"Enter Helios: quantum computer sets high watermark for accuracy"

Quantinuum, recently public as a spin-out of Honeywell, and PsiQuantum, still private, are two of the more interesting entrants in the quantum computing races. Here's the former, symbol QNT via Asia Times, June 27:

Helios quantum computer brings together scale, accuracy, connectivity and programmability in a near revolutionary advance  

In a laboratory in Broomfield, Colorado, 98 atoms are suspended in mid-air, held in place by electric fields and cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero.

Each atom is far smaller than anything the naked eye could ever see, yet each carries information in a form that has no counterpart in classical physics.

Together, they form Helios, a new quantum computer built by the British-American company Quantinuum. Quantum computers use the power of quantum mechanics, the rules that govern how physics operates at atomic and sub-atomic scales. Those that use Helios’ model of suspended atoms are known as trapped-ion.

A paper published in Nature describes it as a 98-qubit processor with very high accuracy and performance that pushes beyond what can easily be simulated on classical machines. That sounds impressive, but the important question is not simply whether this is a bigger quantum computer (the previous biggest, System Model H2, had 56 qubits). It is whether it is a better one.

Quantum computers are not just faster versions of ordinary computers. The qubits (quantum bits) that they use to process information can exist in quantum states that do not behave like the ones and zeroes of conventional digital technology.

This allows some calculations to be arranged in ways that may eventually outperform even the largest supercomputers. The possible applications are fascinating: new materials, better optimization methods, improved chemistry simulations and new approaches to cryptography.

The difficulty is that qubits are extremely fragile. They are disturbed by temperature variations, imperfect control, unwanted interactions with the environment and, in some systems, even the act of moving information around the device. 

For this reason, the race in quantum computing is not only about having more qubits. It is about having more good qubits, controlled accurately enough to perform long and meaningful calculations....

....MUCH MORE 

Previously:

January 2024 - "JPMorgan latest to pile into quantum upstart with $5B valuation"

June 3 - "Quantinuum Prices IPO at $60 a Share. It’s Slated to Go Public Thursday" (QNT)

Here's the amended S-1 dated June 1. 

And the upsize dated June 3 - Registration adding securities to prior Form S-1 registration [Rule 462(b)] 

And on PsiQuantum:

March 11 - Quantum Computing Startup Backed By Nvidia, Lockheed Martin, Breaks Ground On Major Chicago Computing Center

As the young people say: "Shit just got real." 

....Seven acres under roof is pretty big for a startup.

PsiQuantum is different. March 24, 2025 -  "Quantum computing startup PsiQuantum raising at least $750 million, sources say"

September 11, 2025 - A Name To Know: "PsiQuantum Raises $1 Billion, Says Its Computer Will Be Ready in Two Years" 

November 7, 2025 - "Quantum Leap: Lockheed Martin & PsiQuantum"

November 17, 2025 - "Former Top [Australian] Spy, Nick Warner Sounds Warning On Quantum Arms Race In Defence Tech"

If PsiQuantum's approach works, this is the one to decrypt Bitcoin and other blockchain based systems. From CoinTelegraph, March 5:

Construction begins at quantum facility big enough to break Bitcoin

April 27 - "Quantum photonics roadmap — how Xanadu and PsiQuantum are looking to transfer qubits through beams of light" 

Possibly also of interest, at Barron's:

"...How to Pretend You Understand Quantum Computing."

"Keynes, Minsky, and the Economics of Uncertainty"

William Janeway writing at Project Syndicate, May 22:

Although Hyman Minsky’s version of John Maynard Keynes’s economics had a minimal impact on the mainstream during his own lifetime and in the years following, its central insights remain as relevant as ever. Both men understood that economic theory cannot get away with ignoring the fact of uncertainty. 

CAMBRIDGE—Consideration of economic and financial conditions today calls to mind the economic theorists who most influenced my own thinking, as an academic and as a venture capitalist: John Maynard Keynes and Hyman Minsky. Their relationship, though virtual, is essential. It was Minsky who revealed the profound conflict between “the economics of Keynes” and the “Keynesian economics” that dominated the teaching and practice of macroeconomics for at least a generation, and which remains embedded in contemporary “New Keynesian” models of the economy.  

Minsky completed his doctorate at Harvard under the supervision of Joseph Schumpeter, whose concept of “creative destruction” illuminated how technological innovation drives economic transformation, and emerged as a “heterodox economist”—a dissident from the prevailing Keynesian doctrine developed at MIT by the Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow.

Based at Washington University in St. Louis for much of his career, Minsky developed a reading of Keynes’s work that contrasts fundamentally with that formulated by Samuelson and Solow. In their Neoclassical Synthesis, Keynesian macroeconomic policy would ensure that resources are fully employed. Then the traditional neoclassical microeconomics of efficient markets could be deployed, devoid of the uncertainty that pervades Keynes’s own work. The economist Joan Robinson called this “Bastard Keynesianism.”

I myself was sufficiently immersed in Keynes’s own thinking that, rather than teach the Neoclassical Synthesis, I embarked on a 35-year sabbatical as a venture capitalist. My one significant brush with academia in these years was when I met Minsky in the mid-1980s. The relationship deepened when he joined the Levy Economics Institute, conveniently close to New York City. Minsky sponsored a paper I presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Evolutionary Economics in December 1985.

That paper, “Doing Capitalism: Notes on the Practice of Venture Capitalism,” examined the differing profiles of the “financial agent” in the works of Fernand Braudel, Karl Marx, Schumpeter, and Keynes, drawing parallels between each and the role of the modern professional VC investor. It served as the seed that would grow into Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, which I published almost 30 years later, in 2012. Still following where Keynes had led, I focused on the economics of innovation, where investment at the frontier of technology necessarily takes place under conditions of radical uncertainty and volatile financial conditions.

As L. Randall Wray shows in his excellent 2015 book, Why Minsky Matters, Minsky’s most important message is that economists’ fixation on defining equilibrium conditions evades a central, existential truth: stability is itself destabilizing. Minsky set out to explain what he identified as Keynes’s “investment theory of fluctuations in real demand and a financial theory of fluctuations in real investment.” He began by walking carefully through “the conventional wisdom, the standard interpretation of Keynes,” which had served to obscure what Keynes had achieved and derailed the revolution in economic theory he had launched.

Throughout his 1975 book, John Maynard Keynes, Minsky repeatedly cites Keynes’s invocation of uncertainty as the fundamental factor conditioning economic and financial decisions. “Keynes without uncertainty is something like Hamlet without the Prince,” he observed. As Keynes himself had emphasized in a 1937 commentary for the Quarterly Journal of Economics, uncertainty is effectively an ontological condition of the universe:

“By ‘uncertain’ knowledge … I do not mean merely to distinguish what is known for certain from what is only probable. … The sense in which I am using the term is that in which the prospect of a European war is uncertain, or the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the obsolescence of a new invention, or the position of private wealth owners in the social system in 1970. About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know.”

What Money Does

This argument moves from metaphysics to the sublunary plane of financial economics as soon as Keynes (and Minsky) turns to money. It is all very well to note the convenience that money offers as a medium of exchange, eliminating the simultaneous “coincidence of wants” that would otherwise be necessary to motivate trade. But why hold money as an asset, as something to hoard, when it yields no income? “Why,” Keynes asked, “should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to use money as a store of wealth?” The answer, of course, is that it provides insurance against all that cannot be known in advance.

Money is unique among assets for its extreme liquidity, which complements its lack of return....

....MUCH MORE
*For what it's worth, we are fans of Janeway:

William Janeway: "Productive Bubbles" 

"The Rise of Mesoeconomics" - William H. Janeway

In our last visit with Bill Janeway, "The Forgotten Origins of Silicon Valley" - William H. Janeway, I didn't mention that he is not your typical pointy-headed academic. Here's his mini-bio at Cambridge Uni.:

Ambassador for Cambridge Judge Business School

Senior Advisor & Managing Director, Warburg Pincus

Dr William H Janeway is a Senior Advisor and Managing Director of Warburg Pincus. He joined Warburg Pincus in 1988 and was responsible for building the information technology investment practice. Previously, he was Executive Vice President and Director at Eberstadt Fleming. Dr Janeway is a director of Magnet Systems, Nuance Communications, O’Reilly Media, and a member of the Board of Managers of Roubini Global Economics. He is a Visiting Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University.....

Also November 2025's ""In Search of the AI Bubble’s Economic Fundamentals" by William H. Janeway". 

"Time runs out for thousands missing after Venezuela earthquakes"

We've seen survivors of other earthquakes rescued after a week under the rubble but it really is the first three days that matter most. Additionally, if people have suffered crushing injuries* even getting un-trapped is only the start of their recovery. 

From the South China Morning Post, June 27: 

With at least 920 dead and more than 51,000 missing, a critical 72-hour window for rescuing survivors has almost closed 

The situation has grown more desperate by the hour in Venezuela as people dig through the rubble of collapsed homes and flat blocks three days after the devastating one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes, knowing time is running out to find survivors.

Authorities announced on Friday night that they would block access to La Guaira, the epicentre of the destruction, as chaos and traffic began to hamper search efforts. Officials said anyone who wanted to enter would now have to seek official permits, but provided few details of who would be allowed in.

Venezuelans took the search for missing loved ones into their own hands, citing a scarcity of government rescuers, as the human toll of Wednesday’s quakes climbed to at least 920 dead and more than 51,000 missing. People reported seeing few state rescue teams in the hardest-hit areas, despite authorities projecting an image of a robust government response.

Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours to be a crucial time frame to retrieve people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.

“Each person saved is a miracle,” said Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly. “We are not going to hide absolutely anything about the magnitude of this tragedy.”....

....MUCH MORE 

*Via a 2023 earthquake post:

Crush injuries of soft tissues release fat, plasma and other liquids, and toxins which head for the kidneys. From Wolters Kluwer's UpToDate... 

"What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end?"

Beats me, I'm pretty optimistic. 

From Asterisk Magazine, Issue 14, June 2026:

The Doomers Are All Right
What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end?

I opened my interviews for this article with a simple question: “How long do we have?”

Five years, or five to 10, or five to 20. One person said eight, then corrected herself to six; one said eight and stuck to it.

In this, they aren't that far off from many estimates made by experts. The bluntly titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies has hit bestseller lists by warning of the imminent risks of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The scenario AI 2027, written by a former OpenAI employee, predicts AGI within the next few years. The AI company Anthropic consistently predicts AGI by early 2027. 

“I think that in most timelines, humans will simply be irrelevant and extinct,” one interviewee said. 

I heard that a lot. A few interviewees — mostly employed by frontier AI labs — expected the world to become unimaginably strange in a good way. One put a 30% chance on utopia, a 30% chance on dystopia, a 30% chance on extinction, and a 10% chance on something too weird to imagine. Several refused to make any prediction; several more said only that they still had hope. About half echoed one of my most blunt respondents: “I don't think humanity is going to make it.”

What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end? 

Death was already inevitable 
“I was born with a terminal condition,” said Matthew Gray, a board member at the existential risk community-building nonprofit Lightcone Infrastructure. "We call it aging. I've since picked up another. We call it multiple sclerosis. And AI is a third one on top. I'm not very worried about degenerating from multiple sclerosis because I'm pretty sure the robots will kill me first, just like I wasn't that worried about aging-related deterioration because multiple sclerosis will get me first."From this perspective, AI doomers don't face a new problem; they face the oldest problem humanity has ever faced. 

I pushed back. If I look at an actuarial table, I can expect another 47 years of life. I'd be pretty upset to discover I had only five. 

This, my interviewees thought, was naive. Even without AI risk, I could have been hit by a car; I could have gotten cancer; I could have been nuked in a hot war between Russia and the United States. It’s not that the difference in probability doesn’t matter. It's worse to be certain that I'll die in five years than to have a 50% chance of not hitting my allotted 47. But because my death has always been an inevitability, I have been coping all along with the precarity of my existence. From this perspective, AI risk isn’t shocking and unfamiliar; it’s a significantly worse version of a problem I already know I have to deal with. 

"I was never guaranteed that I was going to get a long life and a long future and a chance to meet my grandchildren,” said Gretta Duleba, an independent technical AI safety researcher and former communications manager at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. “Those were never my right. Across human history, no one has ever been entitled to the future.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Most recently from Asterisk:

"The Institute Behind Taiwan’s Chip Dominance"

Google vs Tesla: "Waymos and Cybercabs see the world through very different sensors" (now with more DARPA)

Your Mission: "place all major technological innovations in history on a timeline, together with the connections between them"

"Are Prediction Markets Good for Anything?"

"Shall We Play a Game?" (from India with love)

Silicon Dreams: That One Day, Should All Humanity Die In A Plague, That AI Will Be Able To Harness The Energy And Extract The Physical Resources To Go On Forever

"After decades of warnings, new data suggest the Atlantic’s vital circulation may withstand climate warming better than feared"

And now for some good news. From the journal Science, June 11: 

Shifting currents 

Off the coast of the Canary Islands—In calm waters here off the northwestern coast of Africa, the crew of the RRS Discovery, a U.K. research ship, was scanning the horizon, waiting for a sentinel to return from the deep. An acoustic ping had triggered the release of a mooring holding 2 years of precious ocean measurements from its anchor 2000 meters below. More than 20 minutes had elapsed, and there was still no sign of the bright orange float that would lift the mooring to the surface. But Ben Moat, the cruise’s chief scientist and an oceanographer at the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC), wasn’t worried. He had been here before.

On the bridge, Moat glanced at a black Casio watch attached to his clipboard: 22 minutes. There was more competition than usual to be the first to spot the float. Moat, the captain, and the third officer were joined by NOC’s CEO, as well as several members of a U.K. TV news crew. “Is it still off to port?” Moat asked, peering through binoculars for a mote of orange against a sea of azure.

The crowd on the bridge reflected the importance of the mooring, one of 10 in a vital climate observatory called the RAPID array. For more than 2 decades, RAPID’s instrument-packed moorings, spaced across the Atlantic Ocean at 26°N between the Bahamas and the Canary Islands, have monitored the changing strength of ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. The currents usher tropical waters and heat to the northeastern Atlantic, allowing cabbage palms to flourish in Ireland and keeping Norwegian ports ice-free in winter. As the waters move north, they cool and become saltier as sea ice forms and rejects brine. The resulting cold, salty water becomes dense enough to sink to the abyss, carrying heat and carbon dioxide down with it. The water returns south along the floor of the Atlantic, heading to the Southern Ocean and beyond.

Climate models have long warned that global warming could weaken “deep-water formation”—the density-driven sinking that is the engine of the AMOC. The logic is straightforward: As Greenland’s ice sheets melt and sea ice formation declines, North Atlantic waters will freshen. Combined with warmer sea temperatures, the freshening makes surface waters more buoyant. The AMOC was thought to have shut down abruptly during past climate warmings, and a handful of researchers now argue such a tipping point could occur this century. A sputtering AMOC could trigger a sharp cooldown in northwestern Europe, rising seas along the U.S. east coast, and shifts in tropical rainfall. “It is a risk that would really have severe impacts,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at Potsdam University and a prominent voice warning of the threat.

Yet for all the alarming headlines, most climate researchers think the AMOC is more resilient than these worst case scenarios make it seem. Emerging evidence suggests the AMOC may not have actually collapsed in the warm climates following ice ages. More detailed climate models suggest it could weaken but not collapse in the current surge of warming. And studies of the AMOC’s present behavior do not yet show any clear signs of trouble. They’re also exposing new facets of the circulation that could buffer any eventual weakening.

“The paradigm has been, if we warm and freshen these areas, we’ll get less dense water and AMOC will slow down,” says Susan Lozier, an oceanographer at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “That paradigm isn’t holding up.”....

....MUCH MORE 

If interested see also:

October 2013 - A Table From The UN's IPCC AR5 Climate Change Report

Just some off the cuff factoids, we'll put it together into a coherent (I hope) investment framework between now and the big Paris meeting coming up in 2015.
If you are going to bet real money on this stuff, learn everything and trust no one....

April 2021 - "Rethinking Oceanic Overturning in the Nordic Seas"

The Arctic ocean is weird.
Because of the basin shape and the fact that, whereas in most of the rest of the oceans the temperature gradients, the thermoclines, play the biggest role in mixing/non-mixing of various waters, in the Arctic it's the halocline, the salinity gradient that you have to pay attention to.
And then there are the currents.... 

From the American Geophysical Union's EOS...

August 2023 - The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Collapses, Plunging Europe Into An Ice Age: WHAT IS YOUR TRADING RESPONSE?

Your financial counsel should be able to immediately answer this query upon being awakened from the deepest delta-wave slumber at 3:30 in the AM. Try it tomorrow. Go to his/her/ze/zir's house and scream the question.

If he/she/ze/zir can't return the correct response the charlatan should be subjected to an unmerciful dressing-down. Or worse....

"Venezuela earthquakes latest: Death toll soars to 589 with over 50,000 missing and US military arrives for aid efforts"

From The Independent, June 26 15:34 BST:

At least 589 people have been confirmed dead in Venezuela after two devastating earthquakes struck overnight on Wednesday.

The US military arrived on Thursday to assist with coordinating aid efforts in the country, the military said.

US southern command said it was supporting relief operations on Friday, adding that the interim government of Venezuela had formally requested American support. The military is to provide specialised equipment and assist with search and rescue efforts. 

Acting president Delcy Rodriguez said on Friday that at least 2,980 people were injured in the double earthquake, while nearly 50,000 are missing....

....MUCH MORE 

"VW weighs up to 100,000 job cuts, four plant closures in biggest overhaul yet, sources say"

 This follows on March 12's Signposts: "Volkswagen slashes 50,000 jobs after profits collapse by nearly half".

From Reuters, June 26: 

• Restructuring could be biggest in auto industry history
• CEO Blume tried to enforce major cuts in 2024, but faced union resistance
• Shutting Hanover, Zwickau, Emden and Audi's Neckarsulm could axe more than 45,000 jobs
• Supervisory board members to discuss restructuring on July 9, sources say
• VW's works council, IG Metall and Lower Saxony vow to resist cuts 

Volkswagen is considering shutting four German factories and ramping up job cuts to as many as 100,000, two people familiar with ‌the matter said on Friday, in what could be the biggest ever overhaul in the industry. 

Members of VW's supervisory board have been informed of the plans, which are due to be discussed at a July 9 meeting, the people said. 

The move comes as the carmaker faces mounting pressure from Chinese rivals, stiff tariffs on car imports into the United States, as well as dwindling demand in Europe, which the company has said makes its business model unsustainable.

Closing the plants at Hanover, Zwickau, Emden and Audi's ​Neckarsulm site would put more than 45,000 jobs at risk, according to the people. That would add to the 50,000 cuts that are currently planned. 

In absolute terms, laying off 100,000 people and ​axing four assembly plants would be the largest restructuring in automotive industry history.

It would be comparable to major shake-ups by GM leading up to and during its ⁠2009 bankruptcy and in the early 1990s when it cut as many as 74,000 jobs over four years and shut or idled 21 plants. 

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume presented the plans to senior executives earlier this week ​to rally support for deep cuts likely to face fierce resistance from unions and the state of Lower Saxony, the carmaker's second-largest shareholder.

The overhaul was first reported by Manager Magazin, which also said the world's ​No. 2 automaker would cut investment by about 15% to just over €130 billion ($148 billion) over the next five years. 

Blume and Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz aim to fundamentally restructure the 89-year-old company, including spinning off the core VW brand and parts operations into separate entities, the magazine added, citing sources.

Volkswagen shares were trading at 16-year lows on Friday, down 3.4% at 1335 GMT, suggesting investors were sceptical the plan would succeed. 

“The high costs are merely a symptom, not the cause. ​They do not address the root cause, which is weak sales," Ingo Speich of Volkswagen shareholder Deka told Reuters. 

"VW must bring attractive products to market that are in high demand; that would put an ​end to the debate over costs.”....

....MUCH MORE 

And on one of Doktor P's namesakes (the other, the Ferdinand, was a tank-destroyer, not nearly as well-engineered), March 10/11:

Porsche's €3.9bn writedown cuts automotive profit by 98% in EV retreat 

"China Gives Coal Room to Grow in New Five-Year Energy Plan"

It is quite possible that cheap electricity from coal-fired power plants will win the AI race for China. 

From Bloomberg, June 25/26:

China is leaving room for coal consumption to grow in coming years, as the stability of the world’s largest energy market continues to outweigh climate concerns.

“We will always prioritize energy security,” Wang Hongzhi, head of the National Energy Administration, said at a briefing on Friday to introduce the country’s new five-year plan for the sector, crediting the strategy for allowing China to successfully withstand the supply shock caused by the Iran War.

The new plan calls for strengthening coal’s role as backstop for the energy system. That includes enhancing coal resources in five existing production hubs, while allowing capacity to expand in central and eastern regions. Officials also gave a green light to further growth in the coal-to-chemicals industry.

Construction of new coal-fired power plants has boomed since a spate of electricity shortages in 2021 and 2022 as Beijing has touted the fuel’s role as a reliable back-up to intermittent renewables. China added 95 gigawatts of new thermal power capacity last year, the most since at least 2008, and requests for new permits in the first quarter of 2026 are ahead of last year’s record pace.

Read more: Chinese Firms Speed Up Plans to Build New Coal Power Plants: GEM

Meanwhile, the country’s coal-to-chemicals sector has grown rapidly in recent years, in part because the powerful mining lobby — heedful of the challenge from renewables in power generation — wanted to develop another source of demand for their product. Coal was given a further boost after the war in Iran pushed up prices of rival feedstocks such as naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas.

Softer Target

The new plan does put some limits on the expansion of fossil fuels, but experts view them as relatively weak, continuing a trend of China relying on clean energy to deliver bottom-up progress on emissions rather than enforcing tighter top-down controls.

The new road map reaffirmed the goal set in China’s overall five-year plan released in March, which called for coal consumption to reach a peak during the period. That’s a softer target than President Xi Jinping’s previous pledge to reduce coal use. The timeframe for completing the new dual carbon control system, which would include a cap on overall emissions, has also yet to be released.

While China’s direction of travel is toward lower emissions and eventual carbon neutrality, officials are signaling the journey will be slow and steady.

The goal of getting 50% of power from clean energy still allows fossil fuel generation to increase 10% over the period, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The new target on carbon intensity also leaves ample space for fossil fuels, which could be considered generous given that emissions from the power sector already fell last year....

....MUCH MORE 

Although China will tout the "50% from non-coal sources," they have been building coal-fired power plants and coal infrastructure faster than the rest of the world combined. Here is a September 21, 2025 post, reposted in full: 

"China Accelerates Coal Plant Commissioning To 9-Year High"

Following on September 17's "China’s Coal Power Can Win The AI Race".

From OilPrice, September 3:

Despite record solar and wind capacity additions and booming renewable energy output, China is not giving up on coal, on the contrary. 

During the first half of 2025, China commissioned as much as 21 gigawatts (GW) of coal power, the highest amount in the first half of the year since 2016, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said on Monday in their H1 2025 biannual review of China’s coal projects. 

Projections are that coal capacity commissioned for the full year would exceed 80 GW.  

Globally, China is the leader in renewable energy capacity installations, but it is also a leader in coal-fired power and continues to be the key driver of record-high global coal demand. 

In addition, China is looking to boost its domestic coal demand and prices this year. Coal prices in China have been depressed this year, weighing on the profits and profitability of the coal producers.

Despite previous signs of slowdown in coal power last year and a clean energy boom so far this year, coal power remains strong in China, with new and revived projects the highest in a decade, clean energy proponents CREA and GEM said in their half-year report. 

The surge in coal plant commissioning follows the jump in coal project permitting in 2022 and 2023, when China was permitting, on average, two new coal power plants every week. The years 2022 and 2023 saw more than 100 GW of coal power capacity approved in each of the two years.

“This trend will likely continue into 2026 and 2027, unless policy action is taken,” the report said. 

Just 25 GW of coal projects were permitted in China in the first half of 2025, but new and revived projects came to 75 GW, the highest in a decade, and construction starts and restarts reached 46 GW, which is equivalent to the entire coal power capacity of South Korea, CREA and GEM found....

....MORE 

August 2023 - "China Has Approved More Than 50 Gigawatts Of New Coal Power"

....Every year there's a new excuse.
As we said in June 2021's "Who Is Helping Finance China's Coal Infrastructure Build-Out?":

If you guessed HSBC you may already be a winner.
Or you may be a coal financier with knowledge of the business.
China has no intention of stopping their own coal development or that of their client states in Asia and Africa.* They make lovely, soothing speeches about climate and stuff and build $30 billion dedicated coal hauling railways....

When you see infrastructure like this being built you know the nice words from the Chinese are aimed at the stupid and credulous:

March 2021 -  China Does Not Plan To Stop Burning Coal 

Run-through rail car dumpers at the Port of Huanghua in Hebei. pic.twitter.com/BD5Th5s2eu

— MachinePix (@MachinePix) February 9, 2021

Stunning aerial view of China's longest coal transport route, a heavy-loaded #railway scheduled to be completed later this year pic.twitter.com/KHd9DyUohw

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) July 20, 2019

Some more from the Covid-time:

"Report: China emissions exceed all developed nations combined" 

"China has ‘no other choice’ but to rely on coal power for now, official says"

China's Electricity Derived From Thermal (coal, oil, etc) Up 21.1% Q1 2021 vs. Q1 2020

One of our sources said the growth in thermal plant capacity* (not production) in 2020 was 38.4 gigawatts. This is the equivalent of adding a large (1,000 megawatt) coal plant every nine days. Every nine days.
Continuing that trend, coal plant capacity additions just in the first quarter of 2021 were 10,600 megawatts....

See also March 18's "China Energy Stats and Policy" 

"China's new coal power plant capacity in 2020 more than three times rest of world's"

"China generated 53% of the world’s total coal-fired power in 2020"

 Let's Get This Straight: China Has No Intention Of Giving Up Coal

Something we've been saying for so long I start to bore myself.

It's time to name (can't shame, they have no shame) the enablers of the massive long con China is running.

From the financiers backing Chinese coal to the lobbyists to the useful idiots to the UNocrats and the International Emissions Trading Association, to China's handmaidens in the American media, they are nothing but a bunch of liars and thieves enablers, apologists and grifters. Supergrifters. The time is long past when they deserve any attention at all and frankly, if I had my druthers, they would be dealt with the way the IRA dealt with Supergrasses. Not that we have any love for the IRA.

 China Does Not Plan To Stop Burning Coal

"Report: China emissions exceed all developed nations combined"

Follow-up: Just How Much Coal Fired Power Is China Currently Planning/Building?"

"China Raises Coal and Gas Output to Records After Prices Surge"
Have I mentioned that China has been lying about their climate goals and decarbonization efforts for 25 years?

*****

Uh huh. 

It wouldn't be worth commenting on except for the fact China burns quite a bit of coal.

• China Never Had Any Intention Of Quitting Coal
• "IEA urges India and China to put climate pledges into action as coal power generation reaches record levels"
• China Is Now Backtracking On All Those Nice Global Warming Promises They Made At COP26
• 'Global Warming": "Useful idiots' who let China off the hook: Why is there such an apparent lack of concern over their determination to keep burning coal"

....China is not just the largest burner of coal but it burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, and they have burned more coal than the rest of the world combined since at least 2014 and probably longer.....

And many, many more. Just call us your little ray of institutional memory sunshine on this stuff. 

https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/search?q=china+coal&max-results=20&by-date=true

"Chinese firms brace for new EU rules as trade deficit tops $1bn a day"

Who will China sell to?

From Nikkei Asia, June 26:

Bloc leaders ready diversification tool but still split on how hard to push Beijing 

Chinese companies are bracing for tougher regulations in the European Union after leaders agreed on the need to address the bloc's trade deficit with China, which has ballooned to over 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) a day.

The European Commission -- the EU's executive branch -- is preparing a diversification instrument that would require businesses to expand their supply chains so that they are not reliant on a single country, a decision made during a summit last week. The commission also is considering introducing sector-wide tariffs to avoid being overwhelmed by Chinese imports.

Chinese companies are urging EU leaders to be measured in their approach, saying their businesses are entrenched in the European ecosystem.

"The key concern is that future measures remain proportionate, evidence-based and genuinely country-agnostic, rather than creating de facto exclusions," said a Chinese clean technology manufacturer who requested anonymity.

The mood among Chinese businesses is "cautious and increasingly uncertain, though not alarmist," this person said, adding that they know they are headed for a more defensive EU policy.

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce to the EU (CCCEU) described the decision for a diversification instrument as "regrettable," arguing that rising imports from China reflected choices made by European business and consumers.

"The chamber believes that China-EU trade is driven by market demand and the complementary strengths of our economies," a CCCEU spokesperson told Nikkei Asia, highlighting the role that Chinese machinery and industrial components play in supporting European industry.

The EU recorded a goods trade deficit of 360 billion euros with China in 2025. In April, imports exceeded exports by 31.9 billion euros, according to Eurostat, equivalent to over 1 billion euros a day.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz appears to be taking a harder line toward China, saying last week that Chinese subsidies and an undervalued currency placed European industry at a "massive competitive disadvantage."

Germany, the EU's largest exporter, has resisted tougher action in the past because of its extensive trade and investment ties with China. Not only is Berlin's flagship auto industry deeply intertwined with China's, its chemicals group BASF and pharmaceuticals major Bayer are among the companies that have huge operations there.

"There is a growing consensus that bolder action is needed," said Noah Barkin, a senior adviser at research and advisory firm Rhodium Group. "There is less of a consensus on what that action should look like."

Despite Merz's tough words, the German government remains divided, he said.

"Berlin does not want safeguards in the near term and is likely to take a dim view of any instrument which forces companies to restructure their supply chains," Barkin said.

A recent report by the German Economic Institute think tank estimated that 400,000 German jobs linked to exports to China may have disappeared since May 2021....

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Who will buy? 

Capital Markets: "Oil Resumes Decline, Tech Shares Extend Slump, Greenback Trades Heavier"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

There have been two key developments this week and they are both evident today. The first is the continued pullback in oil prices. August WTI is off almost 9% this week, after dropping as much last week and 5.25% the week before. It is near $69 compared with slightly below $66 before the war began. September Brent is off a little more than 9% this week after a 7% drop the previous week and 5.2% the week before that. It is slightly below $73 compared with a little more than $70 before the war. The second is the meltdown in technology shares. As one would expect, it is most evident in the large bourses in Asia and the Nasdaq in the US. 

The US dollar is mostly softer today, though the decline in oil prices has taken a toll on the Norwegian krone. It is off around 0.3% today and has been tagged for nearly 2% this week. The Dollar Index is off about 0.25% ahead of the North American session, and, if it is sustained, it would be the largest decline since early May....

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Korea's KOSPI Index Gets Slammed Again, Circuit Breaker Triggered

I'm getting triggered.

From Korea's Yonhap News Agency, June 26:

Bourse operator issues circuit breaker for KOSPI on sharp fall 

South Korea's bourse operator on Friday activated a circuit breaker for the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) as stocks crashed due to a slump in tech heavyweights.

Trading of KOSPI-listed shares was halted for 20 minutes....

....MORE

 As Grandmother used to say, "If it's not one tham ding it's another." 

And a bit east, the Tokyo Stock Exchange traders have returned from lunch and SoftBank is now down 13.84%. 

Earlier: SoftBank Stock Plunges On Possible OpenAI IPO Delay (9984:Tokyo)

SoftBank Stock Plunges On Possible OpenAI IPO Delay (9984:Tokyo)

Last I saw the stock was down 12.25% (-872.00 yen) 

From CNBC, June 25:

SoftBank sinks 12% as Asia tech rout tracks declines in the U.S. 

• SoftBank Group plunged 12%, leading a broad selloff in Asian technology stocks.
• The weakness also spilled into Asia’s semiconductor sector.
• Apple and Microsoft price hikes added to pressure on global technology shares. 

SoftBank Group plunged more than 12% on Friday, leading a broad selloff in Asian technology stocks, amid mounting concerns over the rising cost of artificial intelligence infrastructure. 

The Japanese conglomerate led losses across the region after the Nasdaq Composite fell for a fourth straight session overnight. The tech-heavy index dropped 0.46% as a 6% plunge in Apple overshadowed Micron’s stronger-than-expected earnings. 

SoftBank Group could remain under pressure after its chip designer Arm Holdings fell 3.2% overnight, underperforming the broader semiconductor sector even as AI-related stocks rebounded sharply.

Andrew Jackson, an equity strategist at Ortus Advisors, said investor enthusiasm for SoftBank may also be capped by reports that OpenAI could delay its initial public offering until next year as it struggles to secure demand at a $1 trillion valuation.

Qualcomm’s new AI data center chip deal with Meta is ultimately positive for Arm through royalty payments, Jackson added. However, Arm also faces growing competition as Qualcomm expands more aggressively into the central processing unit market....

....MUCH MORE 

A couple days ago we saw at Reuters:

Talk of a bubble is 'blasphemy against AI' says SoftBank's Son 

Recently:

June 15 - Reminder: "Big Tech profits are being inflated by stakes in private startups"

We saw this most egregiously with SoftBank.*

June 9 - "SoftBank’s Attempt to Get $6 Billion OpenAI Margin Loan Stalls"

Good. I'm not kidding when I say Mr. Son's penchant for leveraged beta could be a threat not just to the AI players but to the world economy. If the largest domino starts dropping it's hard to see it stopping short of a coordinated international bailout.

Keep an eye on 9984 - Tokyo Stock Exchange...

"Bayer Surges After Winning Its Supreme Court Roundup Challenge"

From Investor's Business Daily, June 25:

Bayer (BAYRY) stock rocketed to a four-month high Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, blocked thousands of lawsuits alleging its Roundup herbicide caused cancer.

The justices ruled that Bayer couldn't be sued for failing to warn that Roundup, which it acquired when it bought Monsanto in 2018, may cause cancer. The court argued the Environmental Protection Agency didn't require a cancer-warning label, preempting state law claims, according to USA Today....

....MORE 

Previously on this case:

December 2025 - "Bayer stock has its best day in 17 years after support from Trump’s solicitor general" (BAYN) 

April 28 - German Chemical Colossus Bayer Gets Mixed Reception At Supreme Court On Roundup Suits

It was even more of a colossus when it was part of IG Farben before Farben was (rightfully) dismembered.

(and before the Monsanto acquisition) 

And on the other big Roundup case, May 7 - And In The OTHER Bayer Case: "US judge calls proposed Bayer Roundup settlement a 'filthy' deal"

"Tinker Saylor Soldier Spy" (MSTR; BTC)

From Puck, June 24:

Bitcoin has now fallen by more than 50 percent from its all-time high. Does the cryptocurrency’s number one evangelist have an escape hatch? 

For reasons that don’t make a lot of historical—or logical—sense, the U.S. stock markets are either at or near their record heights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average remains within a few ticks of 52,000, around its all-time high, reached a week ago. The Nasdaq reached its climax of a little more than 22,000 on June 17—a day after the DJIA’s record, though the tech-heavy exchange had a rough outing on Tuesday. The S&P 500 peaked at 6,144 on June 18. So, you know, it’s basically been risk-off euphoria in the stock market for months now.

In an environment where stock indices seem to know no bounds, you might think that Bitcoin—the ultimate speculative asset—would be ascending too. It has no business plan, no income statement or balance sheet, no future cashflows to discount back to a present value. Bitcoin is only worth what a buyer will pay for it. And at the moment, that’s about $60,000 per token, or about half of its all-time high of around $126,000, reached on October 6. It’s down 30 percent so far this year, while the Dow has risen 6.5 percent. Bitcoin has always been a volatile asset, but it still has to sting if you were among the crowd that bought BTC late last year.

One person who has been buying all along, at whatever price, has been Michael Saylor, one of my favorite protagonists of this strange era of finance. Saylor is the billionaire former C.E.O. and current executive chairman of Strategy, or what used to be called MicroStrategy, the publicly traded enterprise-software maker that has gone all in on not only buying Bitcoin but also holding it as a terminal asset, sort of the way Peter Thiel is holding on to his end-of-world New Zealand retreat.

As faithful Dry Powder readers know, Saylor is one of the world’s leading Bitcoin proselytizers. He is an absolutely mesmerizing advocate for the digital currency and has bet his entire company on the notion that BTC, of which there are only 21 million units, will continue to go “to the moon,” as the kids say. At a Bitcoin conference in Nashville two years ago, Saylor predicted Bitcoin would hit $13 million per coin by 2045, and that this was his base case. In that scenario, Bitcoin’s total value would be $280 trillion “and account for 7 percent of global wealth,” he said. (In his bull case, he said Bitcoin could reach $49 million per coin.)

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of BTC, now owns 847,363 Bitcoins, worth roughly $51.5 billion. Unfortunately, Saylor paid an average price of around $75,600 per, meaning that at current prices his stash is about 17 percent underwater. His last big purchase came on May 18, when he bought just under 25,000 Bitcoins for an aggregate purchase price of a little more than $2 billion, or about $81,000 per. Then, on June 1, Saylor did something once unfathomable: He sold 32 Bitcoins at an average sale price of $77,135, generating minuscule proceeds of around $2.5 million.

For the ultimate Bitcoin holder, this was quite the shock. On an earnings call, Saylor said that he sold the handful of tokens as a cash-management exercise to pay the dividends on an issue of preferred stock and to “inoculate the market and send the message that we did it.” Whatever the reason, the Strategy stock is down some 40 percent since right before Saylor announced the sale.

Not that long ago, I wrote about how Jim Chanos, the famous short seller, had started betting against Strategy. Using a metric that Saylor refers to as mNAV, or enterprise value divided by his Bitcoin holdings, Chanos pounced when Strategy’s mNAV hit a whopping 2.3x. Needless to say, Chanos was spectacularly correct about Saylor’s Bitcoin bet being wildly overvalued, and he made plenty of money on that short bet. Meanwhile, on Monday, Saylor bought another 520 Bitcoins, for $35 million, or $67,000 per BTC.

A Second Crypto Winter...

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Possibly related:

June 2021 - MicroStrategy, Bitcoin and Beavers  

May 2022 - "Microstrategy chief: 'Bitcoin is going to go into the millions'" (MSTR)

Sadly, there are no pure-play psychiatric hospital stocks left on the market. They've been absorbed into larger organizations. On the other hand, as grandiosity and risk taking are symptoms of the manic phase of bi-polar disorders we may just be in luck with lithium producers SQM and Albemarle.

October 2024 - With The Booming Economy Shortages Are Beginning To Pop Up: "America Risks Running Out of Tickers for Single-Stock ETFs"

November 2025 - "Crypto treasury companies pivot to fringe tokens, stoking volatility fears"

Oh hell no.

Shut 'em all down. They should all be classified as advertent inadvertent investment companies in violation of the '40 Act. (which would have to be preceded by crypto being considered a security, but still)...

November 2025 -  "Chanos declares victory in his bet vs. Strategy’s Saylor"

The bet was smart, the timing was fortunate. Ask any number of investors who have bet on the price of closed end funds versus the NAV of the underlying portfolio.

Sometimes the prices converge, sometimes they don't and sometimes they do but it takes so long that you are in a rocking chair at the Old Traders Home before it happens....

Meanwhile, In Canada: "Report: Female cop shoots rabbi outside Pornhub office in Canada while hiding from Marxist gunman who killed immigrant officer named Mohamed "

Quite a bit going on in that headline.

From the Babylon Bee's sister site (for those times when parody fails) Not The Bee, June 23:

This reads like the darkest of satire:

As we reported yesterday, a female officer appears to have shot a civilian who spooked her while she was taking cover during an active shooting.

That man has been named as a Jewish rabbi named Michael Moshe Mizrahi, part of the Chabad movement. Canadian outlet La Presse reports that the female cop did indeed shoot him:

Michael Mizrahi, a 68-year-old trader, finds himself in the line of fire as he goes to buy a drink near his clothing store on Devonshire Road. In the same video, we see the man appear behind the policewoman, arriving from the side from which the suspect is shooting. In the chaos, the agent shoots the sixty-year-old dead ... Sources close to the investigation confirmed to us that it was indeed the patrolwoman who fired.

What we didn't know at the time is that the shooting took place outside the corporate offices of Pornhub's parent company, Aylo (formerly MindGeek), which owns the largest porn sites on the internet....

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Not The Bee stresses "Noticing the multiple levels of irony here does not downplay the tragedy." Emphasis in original along with:

....The 34-year-old had been with the force since 2021 and was originally from Algeria, according to Canadian outlet TVA Nouvelles and a website for the Algerian diaspora.

Pelosi Group Reveals Latest Option Plays On...

The former Speaker of the House is hands down one of the premier traders of our time.

From Benzinga, June 24: 

Benzinga’s Government Trades page tracks Pelosi’s newly disclosed stock transactions — her first trades in five months.

Purchases include:

• May 29, 2026: 200 call options with a strike price of $50 and expiration date of March 19, 2027 in Intel Corp INTC

• May 29, 2026: 200 call options with a strike price of $50 and expiration date of March 19, 2027, in Uber Technologies UBER

The Intel trade is listed with a dollar value between $1 million and $5 million. The Uber trade has a dollar value of $500,000 to $1 million.

These mark the first trades disclosed by Pelosi since January 2026.

The option purchases follow a trading strategy often used by Mr. Pelosi that involves buying options dated months into the future and at a strike price already in the money, or below where shares are currently trading.

Intel stock is one of the top gainers in 2026 among large-cap stocks. Its shares are up 237.9% year-to-date as of this writing....

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When the she-wolf of Wall Street awakens after a five-month slumber it is worth remarking upon. 

At MoneyWise, November 9, 2025:

Nancy Pelosi posted up a staggering 16,930% return on her investments, beat the market by 581%: Here are her 5 biggest wins and what you can learn

Conservative commentator Scott Jennings recently joked on X that “President Trump should hire Nancy Pelosi in retirement to manage Americans' stock market portfolios. She beat the S&P 500 by 559%. We could all be retired in 6 months!” (1) The sarcasm aside, Jennings had no idea that the numbers Pelosi leaves behind heading into retirement tell a startling truth.

A New York Post analysis revealed that before first taking office in 1987, Pelosi and her husband reported between $610,000 and $785,000 in stocks in their portfolio — worth $133.7 million today, according to the latest estimates from Quiver Quantitative (2).

That means that Nancy Pelosi made a 16,930% return, blasting past 2,300% for the Dow Jones over the same period of 37 years.

The New York Post reported that they netted a 14.5% average annual return, crushing the S&P 500, NASDAQ and Dow Jones performances over those years, around 7% to 9%.

Over the past decade alone, Pelosi's portfolio has generated an estimated 838% cumulative return, beating the S&P 500's 256% return by 581% at time of writing. In 2024, her portfolio jumped 70.9% compared to the S&P 500's 24.9% gain. Pelosi's personal net worth has skyrocketed to over $278 million according to Quiver Quant data (3).

These aren't actually Nancy Pelosi's trades directly — her husband Paul Pelosi, a venture capitalist, handles investments for the Pelosi family....

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