Brexit Vote Is About the Supremacy of Parliament and Nothing Else: Why I Am Voting to Leave the EU
Here is a brief sample from this informative column by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for The Telegraph:
… the EU as constructed is not only corrosive but ultimately dangerous, and that is the phase we have now reached as governing authority crumbles across Europe.
The Project bleeds the lifeblood of the national institutions, but fails to replace them with anything lovable or legitimate at a European level. It draws away charisma, and destroys it. This is how democracies die.
"They are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a gradual process of internal decay and mounting indifference, until one suddenly notices that they have become something different, like the republican constitutions of Athens or Rome, or the Italian city-states of the Renaissance," says Lord Sumption of our Supreme Court.
It is a quarter century since I co-wrote the leader for this newspaper on the Maastricht summit. We warned that Europe's elites were embarking on a reckless experiment, piling Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa with a vandal's disregard for the cohesion of their ancient polities.
We reluctantly supported John Major's strategy of compromise, hoping that later events would "check the extremists and put the EC on a sane and realistic path."
This did not happen, as Europe's Donald Tusk confessed two weeks ago, rebuking the elites for seeking a “utopia without nation states" and over-reaching on every front.
“Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that the citizens of Europe do not share our Euro-enthusiasm,” he said.
If there were more Tusks at the helm, one might still give the EU Project the benefit of the doubt. Hard experience - and five years at the coal face in Brussels - tells me others would seize triumphantly on a British decision to remain, deeming it submission from fear. They would pocket the vote. Besides, too much has happened that cannot be forgiven.
David Fuller's view
Subscribers with a vote on this important subject will make up their own minds, and I suspect we will all be relieved when the referendum is over. My policy with this service has always been to share what interests me, including articles and reports, while also commenting on related market prospects.
This item continues in the Subscriber’s Area and is followed by a number of links to articles from The Telegraph which interested me while I visited the Hay-on-Wye Festival and mostly enjoyed being outdoors during two glorious, sunny weeks in the beautiful Brecon Beacons.
My personal portfolio
A trade increased; a partial profit taken.
David Fuller's view
Here is the Brochure. The seminar room is now three-quarters full.
Could we have a more interesting markets background to discuss on 11th July? I doubt it and am looking forward to discussing market opportunities with subscribers and their friends at this post-Brexit seminar, held in the comfort of the East India Club. David Brown will provide new material of considerable interest to long-term investors. Iain Little will also have some new material, in addition to his review of interesting investment trusts.
Presentations commence at 5:30pm and usually end around 8:30pm, followed by further conversation and refreshments at East India’s cash bar.
Bitcoin Surges to Two-Year High as Supply Seen Shrinking in July
This article by Justina Lee for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Profits from mining bitcoins will be reduced in July, a process that’s written into the code to limit supply, according to Chinese exchanges OKCoin and Huobi. Increased attention from venture capitalists and banks on blockchain, the technology of digital ledgers, has boosted bitcoin’s legitimacy, Jack C. Liu, chief strategy officer at OKCoin, said in Hong Kong.
"The halving of the supply of Bitcoin is attracting many retail investors," Liu said. "More broadly, we continue to see follow-through from the blockchain hype cycle translating to interest in bitcoin the asset."
The price of bitcoin has mostly recovered following a steep decline to less than $200 in January of last year from more than $1,000 in December 2013.
Bitcoin’s rebound is coinciding with weakness in the yuan, which fell the most in two months on Monday in Shanghai. Losses have accelerated in recent weeks as the dollar strengthened and China’s economic outlook deteriorated. Data Monday showed industrial output rose 6 percent in May from a year earlier, while fixed-asset investment increased 9.6 percent in the first five months of 2016, missing all 38 economist forecasts.
"What we’ve seen over the weekend is more of the same: Chinese fear of a slowing economy and the yuan potentially looking to make another move lower," said Ryan Rabaglia, head of wholesale product management at ANX International in Hong Kong.
"Each time we see yuan weakening we tend to see a triggering of capital outflows out of China, and bitcoin has been on the winning end of that."
Eoin Treacy's view
China represents approximately 80% of bitcoin trading activity. This graphic of live bitcoin trades helps to illustrate just how much on an influence Chinese buying has on demand. With the halving of the reward for minting new bitcoins expected to occur sometime between now and July interest in the cryptocurrency is increasing.
Microsoft to Buy LinkedIn in Deal Valued at $26.2 Billion
This article by Molly Schuetz for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
The deal is the largest under the tenure of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who has been reshaping Microsoft since taking over in 2014 to appeal more to business customers with cloud-based services and productivity tools. LinkedIn isn’t an obvious fit in the ongoing restructuring, but gives Microsoft the biggest global social network for professional that’s used by job seekers, recruiters and human resources teams. In a statement, Nadella said the acquisition could drive growth for LinkedIn as well as Microsoft’s Office 365 and Dynamics services.
“Just as we have changed the way the world connects to opportunity, this relationship with Microsoft, and the combination of their cloud and LinkedIn’s network, now gives us a chance to also change the way the world works,” Weiner said in the statement.
Eoin Treacy's view
It is very questionable whether Microsoft will get their money back following such a large outlay on a company like LinkedIn and the valuations on the sector generally are not exactly cheap. With the notable exception of Facebook social media/new economy services companies have been underperforming for quite some time. Today’s announcement of a major takeover in the sector has the potential to revitalise perceptions subject to sound fundamentals.
Batteries Storing Power Seen as Big as Rooftop Solar in 12 Years
This article by Anna Hirtenstein for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
The spread of electric cars is driving up demand for lithium-ion batteries, the main technology for storage devices that are attached to utility grids and rooftop solar units.
That’s allowing manufactures to scale up production and slash costs. BNEF expects the technology to cost $120 a kilowatt-hour by 2030 compared with more than $300 now and $1,000 in 2010.
That would help grid managers solve the intermittency problem that comes with renewables -- wind and solar plants don’t work in calm weather or at night, creating a need for baseload supplies to fill the gaps. Today, that’s done by natural gas and coal plants, but the role could eventually be passed
to power-storage units.
The researcher estimates 35 percent of all light vehicles sold will be electric in 2040, equivalent to 41 million cars.
That’s about 90 times the figure in 2015. Investment in renewables is expected to rise to $7.8 trillion by then, compared with $2.1 trillion going into fossil-fuel generation.
“The battery industry today is driven by consumer products like computers and mobile phones,” said Claire Curry, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in New York. “Electric vehicles will be the driver of battery technology change, and that will drive down costs significantly.”
The industry still has a long way to go. About 95 percent of the world’s grid-connected energy storage today is still pumped hydro, according to the U.S. Energy Department. That’s when surplus energy is used to shift large amounts of water uphill to a reservoir so it can be used to produce electricity later at a hydropower plant. The technology only works in areas with specific topographies.
There are several larger-scale battery projects in the works, according to S&P Global. They include a 90-megawatt system in Germany being built by Essen-based STEAG Energy Services GmbH and Edison International’s 100-megawatt facility in Long Beach, California.
“Utility-scale storage is the new emerging market for batteries, kind of where electric vehicles were five years ago,” said Simon Moores, managing director at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a battery researcher based in London. “EVs are now coming of age.”
Eoin Treacy's view
Innovation in the chemistry that supports batteries has been a lot more difficult to achieve than the Moore’s law related enhancements that have been commonplace in chip manufacturing and increasingly in solar technologies. Nevertheless as the requirement for storage grows increasingly urgent, the capital expended on R&D is expanding and innovations are being achieved. In the meantime economies of scale through larger manufacturing plants are helping to drive efficiencies.