Juggling Dynamite

We humans can be so smart and resourceful when we chose to learn and evolve.

New Yorker Doug Manowitz built an electric vehicle from parts that he mostly ordered online. His goal was to build a zero-emission vehicle he could use to to zip around the city. Here is a direct video link.

And for all those festering over ‘range anxiety’, understand that the roads themselves are obvious solar receptors that can fuel electric vehicles and the grid itself. See: France is using 600 miles of roads to generate renewable energy.

The panels use polycrystalline silicon to trap sunlight, and according to Colas, they can be used on any road. They can reportedly support a variety of vehicular traffic and don’t need any special engineering — they can be installed right top of the road.

While the project is certainly forward-thinking, it’s not the first of its kind. In November 2014, the Netherlands opened the world’s first solar bikeway; as Mic’s Tom McKay reported in May, the project was a major success.

Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill. Yet it goes on, almost entirely unchallenged.  Here is a direct video link.

High yield corporate bonds and stocks traditionally move in close correlation over full market cycles. When valuations are high, so is the downside to capital in both. This chart since 2006 of US high yield bond prices (HYG in green) and S&P 500 stocks (in red), offers some context over the past decade.

High yield prices began to plunge in late 2006 as the subprime bomb blew.  Stocks joined the descent late 2007 to early 2009.  By the bottom, high yield bonds had lost an average of 38% and the S&P 500 55%.  Both then rallied two years, before slumping afresh with global revenues in mid 2011, and rallying into 2013 on QE ‘liquidity’.  That was then.

Since 2013, high yield bonds have been diving (down some 18% so far) even as the S&P 500 managed to limp higher into mid-2015 on ‘FANG’ fumes (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google).

High yield bonds broke below their 2011 support line last fall (horizontal green band above) and so far continue to drop as 2016 brings rising defaults and write-downs.

One has to wonder if equity prices will stick to their usual pattern and follow suit. Just following HYG’s lead to the 2011 support line (pink band above) would be -40% for the S&P from current levels.  And as shown above, high yield debt has not bounced at the 2011 lows.  Food for thought.