18Feb2021 Midday Update: Wall Street Opened Sharply Lower On Mixed Financial Numbers, DOW At 11:30 ET -230 Points, Nasdaq Down -1.3%, Jobless Benefit Claims Climb To 861,000 And Show US Layoffs Still Severe

Written by Gary

Texas freeze causes largest ever US production decline (SPY -0.8%). Lumber futures hit record high $1000. Biggest movers: Walmart, Hormel Foods, Marriott.

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money
	North and South American markets are mixed. The Bovespa is higher by 0.03%, while the S&P 500 is leading the IPC lower. They are down 0.88% and 0.74% respectively.

What Is Moving the Markets

Here are the headlines moving the markets.
	Texas Governor Bans Natural Gas Exports Texas Governor Greg Abbott has banned the exports of natural gas until normal power supply is restored, Reuters reports, citing a statement by the governor. The export ban is in effect until Sunday, with Abbott noting, That will also increase the power thats going to be produced and sent to homes here in Texas. What social media users are calling the Texas freeze wreaked havoc on the Texas grid and its energy industry as wellheads and production pads have not been insulated against freezing temperatures. As a result, natural
	Texas Freeze Causes Largest Ever U.S. Production Decline U.S. crude oil production has plunged by as much as 40 percent due to the Polar Vortex that brought freezing temperatures to swathes of the United States, most notably including Texas, where wellheads and pipelines froze. Now, this is turning into a global problem. Bloombergs Alex Longley writes that according to estimates by Citi, the total lost U.S. production by early March could reach 16 million barrels. According to traders, however, the lost production could be twice as high. The market is underestimating the amount of oil production
	This Commodity Super-Cycle Could Be Unlike Anything Weve Seen Before Commodity prices have been on the rise since late in the 3rd quarter of 2020. Signs that the global economy would rebound faster than anyone thought possible, in the early phase, has spurred purchases of critical components in the modern economy. I have discussed the reasons for this in a couple of OilPrice articles recently. In this article, How High Will Oil Prices Go This Year?, I discussed the impact the decline in drilling in shale plays was having on crude stocks, and resulting trend higher in prices. In the second article,
	Bidens $2 Trillion Green Plan Could Send This Stock Soaring Over 85 years ago, America undertook one of the most ambitious projects in our nations history, and it helped launch the creation of $30 trillion in ESG assets. At the time, they planned to build a dam to help deal with massive flooding issues But this ended up providing green electricity to millions of people across 3 states in the process. And today, Biden could be set to take a page from this American success story, creating the next crown jewel of American infrastructure. It could provide thousands of jobs and fundamentally alter
	Who Will Win The Carbon Capture Tech Showdown? Solar panels and wind farms have become fixtures of the global energy mix even if things like winter cold sometimes interfere with their operation. Hydrogen is garnering growing attentioneven if skeptics are warning that it is still prohibitively expensive to become mainstream. And now another aspect of the all-out war on climate change is drawing more attention: carbon capture, also known by the fancier name of negative emissions. Earlier this month, Elon Musk made headlines yet again, but this time with news unrelated to either Tesla or
	EV Euphoria Sends Lithium Stocks Higher The lithium market is about to end a nearly three-year downturn of low prices and low investment in new supply because of those low prices. Demand for key battery metals, including lithium, is growing, thanks to the green energy investments and support of many governments worldwide, and many announcements from legacy carmakers about more electric vehicle (EV) models or all-electric car production within two decades. The shares of the largest lithium producers have benefited from the EV momentum over the past year, despite the supply chain
	Walmart to hike wages for 425,000 workers to average above $15 an hour Walmart said its minimum starting wage for workers will remain at $11 an hour. Rivals Amazon and Target have made their starting pay $15 an hour.
	How Lamborghini learned to love the SUV The Lamborghini Urus SUV is a new type of product for Lamborghini, but one that is seen as increasingly necessary in the automotive market.
	McDonald’s sets targets to diversify its leadership, seeks gender parity by 2030 By the end of 2030, McDonald’s is hoping to achieve gender parity in leadership roles.
	Walmart shares fall on earnings miss, retailer sees sales growth slowing in coming year The big-box retailer’s fourth-quarter earnings missed Wall Street’s expectations as it tries to turn pandemic gains into sustained momentum.
	Amazon air cargo contractor expects more growth after posting banner year during pandemic Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings posts record sales and profits, boosted by demand during the pandemic.
	Bill Gates: This is what you ” yes, you ” can do to help prevent a climate change disaster “It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of a problem as big as climate change,” says Bill Gates. “But you’re not powerless.” Here’s what you can do.
	Vestas invests in Swedish firm that builds wooden towers for wind turbines Modvion installed a 30-meter tower on an island near Gothenburg last year.
	Prioritizing teacher vaccinations will be a challenge until shortage is resolved, Biden official says The issue of whether teachers should be vaccinated before returning to the classroom has been a flashpoint in the debate regarding reopening in-person instruction.
	CDC director says U.S. needs to curb Covid before it can mutate again and make the pandemic even worse In a paper published Wednesday, the nation’s top health experts warned that a fast spreading virus variant could delay the nation’s control of the pandemic.
	Indra Nooyi: No economy can succeed without tapping the ‘incredible potential of women’ Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi sees the coming years as an inflection point for women in society and says companies and countries should get behind the change.
	Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Walmart, Hormel Foods, Marriott, others These are the stocks posting the largest moves before the bell.
	Texas blackouts show how vulnerable power grid is to climate change The winter storm outages in Texas reveal a broader crisis: Climate change-fueled disasters are overwhelming U.S. infrastructure.
	Texas Frozen Chaos Becomes Global Oil Market Nightmare With 40% Of US Crude Production Offline Texas Frozen Chaos Becomes Global Oil Market Nightmare With 40% Of US Crude Production Offline One week ago, when virtually nobody was following the sudden surge in certain obscure mid-continent nat gas prices… … we warned that the ripple effects of the freezing vortex-induced calamity, which led to near record-low temperatures across the plains states, would ripple far and wide sparking logistical and commodity shockwaves not only in Texas and the continental US, but also around the world. Sure enough, just a few days later, Texas has been hit by a humanitarian crisis the likes of which it has never before seen with millions of people without electricity and increasingly without running water. And even though Texas is doing everything in its power to contain the fallout that, it appears that the crisis is now spreading, because as a result of the persistent freeze and rampant “force majeue …
	Lumber Futures Hit Record High $1000 (As Gold Slumps To 7-Month Lows) Lumber Futures Hit Record High $1000 (As Gold Slumps To 7-Month Lows) As Building Permits explode higher (driven by multi-family units)… Source: Bloomberg The demand for lumber has soared, sending the building material jumping to an all-time high of $1,004.90 Thursday. Prices have climbed more than 30% this year… as gold sinks to a seven-month low…which is odd given that the rally in lumber (among other commodities) hasÂ stoked concernsÂ of inflation bleeding into the home-buying market. Source: B …
	It’s An Expensive Game Of Musical Chairs It’s An Expensive Game Of Musical Chairs Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning, The world was recently mesmerized by the ability of the Bros (short for œbrothers ), a crowd of like-minded, mostly male millennials, to increase the price of GameStop from $20 per share to $400 per share in a matter of days. The fact that the Bros did this using stimulus check money and the Robinhood trading app did not diminish the sky-rocketing numbers behind the frenzy. The stock later collapsed by 80% (as bubbles do), but not before inflicting an estimated $20 billion of losses on hedge funds that were short GameStop when the ascent began. That decentralized (but legal) pump-and-dump scheme came dangerously close to destabilizing the U.S. financial system. If hedge funds had failed (several almost did), those losses would have fallen on bank dealers and other hedge funds, which could have triggered a cascade of failing banks and funds worse than what happened in 2008. Th …
	“Disasters Within Disaster” -Â Death Toll Rises To 30 As Texas Energy Crisis Hits Sixth Day “Disasters Within Disaster” -Â Death Toll Rises To 30 As Texas Energy Crisis Hits Sixth Day Millions of Texans woke up for the sixth day on Thursday, as one of the nation’s wealthiest states can barely supplyÂ electricityÂ to its residents. The power crisis has spread well among its borders crippling Northern Mexico.Â According to NYPost, at least 2.7 million Texas households were without heat, electricity, or water on Thursday morning as a polar vortex air mass continues to linger in the Lone Star State.Â The death toll from the historic cold snap and multiple winter storms has increased to at least 30.Â Besides power plants, the deep freeze has crippled critical infrastructure systems across the state, such as water treatment plants and cellular networks.Â “This is in many ways disasters within the disaster,” said Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston. “The cascading effects are not going to go away.” In a note Wednesday, we asked ifÂ “Is Texas Facing A Humanitarian Crisis?”Â Come to find out, the answer is yes. The cascading effects of days without power have effectively transformed some parts of Texas into aÂ third-world country.Â
	Coronavirus: ‘No jab, no job’ policies may be legal for new staff It may be legal to insist on vaccinations in new staff contracts, the justice secretary says.
	Coronavirus: Barclays says loans worth Â£4.8bn may never be repaid Barclays sees profits dive after setting aside billions for loans expected to turn sour due to Covid.
	‘I’m paying thousands for student housing I can’t use’ Maya Cooper is one of the students collectively charged Â£1bn for accommodation they can’t use.
	RBI finds no takers for Rs 25,000 cr G-secs; yields rise 11 bps The benchmark yielded 6.14 percent Thursday versus 6.03 percent a day earlier. The central bank was aiming to borrow Rs 31,000 crore through a primary auction against which it ended up raising a little more than Rs 6,000 crore.
	FPIs pump in $33.8b this fiscal, take total holding to record $592b. Check 10 sectors they are most bullish on Of the total FPI assets of $592.5 billion, $537.4 billion were in equities and $51.38 billion in debt, according to the data collated by Care Ratings.
	L&T Finance’s rights issue concludes, oversubscribed by 15% The allotment of the equity shares in rights issue will happen on Tuesday and the equity shares shall be listed on the stock exchanges on Friday, the company said.
	January 2021 Residential Building Growth Mixed Written by Steven Hansen Headline residential building permits improved and construction completions declined. The rolling averages worsened for permits and construction completions.
	January 2021 Import Year-over-Year Inflation Now +0.9% Written by Steven Hansen Year-over-year import price indices inflation remained in contraction and grew from -0.3 % to +0.9 %.
	London Markets: U.K. banks slide after cautious Barclays outlook Barclays shares led a downturn for the U.K. banks on Thursday, after an underwhelming reaction to financial results.
	Economic Report: Jobless benefit claims climb to 861,000 and show U.S. layoffs still severe New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits rose in mid-February to a four-week high of 861,000, showing lots of Americans are still losing their jobs nearly a year after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
	Key Words: Bill Gates says cryptocurrency is one innovation the world could do without Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and technological whiz turned philanthropist, doesn’t seem to be a fan of bitcoin and other digital-assets.