produced vs theoretical maximum
• the subject has been discussed ad nauseum but the industry still gets away with it: promoters allowed to "sell" their product using theoretical maximums despite knowing that in actuality, the best one can expect is less than a fourth of that in the first, declining to a tenth just ten years later
• larger wind farms have systematically worse performance than smaller wind farms

Much more at the link.

The SEC meanwhile is going after Exxon for the way it values its reserves.

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More Fake News

I thought "they" were going to quit printing "fake news." More click bait: "2016 was the year solar panels finally became cheaper than fossil fuel. Just wait for 2017."

Not holding my breath. 

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Not Fake News

China has announced it will start paying less for renewable energy in light of decreased costs to install renewable energy projects. Bloomberg is reporting that China will cut tariffs by nearly 20% in 2017 for solar energy, and 15% for wind energy.

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Is Gartman Losing It?

I was looking for something else on the blog when I ran across this old post, which reminded me of a more recent post:

• crude is not going above $55 for years -- Gartman 
• Uber is "top threat" to oil -- Gartman

It started out as a trickle, but more and more media outlets are re-posting the story: there is a small, but influential, group of investors (these articles call them "speculators" placing bets (making investments) based on possibility of $100-oil as early as 2018. When I get around to it, I will post a link but that's not on my list of things to do this morning.