Stocks & Equities

Asian stocks swung between gains and losses as signs the U.S. economy is strengthening fueled speculation that the Federal Reserve will soon start tapering stimulus.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose less than 0.1 percent to 141.78 as of 9:31 a.m. in Tokyo, after losing 0.1 percent. More than $8 trillion has been added to the value of global equities this year, the biggest increase since 2009, as central banks took steps to shore up economies worldwide. U.S. stocks fell yesterday as investors speculated on the impact retail and manufacturing data will have on Federal Reserve bond buying.

“Economic data over the past few weeks have been progressively coming in better and markets are now in the mood to put good economic news as bad news because that will bring forward any reduction in central bank support,” Matthew Sherwood, head of investment markets research at Perpetual Ltd., which manages about $25 billion, said by telephone. “There might be a little bit of downward pressure this month.”
 
Japan’s Topix index rose 0.2 percent. South Korea’s Kospi index dropped 0.4 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 0.1 percent and New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index declined 0.7 percent. Markets in China and Hong Kong have yet to open.
 
The Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to keep its benchmark interest rate at a record-low 2.5 percent today, according to all 30 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. A gauge of China’s non-manufacturing index is due today.

Making Energy & Money – Where You’d Least Expect

 

  • A “chemical” perpetual motion machine?
  • Drilling for Nat gas at the dump… and turning garbage into gold…
  • Plus: The end of everything… and the 7 wealth accelerators of the next decade.

There should be no surprise that landfills are being drilled to install pipes to collect methane (natural gas) from the decay of trash. And it should come as no surprise that a similar collection process is occurring in municipal wastewater treatment plants by placing domes over aeration tanks to capture methane produced by anaerobic bacteria that help consume the waste. But methane is laden with carbon. It’s not as bad as gasoline, but it still adds a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Now comes a clever professor at the University of California’s Santa Cruz campus, and his group of affable graduate students, to design and build a machine that converts human waste directly into cheap clean energy — something that’s close to the chemical version of a perpetual motion machine.

Screen Shot 2013-12-02 at 4.50.25 PM

The device is a unique and nanotechnology-tweaked combination of two unusual fuel cells that have never been combined before. One is called a microbial fuel cell (MFC). That’s most of what you see in the photo above. It’s a two-chambered device (thus the two bottles) with a cathode and an anode and a cation exchange membrane in between. 

The left side of the cell is filled with water and the right side with sewage. It turns out that wastewater contains special bugs — called electrogenic bacteria — that eat hydrocarbons and carbohydrates in the sewage and produce excess electrons in the process.

“Wastewater has a complex community of bacteria. Only one or two produce electrons,” says Yat Li, associate professor of chemistry at the Santa Cruz campus. “When they produce these electrons, they need to get rid of them. We help them do that.” The resulting MFC he and his graduate students designed is essentially a wet battery.

Behind the microbial fuel cell in the photo above is a photoelectrochemical cell (PEC) filled with water that sucks up the electricity from the MFC and off-gasses hydrogen by passing a current through the water, a process known as electrolysis. 

And that’s the trick of it. 

Electrolysis is a great way to produce carbon-free hydrogen for fuel. When you burn hydrogen in a stove or auto engine, for example, the only byproduct is water vapor — no carbon dioxide. But electrolysis takes a hefty input of electricity, so making hydrogen that way is normally expensive and inefficient.

“Our approach is to use sunlight to power the process,” as well as those electron-making bacteria in the MFC, says Li. His PEC creates electricity by using nanotechnologies to make large-surface-area electrodes that are photo-reactive. “You could call it artificial photosynthesis.”

The process is incredibly synergistic because both a microbial fuel cell and a photoelectrochemical cell normally need a jump-start of electricity to begin working. But in Li’s machine, both the MFC and the PEC can jump-start each other. Both can work as a battery for the other. And both are capable of producing hydrogen gas. It’s kind of like a “push me-pull you” of energy.

The only thing that needs to be added from time to time is sewage. And there’s a bonus — the wastewater becomes cleaner in the process. There’s also no loss or gain of electrons in the circuit — the electricity flows from the anode in the MFC to the platinum electrode in the PEC and across to the titanium dioxide electrode in the PEC to the carbon cathode in the MFC and then back to the anode in the MFC — a continuous electrical circuit.

Next, Li and his crew, working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — and its wastewater — will scale up this 100 ml lab project to a 40-liter bottle. “One of the questions we have to address is whether this scales up linearly,” Li says. “Do we have to change the electrodes or the membrane? The surface area of the electrodes, which we can magnify with nanotechnologies, is very important to making this scale up.”

Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists take note: The technology is certain to get the attention of a number of companies trying to get cheap fuel from landfills and wastewater, but so far the process is not licensed. 

We will be watching for those developments. 

In the meantime, to see a delightful video from Dr. Li about how an MFC works, simply click on this link.

Regards,

Stephen Petranek

 

Note: As 2013 winds down, you’re going to be bombarded by all manner of “what to look for in 2014” predictions. Allow us to simplify things for you… 

We predict: “The End of Everything”

Over the next 10 years, 7 key moments could change everything you know about your health, wealth and prosperity.

Don’t miss your chance to discover these 7 mega-events for yourself. 

Watch this short video for all the details.

Thank you for reading Tomorrow in Review. We greatly value your questions and comments. Click here to send us feedback.

 

Commodities: worst performing asset class for second year in a row

18217782811385983887Agri-commodities have seen heavy losses, rebuilding in global inventories suggests headwinds fo the sector are likely to continue. Aside from a moderation in the use of corn for ethanol purposes, possible changes to farm susbsidies in China could also see a reduction in this country’s agricultural imports.

LONDON (Commodity Online): Commodities continue to be the worst performing asset class for second year in a row, but it could signal a recovery in returns heading into next year, according to Deutsche Bank.

The bank expects Crude oil to be sensitive to the possibility of Iranian sanctions easing while Natural Gas is bullish on weather-deficit is seen in storage and further upward price movements could mean its decreasing competitiveness with CAPP coal.

The banks retains its negative view on gold and gold will find solid support when ETF outflows cease, it added.
Among base metals, Copper is showing continued signs of strong demand while surplus concerns pull down the market.

Agri-commodities have seen heavy losses, rebuilding in global inventories suggests headwinds fo the sector are likely to continue. Aside from a moderation in the use of corn for ethanol purposes, possible changes to farm susbsidies in China could also see a reduction in this country’s agricultural imports.

Highlights of technical view on commodities

Technical charts continue to paint a picture of weakness for gold, silver, platinum and sugar having seen its Relative Strength Index (RSI) below 30 indicating extremely oversold conditions.

-Aggregate open interest for the majority of the commodities is above the median of the 2-year range. It is worth noting that aggregate open interest for the PGM sector is at high levels near the 75th percentile.

-However, aggregate open interest for RBOB gasoline and gold is at low levels, below the 5th percentile.

-The performance of the energy sector has been better as compared to the rest of the sector. In the metals and agriculture sector, palladium is the only commodity above the median while the rest of the commodities are trading close to or below the 5th percentile level.

-Implied volatility has deteriorated further for all commodities across four broad sectors. Gold is the only commodity for which implied vol is near the median level. Implied vol for the rest of the complex is at very low levels, below the 5th percentile.

Other Stories

 

 

 

Increased manufacturing activity bodes well for the economy’s health as the year ends.

Manufacturing activity grew last month at the fastest pace since April 2011, beating economists’ estimates and highlighting an economy that seems poised to gain momentum despite budget battles in Washington, D.C.

A closely-watched index of the nation’s factories rose to 57.3% in November from 56.4% the previous month, the Institute for Supply Management said. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists was 55.1, Bloomberg News reported. A reading above 50% indicates the sector is expanding.

The index now has risen for the sixth straight month.

Most encouraging is that an index of new orders, which reflects future production, rose to 63.6 from 60.6. Measures of production and employment also rose sharply, with the employment index reaching the highest level since April 2012.

CONSUMER SPENDING: Rises in November

CONSTRUCTION SPENDING: Best pace in 4 years

Fifteen of 18 manufacturing sectors reported growth last month, including plastics, textile mills, furniture and primary metals.

Manufacturing has not slowed the past two months despite the 16-day government shutdown and the potential of another budget standoff over the next six weeks.


The ghost of Very Light Jets hovers over Amazon’s drones

Jeff Bezos’s plan to start delivering packages in the US by drone reminds me of a quote from The Everything Store, the Brad Stone book that recently won the FT and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award:

[Bezos] is not tethered by conventional thinking … he is bound only by the laws of physics. He can’t change those. Everything else, he views as open to discussion.”

 

….read it all HERE