David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Technology

    U.S. says ransomware attack on meatpacker JBS likely from Russia

    This article from Reuters may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    The company, which has its North American operations headquartered in Greeley, Colorado, controls about 20% of the slaughtering capacity for U.S. cattle and hogs, according to industry estimates.

    U.S. beef and pork prices are already rising as China increases imports, animal feed costs rise and slaughterhouses face a dearth of workers.

    The cyberattack on JBS could push U.S. beef prices even higher by tightening supplies, said Brad Lyle, chief financial officer for consultancy Partners for Production Agriculture.

    Any impact on consumers would depend on how long production is down, said Matthew Wiegand, a risk management consultant and commodity broker at FuturesOne in Nebraska.

    "If it lingers for multiple days, you see some food service shortages," Wiegand added.

    Two kill and fabrication shifts were canceled at JBS's beef plant in Greeley due to the cyberattack, representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 said in an email. JBS Beef in Cactus, Texas, also said on Facebook it would not run on Tuesday.

    JBS Canada said in a Facebook post that shifts had been canceled at its plant in Brooks, Alberta, on Monday and one shift so far had been canceled on Tuesday.

     

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    Advance your thinking on 10 critical themes

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from UBS which may be of interest. Here is a section on new materials:

    Solar Power's Decade of Falling Costs Is Thrown Into Reverse

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    For the solar industry, the timing couldn’t be worse. Renewable energy finally has a champion in the White House and ambitious climate goals have been announced across Europe and Asia.

    At the center of the crisis is polysilicon, an ultra-refined form of silicon, one of the most abundant materials on Earth that’s commonly found in beach sand. As the solar industry geared up to meet an expected surge in demand for modules, makers of polysilicon were unable to keep up. Prices for the purified metalloid have touched $25.88 a kilogram, from $6.19 less than a year ago, according to PVInsights.

    Polysilicon prices are expected to remain strong through the end of 2022, according to Roth Capital Partners analysts including Philip Shen. 

    And the problem isn’t limited to polysilicon. The solar industry is facing “pervasive upstream supply-chain cost challenges,” panel manufacturer Maxeon Solar Technologies Ltd. said in April.

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    Email of the day - on type-2 top formation development and completion

    Thank you, Eoin, for the service. Your call on BTC topping out was excellent. Could you please explain again the signals for your call? You were discussing inconsistency in trend, I believe. In what period? Also, it would be great to hear (based on your latest audio comment) why do you think BTC is not in a secular bull? Thank you. Kind regards, 

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    Bitcoin Plunge Wipes $500 Billion From Value in Crypto Rout

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Bitcoin is now down more than 50% from its record of almost $65,000 set in April. Fueling the volatility is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose social-media utterances have whipsawed the crypto community. A statement from the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday reiterating that digital tokens can’t be used as a form of payment added to the selloff.

    The selloff dominated market chatter on a day when equities also were tumbling and the Federal Reserve was set to release minutes from its latest meeting. #Cryptotrading was trending on Twitter, where critics and fans alike were in a tither over the rout. Critics had warned for weeks that the moves in crypto assets were unsustainable and that any sign of a selloff would lead to a rout.

    “This is going to be the first ‘welcome to crypto’ day for a lot of new entrants,” said Stephane Ouellette, chief executive and co-founder of FRNT Financial. “The history of these assets has been littered with aggressive rallies and sickening selloffs.”

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    Aliens Are (Probably) Not Harassing the U.S. Navy

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Starting in the 1950s, as UFO sightings began proliferating across the U.S., both the Air Force and the CIA tried to conceal their interest in the matter. They did so in part because they feared that the Soviets were trying to sow hysteria and wanted to calm the public, but they also knew that many of the sightings were of top-secret U.S. spy planes. In the end, such deceptions were counterproductive. Nobody believed the denials, the government lost credibility, and the hysteria only grew. An internal CIA review in 1997 found that the agency’s duplicity only added “to a growing sense of public distrust.”

    That skepticism is one reason why, in the decades since, garden-variety military incidents and mishaps have repeatedly been transformed into galactic conspiracies believed by a shockingly high percentage of Americans. With trust in the U.S. government once again at a low ebb, misleading the public with regard to UAPs would be a serious mistake.

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    Square Halts Bitcoin Purchases After Loss, Financial News Says

    This note from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers.

    Jack Dorsey’s Square is not planning on buying more bitcoin for its corporate treasuries after losing
    $20m on a $220m investment in the cryptocurrency last quarter, Financial News reports, citing CFO Amrita Ahuja.

    * Bitcoin represents about 5% of Square’s cash on hand
    * NOTE: Square Revenue More Than Triples, Driven by Bitcoin Sales
     

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    Email of the day on India's demographics

    You say that India has a significant demographic tailwind, taking the consensus view that that is an investment plus; one that is embedded in so many analyses on India. For a challenge to this listen to the Meb Faber interview with Vikram Mansharamani, 50 minutes in for 5 minutes, on his take on India and why in fact the demographics are a head not a tail wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM40JZ3NSNk&t=30s

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    Bitcoin Falls Below $50,000 as Musk Calls Energy Use 'Insane'

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “Surely he would have done his diligence prior to accepting Bitcoin?” said Nic Carter, founding partner at Castle Island Ventures, and a leading voice among defenders of Bitcoin’s energy use. “Very odd and confusing to see this quick reversal.”

    Musk’s decision in February to buy $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and plan to accept it as a form of payment has been a major catalyst in the crypto bull market. In the eyes of analysts, it helped add legitimacy to the token and usher in new investors.

    Musk’s crypto tweets have often been in jest, and his attention toward Dogecoin brought the joke token into the mainstream. He’s quipped about being the “Dogefather” in the past, and tweeted on Tuesday, “Do you want Tesla to accept Doge?”

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    Over 700 Barges Stuck in Mississippi River From Bridge Crack

    This article for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “The river is the jugular for the export market in the Midwest for both corn and beans,” said Colin Hulse, a senior risk management consultant at StoneX in Kansas City. “The length of the blockage is important. If they cannot quickly get movement, then it is a big deal. If it slows or restricts movement for a longer period it can be a big deal as well.”

    The New Orleans Port Region moved 47% of waterborne agricultural exports in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The majority of these exports were bulk grains and bulk grain products, such as corn, soybeans, animal feed and rice. The region also supports a significant amount of edible oil exports, such as soybean and corn oils and even attracted 13% of U.S. waterborne frozen poultry exports in 2017.

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