It has been a busy morning, both researching for the future and playing the market now. The trades come quickly when the market wants to go higher. As well, when the market disregards the fundamentals for nonsense (as it is this week), it makes for greater opportunity to get in low and sell high. Thus, one stays busy.
Home depots earnings came out today and they are good, better than good, exceptional, given the current state of the economy according to the naysayers. I don’t mean to sound so dang repetitive, but revenue rising for Home Depot means consumers are buying, right? Point made.
- Home Depot (HD), the world’s largest home improvement retailer, reported Q3 earnings per share of $0.95, which was above the FactSet consensus estimate of $0.89. Revenues for the quarter were reported at $19.47 billion, which was above the estimate of $19.18 billion. Same-store sales comparisons showed a gain of +7.4% versus the consensus for +5.9%.
Speaking of forex … Okay, so I wasn’t, but I am now because the following information speaks to the forex market, as it does to US trade with China. One of the issues the US has had with China, nay, the world has had with China, for quite some time now is their tight control over their money. It has created an un-level playing field for world trade. It appears, the Chinese government is about to bring resolution to that issue in a positive way.
- The People’s Bank of China intends to “basically” exit from regular intervention in the forex markets, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan has said. Writing in a book that outlines reform programs that the Chinese government announced last week, Zhou said the PBOC will extend the yuan’s trading band in an “orderly” way.
If the Chinese government follows through on this, and I suspect they will, as they seem to be very good at following through on economic reform, the positive implications for global trade, especially for the US and Europe, are numerous.
Speaking of Europe …
- European car sales rose for a second month in a row in October, climbing 4.6% on year to 1.04M registrations after a 5.5% gain in September.
- The German ZEW survey of investor confidence has climbed to its highest in over four years in November, rising to 54.6 from 52.8 in October and topping consensus of 54.
Even though Europe might end the year with negative car sales year-over-year, the trend is in the right direction – up. The economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany, becoming more confident is also a step in the right direction. An economically rebounding Europe coinciding with an economically reforming China combined with the US consumer continuing to spend discretionary dollars means the global economy will keep on ticking upward.
A global economy ticking upward means more room for innovation, especially from countries that are known for innovation.
Graphene Supercapacitors Ready for Electric Vehicle Energy Storage, Say Korean Engineers
The above title references an MIT article about a technological advance in the charging time and capacity for electric car batteries. If the grapheme capacitor technology does work as claimed, it will positively change both the driving capabilities and the cost of electric cars.
- Conventional batteries take so long to charge that they cannot efficiently store braking energy. Graphene super-capacitors store almost as much but charge in just 16 seconds.
The battery work out of Korea is real, timely, and extremely promising.
Researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea say they have a solution based on the wonder material of the moment – graphene. They have built high-performance super-capacitors out of graphene that store almost as much energy as a lithium-ion battery. They can charge and discharge in seconds and maintain all this over many tens of thousands of charging cycles.
The above is inspirational. It makes me want to keep on searching out opportunity in the EV aspect of the auto industry. In fact, I gotta go now. I have work to do.
Trade in the day; Invest in your life …
