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State oil giant Saudi Aramco will supply full crude contract volumes loading in May to several North Asian buyers despite its pledge to cut output by 500,000 barrels per day, several sources with knowledge of the matter said on Monday.

This comes after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, known as OPEC+, surprised markets last week by announcing an extra output cut of 1.16 million barrels per day (bpd) from May for the rest of the year.

Saudi Aramco’s monthly allocation was being keenly watched by investors as an indicator of whether planned output cuts could tighten supplies in Asia, the world’s biggest crude import market.

People are wondering whether the additional voluntary cut will actually affect supply, or whether it is designed just to shore up oil prices, said a source at an Asian refiner who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to media.

The OPEC+ announcement caused Brent and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures to jump 6 per cent last week, returning to levels last seen in November.

Last week, Saudi Aramco also surprised the market by raising prices for the flagship Arab Light crude it sells to Asia for a third month in May. It also increased the prices of other oil grades to Asian clients amid expectations of tighter market supply.

Asia’s oil demand had been expected to weaken in the second quarter as several refiners in Asia, namely Sinopec , South Korea’s third largest refiner and Aramco affiliate S-Oil Corp, Japan’s Fuji Oil and Idemitsu Kosan are shutting a combined 1.15 million bpd of crude distillation capacity in May.

Still, some investors are bullish about a recovery in China’s oil demand and expect global oil markets to tighten in the second half this year and push prices towards $100 a barrel.

Meanwhile, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), a state-owned oil giant from the United Arab Emirates, has informed at least three buyers in Asia that it will supply full contractual volumes of crude in June, trade sources said.

The UAE plans to cut 144,000 bpd from May as part of the OPEC+ cuts.

The Bank of Canada is expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday, weighing the resilience of the Canadian economy against stress in the global banking system as it waits for inflation to recede.

The bank has been in a holding pattern since early March, when it kept its benchmark lending rate stable at 4.5 per cent after eight consecutive increases. That made it the first major central bank to halt its rate-hike campaign.

Since then, the bank has received conflicting economic signals. The Canadian economy is holding up better than expected in early 2023, recent data show, largely defying efforts by the central bank to dampen consumer spending and push up unemployment.

At the same time, banking-sector turmoil in the United States and Europe over the past month has raised concerns about financial stability and dimmed the economic-growth outlook, with nervous banks expected to pull back on lending.

Governor Tiff Macklem has said the decision to pause rate hikes is “conditional,” and that the bank may move again if it sees an “accumulation of evidence” that inflation is not subsiding. But private-sector analysts see little chance that Mr. Macklem and his team would restart monetary-policy tightening this week, and rate cuts are off the table until inflation falls further.

The annual rate of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation stood at 5.2 per cent in February, down from a peak of 8.1 per cent last June, but still more than twice the central bank’s 2-per-cent target.

Central-bank economists expect CPI inflation to fall to around 3 per cent by the middle of the year. The bank will publish an updated quarterly forecast for inflation and economic growth on Wednesday.

“At this point, there is simply just not enough evidence for the BoC’s communications to tilt more dovish or hawkish, especially in the context of the recent round of financial instability,” Royal Bank of Canada rate strategists Jason Daw and Simon Deeley wrote in a note to clients.

“This will leave the market dissecting any small nuances to judge where policy is headed.”

Interest-rate increases work with a lag, curbing consumer spending as homeowners renew their mortgages at higher rates and businesses cut back on hiring. The Bank of Canada is forecasting near-zero economic growth through the first half of 2023. Most Bay Street analysts expect Canada will enter a mild recession this year.

So far, however, the economy is proving remarkably robust. After stalling in the fourth quarter, real gross domestic product rose 0.5 per cent in January from the previous month, and preliminary estimates suggest it grew a further 0.3 per cent in February. Canadian employers keep hiring workers, adding another 35,000 positions in March while the unemployment rate remains near a record low.

Bank of Canada officials have argued that unemployment will need to rise to get inflation back down to 2 per cent, and they have said that wages are growing too quickly without an accompanying increase in labour productivity.

“In this topsy-turvy world, good news for the economy isn’t really what we’re looking for,” Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, wrote in a note to clients.

“If the slowdown that central banks are aiming at fails to materialize, that could force yet more rate hikes, and risk a harder landing.”

The Bank of Canada’s quarterly business and consumer surveys, published last week, did contain some hints that the economy is approaching a turning point. Business sentiment continues to worsen and companies are expecting slower sales in the coming year. Consumers reported dialing back spending plans.

By pausing its monetary-policy tightening last month, the Bank of Canada managed to avoid some of the tough decisions that other central banks faced after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and two other regional banks, as well as the emergency sale of Credit Suisse to UBS Group.

The bank runs – caused in part by losses tied to rising interest rates – sparked fears of broader financial contagion. This put central banks in a delicate position: Should they keep raising rates to combat high inflation? Or should they hold off tightening to prevent further strain in the financial system?

The U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England all pressed ahead with interest-rate increases last month, although they dialed back their inflation-fighting rhetoric.

After announcing a quarter-point increase on March 22 , Fed chair Jerome Powell suggested that U.S. interest rates may not need to go as high as previously anticipated because banking turmoil would likely lead to a contraction in lending, acting as a substitute for additional monetary-policy tightening.

Fears of a broadening financial crisis have subsided in recent weeks, but markets are still pricing in a lower peak for the Fed’s rate-hike campaign than previously expected, as well as several rate cuts before the end of the year.

Interest-rate swaps, which capture market expectations about monetary-policy decisions, are pricing in two quarter-point rate cuts by the Bank of Canada by the end of of 2023, according to Refinitiv data.

Nutrien (TSX:NTR) – Stock Price, News & Analysis – Simply Wall St

Simply Wall St

The excitement of investing in a company that can reverse its fortunes is a big draw for some speculators, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can manage to find investors. Sometimes these stories can cloud the minds of investors, leading them to invest with their emotions rather than on the merit of good company fundamentals. A loss-making company is yet to prove itself with profit, and eventually the inflow of external capital may dry up.

If this kind of company isn’t your style, you like companies that generate revenue, and even earn profits, then you may well be interested in Nutrien (TSE:NTR). Now this is not to say that the company presents the best investment opportunity around, but profitability is a key component to success in business.

View our latest analysis for Nutrien

Nutrien’s Improving Profits

Over the last three years, Nutrien has grown earnings per share (EPS) at as impressive rate from a relatively low point, resulting in a three year percentage growth rate that isn’t particularly indicative of expected future performance. So it would be better to isolate the growth rate over the last year for our analysis. In impressive fashion, Nutrien’s EPS grew from US$5.53 to US$15.36, over the previous 12 months. It’s a rarity to see 177% year-on-year growth like that. Shareholders will be hopeful that this is a sign of the company reaching an inflection point.

Top-line growth is a great indicator that growth is sustainable, and combined with a high earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margin, it’s a great way for a company to maintain a competitive advantage in the market. Nutrien shareholders can take confidence from the fact that EBIT margins are up from 18% to 27%, and revenue is growing. That’s great to see, on both counts.

The chart below shows how the company’s bottom and top lines have progressed over time. To see the actual numbers, click on the chart.

Should You Be Adding Nutrien (TSE:NTR) To Your Watchlist Today? (yahoo.com)

 Nutrien CEO Ken Seitz says Canada is poised to play a big role in global food production as climate change makes farming more difficult and the world’s food supply chain is rendered fragile by political and economic uncertainty.

Seitz made the remarks in Toronto at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Canada.

He says climate change is redrawing the map of global food production and Canada has an opportunity to be a key player in addressing food insecurity.

Nutrien is the world’s third-largest producer of nitrogen, and the largest producer of potash, two of the three main plant nutrients used in commercial fertilizer.

The Saskatoon-based potash and fertilizer company has six potash mines in Saskatchewan with more than 20 million tonnes of capacity, as well as two large phosphate mines in the U.S.

In 2021, Nutrien began piloting a new project aimed at helping farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions, trap and store carbon and measure improvements, as well as facilitating the purchase and sale of carbon credits.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 5, 2023.

A team of South Korean spies and American private investigators quietly gathered at the South Korean intelligence service in January, just days after North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea.

For months, they’d been tracking $100 million stolen from a California cryptocurrency firm named Harmony, waiting for North Korean hackers to move the stolen crypto into accounts that could eventually be converted to dollars or Chinese yuan, hard currency that could fund the country’s illegal missile program.

When the moment came, the spies and sleuths — working out of a government office in a city, Pangyo, known as South Korea’s Silicon Valley — would have only a few minutes to help seize the money before it could be laundered to safety through a series of accounts and rendered untouchable.

Finally, in late January, the hackers moved a fraction of their loot to a cryptocurrency account pegged to the dollar, temporarily relinquishing control of it. The spies and investigators pounced, flagging the transaction to US law enforcement officials standing by to freeze the money.

The team in Pangyo helped seize a little more than $1 million that day. Though analysts tell CNN that most of the stolen $100 million remains out of reach in cryptocurrency and other assets controlled by North Korea, it was the type of seizure that the US and its allies will need to prevent big paydays for Pyongyang.

The sting operation, described to CNN by private investigators at Chainalysis, a New York-based blockchain-tracking firm, and confirmed by the South Korean National Intelligence Service, offers a rare window into the murky world of cryptocurrency espionage — and the burgeoning effort to shut down what has become a multibillion-dollar business for North Korea’s authoritarian regime.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/09/politics/north-korean-crypto-hackers-crackdown/index.html

As US-­China rivalry and Chinese assertiveness heighten tensions in the Asia­-Pacific, countries are engaging in an arms race to secure their borders. But ramping up defence spending can increase the risk of conflicts.

As China flexes its muscles, East Asian neighbours ramp up defences

In March, Japan opened a new army camp on the tropical resort island of Ishigaki – about 330km east of Taiwan – staffed with 570 soldiers and stocked with an arsenal of anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles.

The new garrison, which defence officials describe as the “crucial final component of Japan’s front-line security”, follows other Ground Self-Defence Force camps that have opened since 2016 on the south-western Japan islands of Yonaguni, Miyako and Amami Oshima.

This is on top of the longstanding – and outsized – military presence of security ally United States on Okinawa, which hosts 70 per cent of all US bases in Japan and nearly 30,000 active-duty military personnel.

READ MORE HERE

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South-east Asia plays catch-up with China’s military might

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr gave a thumbs-up for the cameras from the backseat of an FA-50 fighter jet just before it took off from Clark Air Base in Pampanga, south of the capital Manila, on March 7.

The aircraft carrying the commander-in-chief flew west over a military training area near Zambales, a coastal province facing the South China Sea. Mr Marcos would return to base minutes later, impressed by the pilot’s skills and even more convinced that modernising the military is key to counter Beijing’s rising aggression in the disputed waters.

“The modernisation of the Air Force, of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, is certainly a response to the growing complication of the situation that we are facing in the region,” Mr Marcos would later say in another speech before the military at the same air base on March 31.

READ MORE HERE

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Rising risk of arms races in Asia spiralling into major conflict

Arms races can sometimes be stabilising. The United States and the Soviet Union built massive nuclear arsenals during the Cold War. Yet, the risk of mutual annihilation these created ultimately stopped Moscow and Washington from crossing the Rubicon – notwithstanding some very close calls along the way, such as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

But arms races more often precede major conflict. The classic example here is the Anglo-German contest for naval supremacy at the start of the 20th century, which helped spark World War I.

Arms racing, by definition, involves intense bilateral military build-ups that are both rapid and reciprocal. The numerous such contests currently unfolding across Asia appear to be of the historically more combustible kind.

READ MORE HERE

In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon suggested that the U.S. government and climate conscious corporations may have to seize citizen’s private property to enact climate initiatives while there still time to stave off climate disasters.

Dimon declared Tuesday that “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” may need to invoke “eminent domain” in order to get the “adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

“Eminent domain” is a legal term that describes the government using its power to expropriate private property for public use, provided the government provides private owners proper compensation.

JPMorgan CEO suggests government seize private property to quicken climate initiatives | Fox News

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but annual revisions to the data showed applications were higher this year than initially thought, further evidence that the labour market was slowing.

With Thursday’s weekly jobless claims report, the Labor Department updated the methodology used to seasonally adjust the initial claims and the so-called continued claims data. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unemployment insurance claims series used multiplicative factors to seasonally adjust the data.

Beginning in March 2020 that was changed to additive factors, before switching back to multiplicative models as the large effects of the pandemic on the claims series lessened.

“For consistency, the published seasonal factors are presented as multiplicative with additive factors converted to implicit multiplicative factors and will not be subject to revision,” the department said in a statement. “Now that the pandemic impacts on the UI claims series are clearer, modifications have been made to the outlier sets in the seasonal adjustment models for both of the claims series.”

It said this approach had resulted in larger-than-usual revisions during many weeks over the last five years.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 18,000 to a seasonally adjusted 228,000 for the week ended April 1. Data for the prior week was revised to show 48,000 more applications received than previously reported.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 200,000 claims for the latest week. The government revised the claims data from 2018 through 2022.

It introduced new seasonal factors for 2023 and revised factors for 2018 through 2022. But it added that, “the most volatile economic period of the pandemic, including the period running from March 2020 to June 2021, was not revised and will continue to be based on additive adjustments.”

Economists had viewed pandemic-related distortions to seasonal factors as one of several factors keeping claims low despite high-profile layoffs in the technology industry and some sectors particularly sensitive to interest rates. Employers have generally been reluctant to send workers home after struggling to find labour following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The good news is there are no additional job layoffs after the banking panic hit in early March, but the bad news is the labour market was starting to unravel from the strongest in history even before the bank crisis,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS in New York. “Today’s jobless claims data are an additional sign that the labour market is slowing.”

U.S. stocks opened lower. The dollar rose against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields were mixed.

The labour market is expected to loosen up in the second quarter as companies respond more to slowing demand triggered by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases.

Credit conditions have also tightened following the recent failure of two regional banks, which could make it harder for small businesses and households to access funding.

Small businesses, like restaurants and bars, have been the main drivers of job growth. Surveys from the Institute for Supply Management this week suggested that the labour market was fraying at the edges.

The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that job openings fell below 10 million at the end of February for first time in nearly two years. Still, there were 1.7 job openings for every unemployed person in February, which is making it easier for some laid-off workers to quickly find employment.

The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, rose 6,000 to 1.823 million during the week ending March 25, the claims report showed.

The claims data has no bearing on March’s employment report, which is scheduled to be released on Friday. According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 239,000 jobs in March after rising by 311,000 in February. The unemployment rate is forecast to be unchanged at 3.6 per cent.

Cooling labour market conditions could allow the Fed to halt its fastest interest rate hiking cycle since the 1980s.

The U.S. central bank last month raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point, but indicated it was on the verge of pausing further rate hikes due to financial market turmoil. The Fed has hiked its policy rate by 475 basis points since last March from the near-zero level to the current 4.75 per cent-5.00 per cent range.

Signs that the labour market was losing speed were underscored by a separate report on Thursday from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas that showed U.S.-based employers announced 89,703 job cuts in March, up 15 per cent from February. Layoffs jumped 319 per cent on a year-on-year basis last month and were concentrated in the technology industry.

Layoffs this year have been blamed on a range of factors, including market or economic conditions, cost-cutting, store or department closures as well as financial loss. Businesses also have had little desire to add workers.

“With rate hikes continuing and companies reigning in costs, the large-scale layoffs we are seeing will likely continue,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.