Member Info for halfpenny

Derampers gone to bed :)

Only two more weeks until goes ex dividend.

An interest rate reduction by the Federal Reserve, if it were to happen, probably wouldn't lead to a big increase in stocks, the chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs told CNBC on Tuesday.

"A lot of that rise in the market, in my estimation, is already behind us," said Goldman's David Kostin in a "Squawk on the Street" interview. "Ninety percent of that rally has been about multiple expansion."

With the market expecting a Fed rate cut later this month, actually getting one won't do much, he predicted. "What new, incremental information are we going to get to push the market higher? The answer is, not a lot."

"If there was to be a shift from that direction, there'd have to be a lot of jawboning and speechmaking in the next several weeks" before the two-day Fed meeting July 30-31, he added.

In the meantime, investors will be looking for clues on rates and the economy this week when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell appears before a House committee Wednesday and a Senate panel Thursday.

Kostin said Goldman is currently projecting two rate cuts this year due to the Fed's reluctance to go against market expectations.

Against that backdrop, Kostin is sticking with his price target of 3,000 for the S&P 500 by year-end, putting Goldman near the middle of expectations from the Wall Street analysts followed by the CNBC Market Strategist Survey.

While tracking for its third negative session in row Tuesday, the S&P 500 remains less than 1% below last week's all-time record highs and up about 18% in for all of 2019. The index just capped off its best first half of a year since 1997.

If the U.S. were to reach a trade deal with China, that could boost markets, Kostin acknowledged. But he added Goldman does not expect an agreement in the near future.

More director buys please.

I topped up this morning once more.

Scapa Group plc

('the Company')



Additional Listing of Shares





Scapa Group plc (AIM: SCPA) (the 'Company') announces that the Company issued 54,342 new ordinary shares of 5p each in the Company ('New Ordinary Shares') on 8 July 2019 following the exercise of options in accordance with the rules of the Scapa Group plc 2011 Performance Share Plan. The New Ordinary Shares have been issued fully paid and will rank pari passu in all respects with the existing issued ordinary shares ('Ordinary Shares') of the Company.



The Company confirms that at 9 July 2019 the Company's issued share capital comprises 155,184,293 Ordinary Shares with voting rights ('Shares'). No Shares are held in Treasury. As such, the number of Shares with voting rights is 155,184,293.

Where to now?

SP getting hammered today, wondering why?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-news-breaks-iran-nuclear-deal-limit-uranium-enrichment-donald-trump-warning-today-2019-07-08/

Buying opportunity or not?

https://www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/world/2019/7/8/18693297/us-iran-war-trump-nuclear-iraq?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQA#aoh=15625889094917&_ct=1562588925369&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fworld%2F2019%2F7%2F8%2F18693297%2Fus-iran-war-trump-nuclear-iraq

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/

He's pripismic now I'd say :)

Persian Gulf Conflict Could Send Oil Beyond $325
By Vincent Lauerman - Jul 07, 2019, 6:00 PM CDT
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Drone
The possibility of Iran attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic has increased significantly in recent weeks, as has the possibility of a Persian Gulf War, especially with the Islamic Republics’ intentional destruction of a U.S. surveillance drone on June 20.

This act provides weight to Tehran’s threat that it will inflict a heavy toll on U.S. allies in the region if attacked by American forces and will not allow these same countries to export their oil if it can’t export its own.

The memory remains remarkably fresh in Iran of the 1951-53 oil embargo that toppled the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh – and the CIA installing the despot Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the so-called Shah of Iran, in his place.

The impact on oil markets of an Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be enormous.

Strait of Hormuz Closure

The leadership of the Iranian Navy and the Revolutionary Guard Navy, knowing they could never challenge the U.S. in a conventional naval contest, have been accumulating considerable asymmetric and other capabilities to enable the Islamic Republic to close the Strait of Hormuz since the “tanker war” in the Persian Gulf during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

These capabilities include thousands of sea mines, torpedoes, advanced cruise missiles, regular-sized and mini-submarines, and a flotilla of small fast-attack boats, most of which are concentrated in the strait region.
Related: Oil Prices Set For Worst Weekly Drop In Five Weeks

Pentagon planners believe Iran would use all of these capabilities in an integrated fashion to both disrupt maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and attempt to deny American and allied forces access to the region. Iranian naval forces are viewed as a “credible threat” to international shipping in the strait.

When commanding CENTCOM between 2010 and 2013, former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis developed a multinational plan to minimize disruptions to maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz by preventing Iranian efforts to lay mines and systematically clear mines that have been deployed. The focus on mines was due to the assumption that they were the major means to hinder traffic as it is difficult to sink a modern double-hull oil tanker by torpedo or missile attack. A primary goal of the plan is to create ever-larger safe passages through minefields to allow movement of oil tankers to return to pre-crisis levels as quickly as possible.

There is a consensus among U.S. military planners that American and allied forces would ultimately prevail over Iran if it attempted to close the Strait of Hormuz. The most optimistic planners believe U.S.-led forces could reopen the straight within a few days, whereas the least optimistic ones believe it could take up to three months to restore maritime traffic to normal lev

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called Iran's decision to upgrade its uranium enrichment beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal a “dangerous step,” likening it to the “small steps” the Nazis took in the 1930s that the world did not respond to, and which only whet their appetite for more.

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that he read an article in The Washington Post explaining that Iran's decision to go beyond the limit of 3.67% uranium enrichment was “not terrible, because it is just a “small step.”

This type of thinking, Netanyahu declared, is a “mistake.”

This enrichment, he said, “is for only one thing – to prepare nuclear weapons.”

Snapback justification for force.
Three GOP senators this week urged President Trump to reject what they describe as Iran’s ‘nuclear blackmail’ in the wake of the rogue nation’s violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement -- and highlighted the use of a mechanism in the U.N. resolution enshrining the deal that allows for a “snapback” of sanctions.

“Regime officials have signaled they intend to creep towards a nuclear weapon, while demanding concessions and promising to ‘reverse’ their violations if their demands are met,” Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote in a letter Tuesday. “We urge you to reject their nuclear blackmail.”

I am openly saying that Britain should be scared of Iran's retaliatory measures over the illegal seizure of the Iranian oil tanker," Mohammad Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, a member of the Assembly of Experts, a powerful religious body said on Saturday.

"We have shown that we will never remain silent against bullying ... As we gave a staunch response to the American drone, the appropriate response to this illegal capture [of the tanker] will be given by Iran as well," he said over the seizure of the supertanker in the British overseas territory.

The UN meeting is on Wednesday next week tick tock tick tock..

The US has called an emergency meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog after Iran’s uranium stockpile exceeded the 2015 nuclear deal’s limits. That’s the same body whose reports of Iran’s compliance Washington has ignored for years.
“The international community must hold Iran’s regime accountable,” US Ambassador to International Organizations Jackie Wolcott said in a statement calling for a special meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors to discuss what it calls the group’s “latest, concerning report” on the Iranian nuclear program.

“The United States strongly supports the IAEA and its verification efforts in Iran,” the statement continued.

Oh what fun.
OPEC’s crude oil production dropped to below 30 million bpd in June, down by 170,000 bpd from May and the lowest monthly output since April 2014, as higher Saudi oil supply was insufficient to compensate for declines in the cartel members subject to U.S. sanctions, Iran and Venezuela, the monthly Reuters survey showed on Friday.

OPEC pumped 29.60 million bpd in June, according to the Reuters survey that tracks supply to the market from shipping data and sources at OPEC, oil companies, and consulting firms.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, boosted supply by 100,000 bpd in June over May, to 9.8 million bpd, the survey showed.

Despite the increase, Saudi Arabia was comfortably below its 10.311-million-bpd cap under the OPEC+ deal as it had been overachieving in its share of the cuts by 500,000 bpd in the previous months.

The Saudi production rise, however, was not enough to offset declines in Iran and Venezuela, which are exempt from the production cut pact but which continue to see their output drop because of the U.S. sanctions on their respective oil industries.

Production in Angola, Iraq, and Kuwait was also lower in June compared to May, while Nigeria raised its output, according to the Reuters survey.
Related: Shale Boom Reshuffles Global Top 50 Oil & Gas List

In May, OPEC’s oil production had dropped to a 2015 low of 30.17 million bpd, as a major 200,000-bpd increase in Saudi Arabia’s production was unable to offset an even larger production decline in Iran after the U.S. removed all sanction waivers for Iranian buyers, last month’s Reuters survey showed.

OPEC will release its official crude oil production data for June in the Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) on Thursday, July 11.