The Onitsha Market

 

Many years ago Mr Egbo took me in his Mercedes to Onitsha on the mighty Niger.  He had a son in a school and the Headmaster had called him. The Onitsha market was the largest in Africa, and it was well-ordered. I bought lots of locally made iron tools; unfortunately, I had to leave them in Bauchi, which was never sent after me to Buenos Aires. The Ibo had advanced in metallurgy and fabricated wonderful brass sculptures, iron farming implements, and weapons. The Hittites reached the iron age about 3500 years ago, while the Nordics only 1500 years ago. The Ibo were well-advanced on the path to industrial economy. The contact with the Portuguese resulted deadly for them. 

The girls of Caphtor

 

Knossos fresco. Now, they are known as Minoans, an invented name. They were originally from Caphtor (see the Tanach).

Negotiating the 2025 national budget

 

The official picture says it all: Netanyahu, Smotrich, Head of Bank Israel et al. deciding the fiscal year 2025 national budget. Observe all of them with tightly closed fists on the table, muscles contracted to the breaking point, not a paper anywhere, - why should they need tables when it has been decided that they will not release even one shekel? There is no need for Excel tables; it is a fight to the death for each penny. 

British, we are not.    

Fire in Karaj

 The internet reports that a nuclear energy facility caught fire. The Picture shows three cooling towers, so it may be hot. The wind is steady at 14 km/hour toward the East, so the radioactive isotopes may reach Tehran in 4-5 hours. I hope it is not true. 

Claude says Karaj is approximately 20-30 km west of Tehran's western edges. Assuming an eastward wind, smoke or airborne particles take around 1-2 hours to reach western Tehran. That means that by now radioactive smoke has reached the capital.Wow!

De-Cluttering

I took a lot of my beloved books to the waste and observed that the former lot of my books was there. It has been there for three days, and no one wants them. People in this building and on my street are uninterested in my books. Big, new, luxurious dictionaries purchased when I was penniless will be recycled. I had been offering my daughters Please take some books, but nobody reads books these days. 

My shoes and the rest are gradually disappearing. We are an old couple living in a large five-room apartment and my wife is emptying it, starting with me and my things. I shall take nothing with me to the tomb, there will be no place there. In Kfar Saba, three bodies are laid one above the other in every square meter. Like in the old Frankfurt ghetto's cemetery. 

FDTEC (Information Technology ETF)

 

The fund invests at least 80% of assets in securities included in the fund's underlying index.

 The fund's underlying index is the MSCI USA IMI Information Technology 25/50 Index, which represents the performance of the information technology sector in the U.S. equity market. It may or may not hold all of the securities in the MSCI USA IMI Information Technology 25/50 Index. The fund is non-diversified.

Annual Total Return (%) History

Year

FTEC

Category

2023

53.30%

43.43%

2022

-29.59%

-37.39%

2021

30.49%

15.09%

2020

45.87%

55.91%

2019

48.93%

37.49%

2018

-0.37%

-3.21%

2017

36.83%

35.35%

2016

13.92%

10.84%

Steady She Goes

Globes:  Over the past week, the shekel has been the strongest currency in the world against the US dollar, strengthening by 0.8% while the dollar weakened on average by 0.5% against the basket of major currencies.

Secondly, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange TA Index rose by 3% last month, more than the average rise of 3% by European stocks and slightly below the S&P 500's rise of 3.4%.
Thirdly, the gap between 10-year Israeli government bonds and their US counterparts narrowed by 0.5% over the past three weeks.
Fourthly 108,000 new jobs were created in the Israeli economy between April and June 2024.
Fifthly the average salary in Israel in July 2024 was NIS 13, 591, up 6% from July 2023.
Zabezhinsky says that investors understand that despite concerns about the war in Lebanon, "It is clear that the consequences are less threatening on the routine operation of the economy." If the market is right, Zabezhinsky's assessment is that growth in Israel will be higher than expected.