#WSJ COMMODITIES CRUNCH - FIRST RULE OF #INVESTING - #MOTHER #NATURE BATS LAST

  

Cash Crunch Drives Wild Moves in Commodities

Exchanges and brokers are demanding more money upfront to trade oil, wheat and natural gas, straining markets amid supply disruptions from war in Ukraine.

Commodity prices are hot right now. But the prices investors are paying in the open market for commodities like coffee, copper or corn can have little to do with the price customers pay at the store. 

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WHAT IS THE LINK WITH RETAIL PRICES?

 T

Expect More #Turmoil And #Market #Distemper

 

More turmoil ahead! This may just be beginning of market upheaval

By Nikos Chrysoloras, Jessica Menton & Thyagaraju Adinarayan, Bloomberg

Synopsis

With a sharp and widespread economic slowdown looming over the horizon, here’s a guide on how to prepare based on conversations and notes by fund managers and strategists

Even after one of the worst starts to an equity trading year in history, the market upheaval might just be getting started. Ominous signs are piling up that more turmoil is still coming, as key indicators point toward a potential recession. That could deepen the market rout triggered by the Federal Reserve leading a hawkish shift among central banks and war in Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury yield curve has collapsed to near inversion -- a situation when short-term rates exceed those with longer tenors which have often preceded a downturn. In Europe, energy costs have climbed to unprecedented levels, as sanctions against Russia exacerbate a global commodity crunch.

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#OIL #MARKETS FACE - UNKNOWN, UNKNOWNS - #TREPIDATIONS

 

March 13, 2022

In the Know, Ahead of Markets, Deciding Wisely...'

• Oil settles up but posts biggest weekly decline since Nov
• 
  
• Supply Uncertainty Keeps Oil Markets On Edge

• Column: Global diesel shortage raises risk of oil price spike

• November Non-OPEC Oil Production Ticks Up

Such Ups And Downs

#TIME to Short #EVMakers As Chip, Battery and #Lithium Shortages #Devastate Production?

TIME to Short EVMakers?

Consider the state of supplies and resources as set out by the following articles and videos. In all, multiple variables are impacting production and deliveries leading to concerns as to whether the industry may remain viable. Last we heard, you make cannot something from nothing unless you are Lawrence Krauss selling snake-oil physics. Even then, it takes billions of years and lots of bangs...that won't make 4th quarter results. Hmm...

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE 

Investors' Insights Editors

Chinese EV firms face new hurdle as battery supply bottleneck leads to delays in deliveries

• Last week, Xpeng had to apologise to customers for delays in deliveries of P5 sedans due to insufficient battery supply
• Tesla asks buyers to wait for as long as four months before its vehicles are delivered
• South China Morning Post
• Read More
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Global Chip Shortage to Stretch Through 2022 Says US - Bloomberg News

Jan 25, 2022 — The Biden administration has concluded that a global semiconductor shortage will persist until at least the 

e second half of this year, Read More

Factbox: World faces shortage of lithium for electric vehicle batteries - Reuters

MELBOURNE, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Lithium is in hot demand due to rapidly growing production of electric vehicles that use lithium-ion batteries, but there is a global supply shortage of the metal, with western countries racing to bring on new mines to compete with China.

Compiled by Sonali Paul; Editing by Rashmi Aich

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OPEC Production Problems Push Oil Prices Higher

By Josh Owens - Feb 11, 2022, 2:00 PM CST

News of an 'imminent' nuclear deal with Iran sent oil prices lower this week, but the reality of OPEC underproduction soon shifted sentiment and sent prices higher on Friday.

Friday, February 11th, 2022

Wherever you looked this week, it seemed that Iran was at the center of all oil market news. The prospect of a breakthrough in the nuclear deal, a breakthrough that was assumed to be imminent by several participants, drove oil prices lower over the week after last week’s bull run to mid $90s. The fact that Iran’s crude would take several months to reach markets if a deal were agreed upon shows that this was largely driven by sentiment. On the fundamental front, OPEC+ underperformance is potentially flirting with 1 million b/d in February, news that led even the IEA to get involved in pushing for more oil. The IEA joined the ranks of India and other major importers, all calling upon Middle Eastern exporters to bring more crude into the markets.

IEA Calls Out Saudi Arabia and UAE. The International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that Saudi Arabia and the UAE could use their spare capacity to compensate for the ever-worsening underperformance of OPEC+, with the missing volumes totaling some 800,000 b/d since the start of 2021. 

Global Shortage Spreads to Diesel. Global shortages of diesel have become the new talk of the town as inventories in Northwest Europe fell to their lowest level since at least 2008, whilst Singapore gasoil stocks also dropped to multi-year lows of 8.2 million barrels. 

Libya Gets Closer to the Brink, Again. The prospects of oil production in Libya were hampered after the eastern-based parliament in Tobruk named Fathi Bashagha the country’s new prime minister, unbeknownst to the other government in Tripoli, ratcheting up risks of further infighting. 

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They Say A #Picture Is Worth A Thousand #Words

                                                                   

                                 I AGREE 

WHY?

• • 
    

  • Be sure to wash your hands and all will be well 

  • 
    
  •  Another Picture Worth A Thousand Words. 

    
    
    
  • August 5,2021
  • 
    
  • The question is why do we overpopulate? Because it is evidenced to be innate in biological entities to comply with the universal laws of entropy and consume more energy to survive and procreate for another day. It is an endless battle - as chaos drives the pursuit to grow, acquire. and use more energy to return the systems to a temporary equilibrium. Only to start the cycle once again. 
  • 
    
  • We observe this phenomenon in the smallest of cell constructs to the largest of vertebrate creatures (remember the mice utopia experiment) - ultimately they outgrow their respective habitats and go extinct. I have seen no evidence anywhere in the universe that any biological construct has dispensation from the laws and cycle of entropy and thus its consequential guaranteed final outcome - EXTINCTION
  • 
    
  • In the end, all biological constructs are imprisoned in a Devil's Bargain that cannot be breached or voided to avoid its slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.

  
  

                 T A McNeil

         CEO Founder

         First Financial Insights Inc 

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There Are Exponential Limits to Growth We Cannot Defeat.

WATCH

The Final Warning

Energy 2050 Markets Gloom - Days of Doom (Part 6)

Energy 2050 Apocalypse

World Energy to 2050 
Forty Years of Decline

Putting Energy Sources in Perspective
Part 6

By Paul Cherfurka

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/

Putting Energy Sources in Perspective

Figure 11: Energy Use by Source, 1965 to 2100

Figure 11 shows all the above curves on a single graph, giving us a sense of the relative timing of the various production peaks as well as the rates of increase or decline of the different sources. As you can see, fossil fuels are by far the most important contributors to the world's current energy mix, but oil and natural gas will decline rapidly over the coming decades. By the middle of the century the dominant player is coal, with oil, gas, hydro, nuclear power and renewables making very similar contributions to the world's mid-century energy supply.

  

Figure 12: The Global Energy Mix in 1965, 2005 and 2050

Figure 12 shows the changing contribution of each energy source relative to the others over time.  There are three interesting things to note about this progression.

The first is the large role that coal plays in the global supply picture.  That situation is not entirely unexpected, but it hints at the difficulty we will have trying to replace our dirtiest and most dangerous energy source as our supplies of oil and gas decline.

The second is the increasing diversity of energy sources over time.  This change is a good thing, as it indicates that various regions will have a much wider range of energy options available to them than in the past.

Finally, by mid-century energy sources that do not generate greenhouse gases may be supplying 40% of the world's power as opposed to 13% today and only 5% in 1965.  Combined with an overall (albeit involuntary) reduction in global energy use by 2050, that shift bodes well for reducing the carbon dioxide our civilization exhales into the atmosphere.

Figure 13: Total Energy Use, 1965 to 2100

Figure 13 has all the energy curves added together to show the overall shape of total world energy consumption. This graph aggregates all the rises, peaks and declines to give a sense of the complete energy picture.  The graph shows a strong peak in about 2020, with an ongoing decline out to 2050. The main reason for the decline is the loss of oil and gas. The decline is cushioned by an increase in hydro and renewables over the middle of the century, and averages out to 1% per year.

Fuel vs. Electricity

The energy we use can be broadly categorized into two classes, fuel and electricity.  The former consists of oil and gas, the two sources that will be in decline over the next half century.  The amount of electricity we produce from all other sources including coal will increase, though not enough to offset the decline in fuels in terms of the energy they supply.  Figure 14 shows show how the split between the two classes of energy will change over the next 45 years.

Figure 14: Fuel and Electricity Use, Today and 2050

In addition to the loss of transportation mobility it represents, the loss of the enormous contributions of oil and natural gas means that the total amount of energy available to humanity by the middle of the century may be only 70% of the amount we use now. That shortfall contains an ominous message for our future that is the subject of the next section.

Next

Part 7: Effects and Conclusion

(February 27, 2016)