Some of you already know that I am Mechanical Engineer working for one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today.
This project is called ITER and till today I have dedicated to it more than 8 years of my life.
ITER is an Enormous Experimental Fusion Reactor which is being built in Cadarache, south of France, by an International Team.
To make it short, I would tell you that what we want to do is to reproduce a burning “Sun” (yes, yes, our star) in the earth…and that is only possible by reaching hundreds of thousands of grades of temperature and under a high vacuum conditions…
I am the Interface Project Manager of the Superconducting Magnets Project Team. Magnets are the core of the Fusion Reactor and the most important part of the machine since it will allow us to confine the hot plasma using Powerful Magnetic Fields.
Nowadays, we are ending our first Toroidal Coil (Magnet)… a massive piece 18 meters high, 9 meters wide and 4 meters thick and, more or less 300 Tons of weight…
This last phase of the Magnet Fabrication is being carrying out close to Venice but the components and subassemblies have come from Russia, Japan, Europe, Korea, China, USA etc… so, that’s why I am always travelling to Italy lately but before I was going as well to the other countries… following the production.
The main milestone of the project is called “The First Plasma” and, in theory, it will be the moment on which the machine will be ready, again, in theory, to produce plasma… The target date points towards 2025… I have my doubts about but we are working as slaves in order to finish our part before that date…
Today, at the factory, part of the team and myself have been playing with an scaled model of the TF Coil mounted on its Vacuum Sector…one colleague put his lighter just in the center of the assembly …just emulating the “plasma” that one day will be…
This is a very long project, believe me… but, despite the political problems and technical challenges… we will make it…
Fitbit is trading at all-time new lows after reporting their second quarter earnings earlier this week. Their earnings (really their losses were higher than expected) fell short of expectations and they cut back on their full year revenue guidance. It appears Fitbit a lot of their hope into the Versa Lite smartwatch.
CFO Ron Kisling quantified how badly the Versa Lite underperformed, saying, “What we’re seeing generally across the course of the year in our guidance was Versa Lite over $150 million below what our initial expectations were.”
While the Versa Lite didn’t sell well, the original Versa exceeded expectations, Park said. The company is reevaluating its pricing and promotion strategy for future hardware launches, and it’s accelerating hardware product development.
Fitbit was the pioneer in fitness trackers and was doing well, that until the smartwatches were also able to track fitness activities. But just like Snapchat has to contend with Facebook and just like Blue Apron has to contend with Amazon, Fitbit has to contend with the Apple Watch.
Five months ago, I talked about how the chart was suggestion price was heading lower to the weekly demand at $4.50
Needless to say the stock has now breached the weekly demand zone after earnings.
Unless, Fitbit finds another niche for its products, just like Garmin International moved away from just a GPS screen in your car, the chart suggests Fitbit is headed to $1, with a final stop of getting delisted from Nasdaq.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Sometimes Trump has perfect timing. The DOW rose nearly 300 points yesterday, only to close down nearly 300 points. Speaking of down, trump’s twit said it’s time to short the Retail Sector.
On the news many of the major retailers, from Kohl’s to Nordstrom to Macy’s fell right after his twit. When Trump said the U.S. would impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods beginning Sept. 1st, it automatically signaled an additional tax on the Retail Sector. That because the proposed list of goods includes consumer and technology goods, like the iPhone, toys, footwear and clothing.
The SPDR® S&P® Retail ETF, XRT seeks to provide exposure the retail segment of the S&P TMI, which comprises the following sub-industries: Apparel Retail, Automotive Retail, Computer & Electronic Retail, Department Stores, Drug Retail, Food Retailers, General Merchandise Stores, Hypermarkets & Super Centers, Internet & Direct Marketing Retail, and Specialty Stores.
XRT was showing a double top – bearish technical reversal pattern, a up trendline break, and a head and shoulder pattern – market trend is in the process of reversing, in this case bearish trend.
The chart suggest price has further downside. I’m personally looking for price to break the $37.50 level and eventually making its way to the weekly demand at $33.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
On the 22nd July, in the last days of the May government in theUK, a green discussion paper was released on preventative healthcare. The report highlights the long term risk to health budgets if the emerging (& in some cases already emerged) life style risk factors (smoking, obesity, diabetes etc.) are not addressed
The report flags some of the recent successes, including the reduction in smoking (its now down to fewer than 1 in 6 of the adult population)
But, it also highlights some of the risk factors we are yet to find solutions to – of which the biggest is obesity (especially in children)
The report goes on to discuss the increasingly important role that technology will play in helping to solve these problems, obviously not on their own but as part of a wider shift in healthcare priorities
The article also highlights that only 5% of UK NHS spending (which is the bulk of the governments healthcare budget) goes on preventative medicine.
Analysis and Comments
This report and the related article picks up two very important issues in healthcare – that we think will have material impacts for investors.
Much of what we see in the industry around innovation is about better ways of doing the same thing (better heart valves, improved drugs etc). This is in of itself a good thing, but its not enough if innovation is really to make a difference to long term health outcomes
This article also picks up on the second important issue, institutional change. Across Europe much of our healthcare industry is driven by government spending & priorities. In such an environment, switching to preventative healthcare is tough as it does not really contribute to achieving short (or in some cases even medium) term goals.
The article picks out a number of areas where current technology, properly applied, could make a difference to longer term health outcomes. Inaddition, just yesterday, there were reports out can Google predict kidney disease, that suggest AI could be used to help identify those hospital patients that are at a high risk of developing kidney related complications. The current trial at the Royal London Free Hospital, seems to have gone well kidney app a life saver.
These technological advancements to really gain traction need a shift in emphasis among politicians, who set government healthcare priorities. When that happens we could see an explosion in opportunity for European healthcare companies.
What started out as a slow week, has been made up in the last two days thanks to all the volatility. Volatility is a necessary evil, if one is to make money. I say a necessary evil because when prices move, it provides an opportunity to make money and make money quickly. However, because trading is a zero sum game, that money that was made quickly was due to someone losing money quickly.
Fed Powell cut central bank cut rates on yesterday for the first time in ten years, due to continued uncertainty and a slowdown in the global markets. Fed Powell told the Markets not to necessary expect more cuts in the future. The DOW fell a little over 500 points.
Fed Powell tried to clear things up at the press conference,
“Let me be clear: What I said was it’s not the beginning of a long series of rate cuts,” Powell said. “I didn’t say it’s just one or anything like that. When you think about rate-cutting cycles, they go on for a long time and the committee’s not seeing that. Not seeing us in that place. You would do that if you saw real economic weakness and you thought that the federal funds rate needed to be cut a lot. That’s not what we’re seeing.”
but the damage was already done. I trade the futures market and missed the opportunity to ride on the backs of the Smart Money when price pulled back into a daily demand zone.
The Markets took off at the opening bell, the next thing I know the DOW was up almost 300 points. Then Trump did, what Trump does,
And the DOW reversed ending the day down almost 300 points, a 500 point reversal and busting through the daily demand zone in the process.
So what’s the lesson of this post…win, lose or draw, trade your plan, plan your trade.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Payments company Square reported its second-quarter earnings Thursday, revealing $125 million in bitcoin sales through its Cash App, nearly doubling a record first quarter.
“During the quarter, bitcoin revenue benefited from increased volume as a result of the increase in the price of bitcoin, and generated $2 million of gross profit,” the earnings report explains.
Founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Square reported that bitcoin represented very nearly half of the total revenue on its Cash App, at $260 million, for the second quarter of 2019. Bitcoin costs, however, are listed at $122.9 million in the unaudited quarterly report, yielding the aforementioned $2 million in profit.
A new patent filing suggests that United States retail giant Walmart may be developing its own U.S. dollar-backed digital currency similar to Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency.
Walmart filed patent for “Digital Currency via Blockchain”
Patent filing number 20190236564, “System and Method for Digital Currency via Blockchain,” was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Aug. 1. The document outlines a method for:
“Generating one digital currency unit by tying the one digital currency unit to a regular currency; storing information of the one digital currency unit into a block of a blockchain; buying or paying the one digital currency unit.”
Eric Conner, founder of information site ETHHub and product researcher at blockchain startup Gnosis, said:
“I think in four years, Ethereum will be moving past the hardest parts of its ambitious goals around proof-of-stake and scaling. At that point, the network will be able to onboard more users and we’ll start to grow beyond the use cases we are seeing today.”
LedgerX admitted Thursday it has not launched bitcoin futures, as the firm had previously claimed, after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it had not approved the exchange to do so.
The company previously told CoinDesk it was planning to launch the product on Wednesday. LedgerX would have been the first venue in the U.S. to offer physically-settled bitcoin futures, which are contracts that pay out in the underlying cryptocurrency rather than in cash.
“Not only are they delivered physically in the sense that our customers can get bitcoin after the futures expires, but also they can deposit bitcoin to trade in the first place,” LedgerX CEO Paul Chou told CoinDesk on Monday.ring connections to external services like the crypto exchange ZigZag, the blog Yalls and games like Lightning Roulette, facilitates nearly 10,000 referrals a month. So far, BlueWallet users have completed more than 100,000 lightning transactions.
The New York Office of the Attorney General (NYAG) has submitted a letter to Justice Joel M. Cohen, arguing that cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and affiliated Stablecoin firm Tether should not be granted a continuing stay of demands. The NYAG submitted its letter on Aug. 1 — the latest chapter in the New York Attorney General’s ongoing case against Bitfinex, parent company iFinex and Tether, in which the state alleges a multimillion loss coverup took place.
The motivation for NYAG’s letter
The court initially issued a stay of document demands in May at the defendants’ request. This means that the court currently only requires the defendants to produce documents and information pertinent to the issue of whether or not New York is the appropriate jurisdiction for the NYAG’s complaint, as opposed to a wholesale disclosure of complaint-pertinent documentation.
Bitfinex’s lawyers recently wrote that it had spent over $500,000 responding to NYAG’s document requests, adding that they would appeal for a continued stay of demands even if a dismissal motion does not go through.
“Scarcity is about to kick in,” the crypto trading account known as Rhythm on Twitter commented on the event.
The current Bitcoin supply means only a maximum of 17,850,000 people can own an entire coin. In reality, however, some of the existing mined supply is not in circulation and never will be, as users lose access to private keys.
Bitcoin (BTC) price climbed back over $10,000 to nearly $10,500 on the morning of August 2 as the market has shown a surprising bounce defying earlier calls by some traders for more downside.
“August could turn out to be a good month”
Trader and market analyst Josh Rager said that BTC/USD moving back above $10,000 is finally showing some nice follow through.
“A close above previous 4hr resistance is a nice sign,” he continued. “The good news about the death cross is that it leads to a golden cross as the 50MA is already starting to turn up.”
Rager concludes that:
“August could turn out to be a good month for price, IMO”
“Join us in Geneva on August 2nd for a “Workshop on #DLT Scalability and Interoperability” hosted by the @ITU FG on DLT #Standardization.”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The STEEM is still stitting exactly on the support line. I think we should have a decision from the market quiet soon. Let’s hope it will be a good news. The current pattern could indicate that the market is not able to go lower anymore and if this is the case, a sudden UP should appear suddenly. However, this kind of support line can finish also to be broken so we must stay all very carefull.
In Elliott Wave terms, BHPCoin began a wave one advance on March 2. The red wave one (blue sub-waves i-ii-iii-iv-v) finished on June 27, and the red wave two (blue sub-waves a-b-c) correction ended on July 24. If this wave count is correct, BHPCoin should be heading next towards the June 27 peak in the red wave three.
BHP（Blockchain of Hash Power）is a public chain which is a decentralized digital asset interaction network based on bitcoin hash power credit. You can read their latest bi-weekly update below.
During a question-and-answer session on Oct. 3rd, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank was a long way from adopting a neutral rate of growth. At the time the Markets were grinding higher from a very volatile 1st quarter where the US Equity Markets had not one, but two 10% declines. The Markets didn’t like what Powell said and showed him by tanking.
Then in December of 2018, Powell said the Fed’s program to reduce the bond holdings on its balance sheet was on “autopilot.” Powell later went on and raised short-term rates another one-quarter percent. The Markets didn’t like what Powell said and showed him by tanking again.
At this point, the Markets had Fed Powell right where it wanted him. The Markets become the puppeteer and Fed Powell became the puppet.
In early January, during a round table with Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, Powell said, there is no preset path for raising rates or adjusting the balance sheet. The Markets like what he had to say, eventually climbing 10%, aiding in one of the greatest V-reversals in US equity market history.
Yesterday, Fed Powell cut rates. However, the Markets had the rate cut priced in. But Fed Powell tried to cut the strings off from the puppeteer (the Markets) saying to the Markets not to expect more cuts, just because I cut rates this time. Well, the Markets pulled on the string by dropping almost 2%.
So what’s the lesson of this post, the relationship between the puppeteer is a special two way relationship in which the puppeteer gives life to the puppet by being man-handled when necessary.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
