Tech Review | US Imports From Vietnam Surge, While China Declines

Tech Review (TR 2019-06-29)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) Trump Effect: US Imports From Vietnam Surge, While China Declines, 2)  Facebook's Libra Could Disrupt the Remittance Industry, 3) Investing YTD & Investor Notes: China, EU, US, & Zombies,  4) ICYMI Tech News: Apple, Flipkart, iQiyi, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and more.

1) Trump Effect: US Imports From Vietnam Surge, While China Declines
And it's not just Vietnam that is a winner from the US-China Trade War:

source: statista.com

Editor's note and caveat: "Exports from China are a murky thing. To dodge tariffs, some of it gets transshipped via other countries, such as Vietnam, before the products are shipped to their destinations, such as the US or the EU ..."--Wolfstreet.com.

Nevertheless, in a note this week, Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J. Capital Research  (domain: jcapitalresearch.com), wrote that China has already entered its “Japanese phase,” marshalling financial resources exclusively to avoid crisis. China's economy is overleveraged, as demonstrated clearly by the Baoshang situation, and China may now be prey to further problems, perhaps even a perfect storm event.

China is again resorting to such tactics as gross overproduction of steel in a desperate attenpt to keep its economy humming, but even that may fail. In order of tonnage of crude steel, ArcelorMittal is first with 96.4 Mt (in 2006, India’s giant Mittal Steel acquired French giant Arcelor; and is now registered in Luxembourg as a mailbox company run from India) and the EU has had tariffs on Chinese steel for years.

Also note:

• Vietnam economy (GDP April-June quarter) grows nearly 7% on trade war tailwinds--Manufacturing exodus from China propels one of fastest boosts in region--nikkei.com.
• India Plans to Offer Incentives to Companies Moving From China--"aim is to become a production base for firms fleeing tariffs."
• Vietnam's Vingroup in deal with Fujitsu unit, Qualcomm to make 5G phones to be manufactured in Hanoi and sold in the U.S. and Europe in 2020.
• A Dark Alley in China’s Credit Market Is Getting Rough--bloomberg.com June 24, 2019.
• As China's Banking System Freezes, SHIBOR Tumbles To Lowest In A Decade--zerohedge.com June 24, 2019.
• Trump Pressured by Congress to Stay Tough on Huawei--bloomberg.com June 24, 2019.
• The U.S. is now playing down expectations for progress from a Trump-Xi meeting during the G20 June 28-29, with the U.S. holding its hard line demands for meaningful Chinese economic reforms, according to Bloomberg.

2) Facebook's Libra Could Disrupt the Remittance Industry

source: statista.com

Money transfers a/ka "remittances" to low- and middle-income countries reached a record high of $529 billion in 2018, according to the World Bank and the world's total remittances in 2018 were $689 billion. “Success will mean that a person working abroad has a fast and simple way to send money to family back home,” says Libra’s white paper, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals aim to reduce the transaction costs of migrant remittances to less than 3 percent and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 percent by 2030. Libra could lead the way. See also:  How Libra Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Network Will Work (video).

3) Investing

YTD (Year-to-date): NASDAQ Composite +21% | S&P 500 Index +17%  | DJIA +14%

The DJIA closed at 26,599 on Friday, up 73 points, its best first half since 1999 and best June since 1938. It was also the best June for the S&P 500 since 1955.

US: Economy Breaks Record on Trump’s Watch--bloomberg.com: “If voters went to the ballot box today, it would be the strongest economy in U.S. election history,” said Justin Waring, an investment strategist at UBS in New York. Unemployment is close to a half-century low and inflation is so subdued that some have pronounced it dead. 

Editor's note: this is neither a Bull Market nor a Bear Market, this is Trump's Market.

Investor Notes: 

Public default at Chinese trust company highlights cracks in market https://t.co/0jqIRRpbZa

— ChinaEconomicReview (@chinaeconreview) June 26, 2019

China: signs of a slowdown in China’s property market continue --office vacancies in tech-centric Shenzhen rose to more than 23% for the first half of 2019, a decade high, reported Caixin (domain: caixinglobal.com).

EU: "There is no common Fiscal Policy. Thus the Eurozone stagnates, withers and has utterly lost momentum …" The next ECB president? "Best candidate for the ECB job is going to be a secondary issue to how many other jobs France and Germany get."--Bill Blain. And Brexit? UK looks cheap ... but we still face a few more months of fraxious uncertainty.

US: "... investors, both foreign and domestic, continue to buy Treasuries, no matter the risks associated with them. And the longer they buy Treasuries, the bigger the US debt load becomes, and — ironically — the lower the risk of default."--cfainstitute.org.

Zombies: A report from the Bank for International Settlements found 12% of publicly listed companies around the world can be described as zombie firms:

"The rising number of so-called zombie firms, defined as firms that are unable to cover debt servicing costs from current profits over an extended period, has attracted increasing attention in both academic and policy circles. Using firm-level data on listed firms in 14 advanced economies, we document a ratcheting-up in the prevalence of zombies since the late 1980s. Our analysis suggests that this increase is linked to reduced financial pressure, which in turn seems to reflect in part the effects of lower interest rates. We further find that zombies weigh on economic performance because they are less productive and because their presence lowers investment in and employment at more productive firms."--BIS report, supra.

"Policies created to pull the world out of recession are still in place, but now they are strangling the global economy ... we are in a fat and slow world," wrote Ruchir Sharma in the New York Times, June 15, 2019. What exactly is the problem?

"The trademarks of the fat and slow world: larger corporations, declining competition and fewer start-ups (all of which contribute to wage inequality), ... together undermine and slow economies already hindered by falling growth in the working-age population."--Sharma, supra.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

Tech still drives US markets more than any other sector. If you don't like Tech stocks, it's hard to justify owning the S&P 500. We explain why here: https://t.co/W1RvpTkdHN $SPY $XLK $MSFT $FB $AMZN $AAPL $FB $GOOG $XLY $XLC pic.twitter.com/hUpUc0Qpib

— DataTrek Research (@DataTrekMB) June 28, 2019

Jony Ive Is Leaving Apple--but he's not being replaced, and the design team reporting to operations makes no sense--daringfireball.net.

Walmart Inc’s Indian unit Flipkart said late Thursday it plans to replace nearly 40% of its current fleet of delivery vans with electric vehicles (EVs) by March 2020.

iQiyi (domain: iqiyi.com) China’s version of Netflix, reportedly wants to enter overseas markets including North America and Japan after hitting a milestone of 100 million paying subscribers this month, even though the company has been in a cash-burning fight with Tencent’s video site and Alibaba-backed Youku Tudou in China. See also: China's Alibaba aims to double Tmall Global brands with English portal.

Toyota to invest $2 billion in developing electric vehicles in Indonesia.

Goodbye, Chrome? Google’s web browser has become spy software ... why Firefox is better says Washington Post (owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos).

Google Drive vs. Microsoft's OneDrive: choosing the right cloud storage and collaboration service.

Bezos Blowback? Will The AWS JEDI Scandal Upset Amazon's Omnipotence?--zerohedge.com.

The Empty Promise of Data Moats--a16z.com: data goes stale over time…

The European Digital Social Innovation Index by Nesta, published for the first time this year, found London came out on top in a ranking of 60 EU cities on indicators such as funding, skills, infrastructure and diversity. The European Digital Social Innovation Index (EDSII) is the first index ranking how different European cities support digital social innovation (DSI) and tech for good to grow and thrive. London had a significant lead over Amsterdam, which came in second place. Copenhagen, Stockholm and Paris rounded out the top five.

Personal Tech: going 'off the grid' this summer? Iridium GO!--turn any smartphone into a satellite phone--you can get access to phone calls, text, and more, 'off-grid' via the Iridium satellite network.

Parting Thoughts:

• Tulsi Gabbard is the winner--Drudge instant poll shows Gabbard won the first Democratic debate in landslide.

• Always "ask if the algorithm, which is a model of the world, is working the way it was designed to work. Models represent the market, and models are not reality. As Alfred Korzybski said, “The map is not the territory.”

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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Tech Review 1) Big Tech & Antitrust, 2) World's Most Valuable Brands 2019

Tech Review (TR 2019-06-22)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) Big Tech & Antitrust, 2) World's Most Valuable Brands 2019, Huawei? 3) Investing: The Week & Investor Notes: Where the 'Ready' Users of Libra & Calibra Are, 4)ICYMI Tech News: Unicorns, 5G, Nvidia & ARM, Google, Walmart, Slack, and more.

1) Big Tech & Antitrust
Antitrust expert Doug Melamed on the new probes into Big Tech

Doug Melamed, Stanford law professor, joins CNBC's "Squawk Alley" to discuss how the Microsoft antitrust case he helped bring to court might affect the new probes into major tech companies. CNBC Television video above published Jun 13, 2019.

2) World's Most Valuable Brands 2019

World's Most Valuable Brands 2019 | statista.com

Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Visa, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, McDonald's, AT&T.
For more: Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2019 (published June 2019).

Editor's note: Huawei? 

#47. Where will Huawei be next year? Huawei says U.S. ban hurting more than expected, to wipe $30 billion off revenue and Bloomberg.com: Huawei Braces for Phone Sales Drop of Up to 60 Million Overseas.

"The most ambitious start-ups attempted to transcend their region of origin to become seen as global brands."--brandz.com

Chinese Cash In Silicon Valley Is Suddenly Toxic: as U.S. startups reject their money, Chinese venture-capital firms in U.S. are structuring deals to avoid regulators or shutting down. See also:  World’s Top Bicycle Maker Says the Era of ‘Made in China’ Is Over and Apple Explores Moving Some Production Out of China--Trade tensions prompt iPhone maker to consider diversifying supply chain. On Friday the U.S. Department of Commerce expanded its national security “entity list” to bar Chinese supercomputer firms from buying U.S. parts and components without U.S. government approval.

3) Investing

The Week--NASDAQ Composite +3.0% | S&P 500 Index +2.2% | DJIA +2.4%--for the week all three major U.S. stock indexes gained at least 2.2%, with the S&P 500 hitting its first record close since April. 

The Backstory: U.S. stocks ended slightly lower Friday, but locked in strong weekly gains after the Federal Reserve indicated on Wednesday it could carry out rate cuts later this year if economic conditions decline, with investors eyeing a slowdown in the global economy, and the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, 28-29 June 2019, where a widely anticipated meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump may take place.

Investor Notes--where the 'ready' users of Libra & Calibra already are:

source: statista.com

Background:

• How Libra Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Network Will Work (video)

• Fed Chair LIVE Jun 19, 2:30pm EDT, ECB Draghi Chaos, Facebook Calibra & Libra: "The first product Calibra will introduce is a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology."
• In an opinion piece in the Financial Times on Friday, Facebook Inc’s co-founder Chris Hughes said the Libra cryptocurrency would hand over much of the control of monetary policy from central banks to private companies: “If global regulators don’t act now, it could very soon be too late,” wrote Hughes, who also said the corporations that would oversee the new currency would put their private interests - profits and influence - ahead of public ones. Editor's note: what Hughes describes is exactly how ICANN has been corrupted.   
• The international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has issued updated guidance concerning regulation of cryptocurrency and virtual assets at its meeting in Orlando, Florida.
• European central bankers claim oversight over Facebook’s cryptocurrency--reuters.com. Reuters also reported that France is creating a G7 task force to study how central banks ensure cryptocurrencies like Facebook’s Libra are governed by regulations ranging from money-laundering laws to consumer-protection rules.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

"Unicorns are amazingly deflationary vehicles. They're deflating rents, they're deflating driver salaries, they're deflating all kinds of things"--renown short-seller Jim Chanos explaining how Silicon Valley unicorns have pushed prices lower and why central banks are to blame.

According to latest estimates by Ericsson, 5G won’t really take off until 2021/2022. See also Crown Castle International: a play on the coming of 5G and the expansion of IoT--SeekingAlpha.com.

Nvidia says its accelerator chips will work with ARM processors by end of this year.

Google will eventually provide RCS Chat (replacement for SMS texting) directly to any Android user. Note also Google cancels plans for future tablets, focusing instead on Pixel phones and Pixelbooks (chromebooks).

Urban Mobility: Getting Beyond Gridlock--by 2030 robo-taxis, autonomous shuttles, and trains, will provide most urban mobility with private cars only a very small share, and buses almost non-existent.

Walmart: U.S. eCommerce Strategy and the Role of Jet.com. Walmart is the fourth largest online retailer in the US in 2019, according to eMarketer estimates, behind only Amazon, eBay, and Apple. See also: Apple says iPhones can now be fixed at all U.S. Best Buy stores, and Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown Gets Costly for Big Retailers--wolfstreet.com.

Slack closed at $38.62, June 20, 2019, up 48.5% from its $26 reference price, on its first day of trading as a direct listing, valuing the company at about $20B. Domain: slack.com. Investor relations: https://investor.slackhq.com/home/default.aspx.

UK: likely next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, pledges to 'end the digital divide' by 2025, via a full rollout of fiber broadband.

Personal Tech: most U.S. mobile banking apps have security and privacy flaws, researchers say.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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How Libra Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Network Will Work (video)

Libra: how it's going to work

FT.com's global tech correspondent Tim Bradshaw explains the new cryptocurrency announced by Facebook: "Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology."

Facebook investor on Libra cryptocurrency

Scott Kupor of Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z.com) joins CNBC's "Closing Bell" to discuss Facebook's new cryptocurrency, June 19, 2019.

"... we are joining the Libra Association as a Founding Member. The Libra Association is a membership organization behind Libra, a new global currency and financial infrastructure built on blockchain technology.  Libra brings together a world-class group of partners, including:

• Technology companies that know how to create global-scale networks and infrastructure, like Stripe and Facebook.

• Financial services companies, like PayPal and Visa, that have deep experience in global payments.

• Platforms, including Spotify, Lyft, and Uber, who know how to build user-friendly and popular applications with millions of users.

• Crypto-first companies, like Coinbase and Anchorage, that have deep subject matter expertise.

• NGOs, like Kiva, Mercy Corps and Women’s World Banking, that understand the needs and habits of a wide variety of populations across the globe.

"These organizations can help Libra reach a critical mass of users, businesses and developers, with the goal of mainstreaming crypto adoption ..."--a16z.com

Domain: libra.org (more info on Libra at the link), and Libra white paper.

See also Fed Chair LIVE Jun 19, ECB Draghi Chaos, Facebook $FB Calibra

Tweets by Libra_

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Tech Review | Crypto & Blockchain Investing: 'Don't Buy Bitcoin, Do This'

Tech Review (TR 2019-04-06)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) Crypto & Blockchain Investing: 'Don't Buy Bitcoin, Do This', 2)How Instagram And Facebook Make Money, 3) Investing: The Week & Investor Notes, 4) ICYMI Tech News: Amazon, Apple, Google, and more.

1) Crypto & Blockchain Investing: 'Don't Buy Bitcoin, Do This'

"Don't Buy Bitcoin. Do This Instead"--Peter Mallouk. "It's not a real investment," says certified financial planner Peter Mallouk. "It's speculation." CNBC.com video above published Apr 4, 2019.

2) How Instagram and Facebook Make Money

Everyday more than 2 billion people use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger, more than a quarter of the world's population. Despite a rising number of privacy scandals and public backlash — Facebook is still growing. Since its apps are free to use, Facebook sells advertising to make money. Here's how the company's advertising model works. CNBC.com video published Apr 2, 2019.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite +2.7% | S&P 500 Index +2.1% | DJIA +1.5%

The S&P 500 Index Now Up 15.4% YTD (as of 5 Apr 2019)

Investor Notes: U.S. Jobless Claims Fall to 49-Year Low, Below All Forecasts.

But "Synchronized Global Growth Has Collapsed"--Why Deutsche Just Downgraded Caterpillar.

EU: German Manufacturing Collapse: "Awful" Industrial Orders Plunge Most Since Financial Crisis.

Why Global Bond Market Investors Are Nervous: The European Central Bank has little margin to lower rates further, after the infusion of 2.6 trillion euros ($2.9 trillion) into the euro-zone economy through its bond-buying program, driving yields in Germany and the other most credit-worthy members below zero, in what some call a Japanification of the fixed-income market. Also: speculating against “the most distorted asset class in the world” caused Hugh Hendry to close his Eclectica hedge fund in September 2017, after the German two-year note confounded his expectations. Since then, that short-dated yield has averaged minus 0.6 percent, about where it was when Hendry decided to shut up shop, and near where it rests today.

Brexit: The value of the customs union to the UK is overrated--The customs union works well for German carmakers and French farmers, who have had a captive market for their products, but has not delivered anything like that for the UK.--theguardian.com.

US 'Tax Avoidance' Schemes: Wall Street’s “Dirty Little Secret” the ETF Tax Dodge--Banks pumping billions of dollars into and out of funds with “heartbeat” trades.--bloomberg.com.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

Amazon at Scale: the Enormous Numbers Behind Amazon’s Market Reach. $AMZN Post-Marital Bliss: Jeff Bezos's ex-wife, MacKenzie Bezos, tweeted details of their divorce settlement that gives Jeff 75% of their Amazon stock and all of their shares' voting power (at least for now, further details not provided).

Apple: services group could add an additional $25 billion in gross profit by 2023. Also Apple pulls plug on its wireless charging mat.

Google made $6.5 billion from sources other than ads in Q4 2018, an increase of 30% year-over-year, while Google's ad business is growing at 20% year-over-year. New revenue sources include Google Cloud, hardware, and Google's Play store--seekingalpha.com.

MIT is the latest top U.S. education institution to cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei and ZTE, while UK's Oxford University has also stopped accepting funding from Huawei..

WeWork's $1.9 Billion Loss Is A Typical Tech Bubble 2.0 Story--zerohedge.com.

Germany's Daimler has filed a complaint with EU antitrust regulators about Nokia patents essential to car communications.

Personal Tech: 

1. Why Can't I Get a Decent Stock Android Smartphone With No Apps Pre-Installed?

"Android ecosystem of pre-installed apps is a privacy and security mess"--extensive academic study finds data-harvesting and malware-laced pre-installed apps.--zdnet.com and An Analysis of Pre-installed Android Software (pdf). 

See also Android Security & Privacy Year 2018 in Review (pdf) and blog.google.

2. The next 15 years of Gmail | blog.google

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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Tech Review | Analysts Giving Up On Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency

Tech Review (TR 2019-02-02)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) Giving Up On Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency, 2) Amazon Alexa And Google Assistant Becoming Omnipresent, 3) Investing: The Week & Notes: WEF, EU, Brexit, US, 4)ICYMI Tech News: Facebook, Nvidia, Twitter, Google, Oracle, Huawei, China VC, Microsoft, Amazon, Startup Starbreeze Implodes, Personal Tech: Chromebooks vs Windows?

1) Giving Up On Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin in US$

Bitcoin Volatility Problematic For Analysts: Crypto enthusiasts such as Mike Novogratz made wild predictions on Bitcoin's price in 2018, most of which proved wrong. Tom Lee of Fundstrat said Bitcoin would hit $25,000 by end of 2018. It didn't happen. Now, Lee, and others, are not making timing calls at all. 2019 is off to a rough start for cryptocurrencies, with most coins continuing their downturn in January.

However, Ripple CEO says decentralized payment systems are likely to win:

Ripple's Brad Garlinghouse discusses blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies at a CNBC-hosted panel in Paris. CNBC International TV video above published Jan 31, 2019.

Ripple supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes. Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks." The ledger employs the decentralized native cryptocurrency known as XRP, which as of September 2018 was the second largest coin by market capitalization. Ripple has been adopted by banks and payment networks as settlement infrastructure technology (sources via Wikipedia.org).

Building Crypto, from Vision to Reality

a16z.com video (podcast) above with Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong), Chris Dixon (@cdixon), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) Where are we, really, right now -- in terms of what we can/ can't do with crypto today? And what will it take to get from vision to mainstream reality? This episode of the a16z Podcast covers all this and more. It's based on a conversation that took place between Coinbase CEO and cofounder Brian Armstrong and a16z crypto general partner Chris Dixon, interviewed by a16z editor in chief Sonal Chokshi, at our at our annual Summit in November 2018 -- following a series of presentations that covered everything from early adoption, myths, and the global need for crypto; to crypto as seen through the lens of trust; to key terms and concepts that enable entirely new use cases on top of crypto. But what are the missing pieces needed to get us there? Is crypto is too much like a religion... and if so, how does one build a company, culture, community in such an intense environment? Where does the history of open source come in? And finally, what are some of the most interesting applications and trends in the space? Video above published Jan 1, 2019. Disclosures.

See also:

• "Participation by financial institutions in bitcoin trading appears to be fading," JPMorgan analysts wrote in a research note to clients--forbes.com
• Bitcoin Is Worth Less Than the Cost to Mine It, JPMorgan Says--
bloomberg.com.
• JP Morgan: Blockchain Needs To Be Separated From Bitcoin & Crypto--ethereumworldnews.com.
• Bitcoin Failed as a Safe Haven to the U.S. Stock Market: JP Morgan--newsbtc.com.
•  Bloomberg Technology video published Jan 30, 2019.
• Three reasons why you should stay away from bitcoin!--Bitcoin has bit the dust--zerohedge.com.

2) Amazon Alexa And Google Assistant Becoming Omnipresent

Until recently, Amazon $AMZN and Google $GOOG $GOOGL competed for presence in our homes through their own hardware: smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, TV add-ons like Chromecast and Fire TV and even home security systems like Nest and Ring. At CES 2019, partners from both companies launched dozens of new products that will bring Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant into nearly every aspect of our lives. Both firms also revealed how widespread their ecosystems are.

Google said that by the end of January, more than 1 billion devices will have Google Assistant built-in. That's up from 500 million in May, but a lot of that growth is because Assistant now ships as a standard feature on Android phones. Google Assistant is also built into 10,000 different smart home devices from more than 1,600 brands, the company said.

Amazon said there are now more than 150 products with Alexa built directly in — which means you can talk right to it without also owning an Echo — and more than 28,000 products from 4,500 brands that support it. That means you need an Amazon Echo to control the gadget. Amazon also said it has now sold more than 100 million Alexa devices. CNBC.com video above published Jan 13, 2019.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite +1.4% | S&P 500 Index +1.6% | DJIA +1.3%

Investing Notes: the benchmark S&P 500 Index is UP 8% so far in 2019.

WEF a dud and joke: "This year's now-concluded World Economic Forum conference in Davos was mostly a dud and increasingly a joke in financial circles, with Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid going so far as admitting that 'we had a DB drinks reception for our clients last night and one said to me that in 11 years of coming here the best advice would be to trade in the opposite direction to the main theme of the conference over the next 12 months'"--zerohedge.com. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz  was heckled after he said he might run for U.S. president:“Go back to Davos with the rest of the billionaire elite who think they know how to run the world.”

EU: France's ‘Yellow Vests Movement"--Mouvement des gilets jaunes--should be taken seriously says AXA CEO--in a CNBC International TV video published Jan 26, 2019, AXA CEO Thomas Buberl says Europe’s social contract isn’t working anymore.

• France: the November 2018 data shows unemployment at 8.9%, well above the 6.7% EU rate. Current levels are also above prior cycle lows of 7.2% in February 2008.
• Italy: unemployment currently sits at 10.5%, far above the EU’s 6.7%. The prior cycle low in Italy was 5.8% in April 2007.
• Spain: unemployment remains stubbornly high, 14.7% based on the November 2018 data. The lows from May 2007 were 8.0%. 

Above data via DataTrekResearch.com:

• The Eurozone problem: with German unemployment at just 3.3%, how does the European Central Bank consider normalizing both interest rates and its balance sheet when systematically important Eurozone economies like France, Italy and Spain remain at essentially recessionary levels of unemployment?
• What are the political ramifications of high unemployment across these large countries? See "Yellow Vests Movement" (above) for the answer.
• "Personally, I just don’t think Europe works – its imbalanced in favour of the few."--Bill Blain.

Brexit? Christian Ulbrich, global chief executive of JLL, the property agency, told Financial News  that his company leased more space in the City of London 'Square Mile' during the final three months of 2018 than in any other quarter on record. CBRE also reported 3.9 million sq ft of deals had closed across all of central London during the quarter, above the 10-year average.

US: Every year, roughly 14% of the US population moves from one state to another, according to US Census Bureau data--top inbound states (dark blue) and top outbound states (medium blue):

source: 2018 Migration Report | northamerican.com (pdf)

Apparently, Americans don't like high-tax states like Illinois, California, New Jersey and New York, but prefer living in Idaho, Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida. Also note U.S. jobless rates across the largest 5 US states (December 2018 data): California: 4.2%; New York: 3.9%; Pennsylvania: 4.2%; Texas: 3.7%; Florida: 3.3%. The national unemployment rate:  3.9%.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

Facebook: "Even after losing roughly a third of its market cap, Facebook $FB may yet prove to be one of the great shorts of all time"--The Fall of Facebook Has Only Begun--medium.com. Also: Facebook knowingly duped game-playing kids and their parents out of money--revealnews.org.

Nvidia Jan 28 Financial Guidance: "deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, particularly in China, impacted consumer demand for NVIDIA gaming GPUs"--NVDA shares fall 14% and are now off 44% since Jan 29, 2018 (as of Jan 28, 2019):

Nvidia's Problems May Grow Worse--seekingalpha.com.

Twitter’s CEO keeps "substituting talking for doing"--Jack Dorsey has a lot to say, but he has more to do--theverge.com.  Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) will release financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018 on February 7, 2019, before the market open at approximately 7:00 am EST. Twitter will host a conference call / LIVE webcast to discuss these financial results at 8:00 am EST, at investor.twitterinc.com. Tweet your question to @TwitterIR using #TWTR.

Google LLC vs Oracle America, Inc., software copyright dispute, Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (pdf) in the US Supreme Court.

U.S. Indicts Huawei--accused of stealing trade secrets, defrauding banks--bloomberg.com. See also "Huawei will struggle to assuage western concerns - Suspicions are as much about China’s system as about the company itself"--ft.com.

China VC: "The number of China’s venture capital deals dropped to 713 in the fourth quarter of 2018, down 25% from a year earlier, with the amount of funding shrinking 12% to $18.3 billion ... Competition for job vacancies has intensified with an average applicants-to-jobs ratio of 32 to 1."--scmp.com.

Walmart, Amazon scrambling to comply with India's new e-commerce rules--reuters.com.

Startup Starbreeze implodes: "How did things go so badly wrong in such a short space of time? According to over a dozen current and former Starbreeze (starbreeze.com) staff members, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect their careers, the writing had been on the wall for some time. But even as staff lost faith in the studio and its bosses, nobody, it seemed, thought Starbreeze's fall from grace would turn out to be quite so dramatic."--eurogamer.net. “How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.--Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.

Personal Tech: after January 14, 2020, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or support for PCs running Windows 7 (unless you pay extra), so for many Windows 7 users, it will be decision time (Microsoft Windows 10, Apple Mac OS, Google Chrome OS, or Linux) during the next 12 months. Editor's note: personally, I am transitioning to Google Chrome OS (Chromebooks) and recommend the two chromebooks I am familiar with: Google Pixelbook and Acer Chromebook 15.  There are plenty of other nice chromebooks available, but no matter your budget, be sure to get at least 4GB of RAM, and do your own due diligence, e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/Pixelbook.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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