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US REITs Led Last Week’s Broad-Based Rebound

US REITs Led Last Week’s Broad-Based Rebound

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Most of the major asset classes mounted a strong rebound in the shortened trading week through Thursday, Mar. 9, led by US real estate investment trusts (REITs), based on a set of exchange-traded funds. The lone exception: broadly defined commodities, which continued to slump.

Vanguard US Real Estate (VNQ) posted a blowout gain of more than 22% last week. Despite the fund’s monster rally, VNQ remains far below its previous peak, reached in late-February, nursing a 20% drawdown.

Big gains were also posted in other corners of the global markets last week, including US stocks. Vanguard Total US Stock Market (VTI) surged 13.0%. Here, too, the powerful rally only recovered a portion of the losses following the sharp selloff since February.


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The only slice of the major asset classes to lose ground last week: broadly defined commodities. The iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust (GSG) fell 3.1%, leaving the fund near its lowest level since it began trading in the mid-1990s.

The broad-based rally in markets last week lifted an ETF-based version of the Global Markets Index (GMI.F). This unmanaged benchmark that holds all the major asset classes (except cash) in market-value weights via ETFs surged 8.4% over the five trading days through Thursday’s close.

Turning to the one-year trend, US investment-grade bonds are in the lead for the major asset classes. Vanguard Total US Bond Market (BND) is up 5.0% on a total return basis for the one-year window through Thursday’s close.

A close second-place performance is currently held by inflation-indexed Treasuries for the trailing 12-month window. The iShares TIPS Bond ETF (TIP) closed up on Mar. 9 by 9.7% vs. the year-ago level after factoring in distributions.

Commodities continue to remain dead last: iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust (GSG) has lost more than 39% over the past 12 months.

GMI.F remains in the red over the trailing one-year window but last week’s rally helped to pare the red ink. The benchmark is currently down by a relatively modest 3.5% vs. the year-ago price.

Ranking the major asset classes by current drawdown shows that only US investment-grade bonds (BND) and inflation-indexed Treasuries (TIP) are trading near their previous highs.


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Germany Is Running Out Of Money And Debt Levels Are Exploding, Finance Minister Warns

Germany Is Running Out Of Money And Debt Levels Are Exploding, Finance Minister Warns

By John Cody of Remix News

German Finance Minister…

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Germany Is Running Out Of Money And Debt Levels Are Exploding, Finance Minister Warns

By John Cody of Remix News

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner is warning his own government that state finances are quickly growing out of hand, and the government needs to change course and implement austerity measures. However, the dispute over spending is only expected to escalate, with budget shortfalls causing open clashes among the three-way left-liberal coalition running the country.

With negotiations kicking off for the 2025 budget, much is at stake. However, the picture has been complicated after the country’s top court ruled that the government could not shift €60 billion in money earmarked for the coronavirus crisis to other areas of the budget, with the court noting that the move was unconstitutional.

Since then, the government has been in crisis mode, and sought to cut the budget in a number of areas, including against the country’s farmers. Those cuts already sparked mass protests, showcasing how delicate the situation remains for the government.

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner attends the cabinet meeting of the German government at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Lindner, whose party has taken a beating in the polls, is desperate to create some distance from his coalition partners and save his party from electoral disaster. The finance minster says the financial picture facing Germany is dire, and that the budget shortfall will only grow in the coming years if measures are not taken to rein in spending.

“In an unfavorable scenario, the increasing financing deficits lead to an increase in debt in relation to economic output to around 345 percent in the long term,” reads the Sustainability Report released by his office. “In a favorable scenario, the rate will rise to around 140 percent of gross domestic product by 2070.”

Under EU law, Germany has limited its debt levels to 60 percent of economic output, which requires dramatic savings. A huge factor is Germany’s rapidly aging population, with a debt explosion on the horizon as more and more citizens head into retirement while tax revenues shrink and the social welfare system grows — in part due to the country’s exploding immigrant population.

Lindner’s partners, the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD), are loath to cut spending further, as this will harm their electoral chances. In fact, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is pushing for a new pension package that will add billions to the country’s debt, which remarkably, Lindner also supports.

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Tyler Durden Mon, 03/18/2024 - 05:00

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Artificial mucus identifies link to tumor formation

NEW ORLEANS, March 18, 2024 – During cold and flu season, excess mucus is a common, unpleasant symptom of illness, but the slippery substance is essential…

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NEW ORLEANS, March 18, 2024 – During cold and flu season, excess mucus is a common, unpleasant symptom of illness, but the slippery substance is essential to human health. To better understand its many roles, researchers synthesized the major component of mucus, the sugar-coated proteins called mucins, and discovered that changing the mucins of healthy cells to resemble those of cancer cells made healthy cells act more cancer-like.

Credit: American Chemical Society

NEW ORLEANS, March 18, 2024 – During cold and flu season, excess mucus is a common, unpleasant symptom of illness, but the slippery substance is essential to human health. To better understand its many roles, researchers synthesized the major component of mucus, the sugar-coated proteins called mucins, and discovered that changing the mucins of healthy cells to resemble those of cancer cells made healthy cells act more cancer-like.

The researcher will present her results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2024 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in person March 17-21; it features nearly 12,000 presentations on a range of science topics.

“For hundreds of years, mucus was considered a waste material or just a simple barrier,” says Jessica Kramer, a professor of biomedical engineering who led the study. And indeed, it does serve as a barrier, regulating the transport of small molecules and particulates to underlying epithelial cells that line the respiratory and digestive tracts. But it also does much more. Studies show that mucus and mucins are biologically active, playing roles in immunity, cell behavior and defense against pathogens and cancer. Kramer’s team at the University of Utah, for example, recently found that specific sugars attached to mucins inhibited coronavirus infection in cell culture.

“Part of the challenge of studying mucus and mucins in general is that they have quite a variety of protein structures,” Kramer explains. Although humans share more than 20 mucin genes, those genes are expressed differently in different tissues and are spliced to generate a range of proteins. In addition, cells modify those proteins in myriad ways with different sugars to meet the body’s needs.

Complicating the picture, genetic factors alone don’t determine mucin composition. Dietary and environmental factors can also influence which sugars become attached to these proteins. Thus, mucus composition can vary significantly from person to person, from day to day, and from tissue to tissue, all of which makes it difficult to identify the biological effects of any given mucin.

To study mucin properties, researchers can collect mucus from animals in slaughterhouses, Kramer says. “But ultimately, it’s quite labor intensive and difficult to purify. And in the process of doing the harvesting, usually the sticky, slimy properties are disrupted.”

As an alternative, mucins can be purchased off-the-shelf, Kramer explains. But because batch-to-batch variability can lead to problems with experimental reproducibility, methods are needed to reliably produce synthetic mucins at scale and at a reasonable price.

In the absence of a simple genetic method to produce individual mucins, Kramer’s lab combined synthetic chemistry and bacterial enzymes to generate the core polypeptides and then selectively add sugars to create unique synthetic mucins. This allows the researchers to test the physical, chemical and biological properties of individual types of mucin molecules and identify the impact of changing individual sugars or protein sequences.

Kramer, along with the lab of collaborator Jody Rosenblatt at King’s College London, is applying her team’s mucins to questions of cancer biology. In particular, the scientists are exploring the influence of mucins on the earliest stages of tumor formation. Previous studies in other labs have shown that mucins embedded in the surface of cancer cells promote metastasis, the spread of cancer to other tissues in the body. These mucins can also help the cancer cells evade immune system defenses by blocking immune cell activation.

“We are building synthetic mucins to understand how the chemical aspects of these proteins affect the behavior of cancer cells,” Kramer explains. “It hasn’t been possible to study these things before because we can’t control the molecular properties of mucins using traditional genetic and biochemical methods.”

Normally, as non-cancerous epithelial cells grow, they crowd together, with some getting eliminated from the epithelial layer to maintain a consistent and stable tissue structure. When Kramer’s team engineered the cells to have a bulky mucin-rich surface similar to that of cancer cells, the cells stopped extruding normally and piled up, forming what looked like the start of tumors.

Kramer is quick to note, however, that her team has not determined whether the genetics of the cells have changed, so they cannot yet state definitively whether the healthy cells were transformed into cancer cells. Those studies are ongoing.

The insights will be pivotal for the development of possible cancer treatments targeting mucins, as they will help highlight which parts of the mucin molecules are most important to tumor formation.

Scientists have been trying to make mucin-targeting therapeutics for decades, but that hasn’t worked well, in part because the sugar groups on the molecules weren’t fully taken into account, Kramer says. “For a vaccine, we can’t only consider the protein sequence because that’s not what the molecule looks like to the immune system. Instead, when an immune cell bumps into the surface of a cancer cell it’s going to see the sugars first, not the protein backbone.” So she believes an effective vaccine will need to target those mucin sugars.

Beyond cancer, the ability to reliably modify the protein sequence and sugars and produce scalable quantities of synthetic mucins offers opportunities to develop these molecules as anti-infectives, probiotics and therapies to support reproductive and women’s health, Kramer says.

The research was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Science, National Science Foundation and Marion Milligan Mason Fund.

Visit the ACS Spring 2024 program to learn more about this presentation, “Synthetic mucins: From new chemical routes to engineered cells,” and more scientific presentations. 

###

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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Title
Synthetic mucins: From new chemical routes to engineered cells

Abstract
Mucin glycoproteins are the major component of mucus and the epithelial glycocalyx. Mucins are essential for life, serving roles as a physical barrier, a lubricant, and a biochemical moderator of infection, immunity, and cancer. There are more than 20 known mucin genes with variable expression patterns, splicing, and post-translational glycosylation patterns. Such diversity has challenged study of structure-function relationships. We are developing scalable methods, based on polymerization of amino acid N-carboxyanhydrides, to synthesize glycan-bearing polypeptides that capture the chemical and physical properties of native mucins. We are utilizing these synthetic mucins to form fully synthetic mucus hydrogels and to engineer the glycocalyx of live cells to shed light on the role of glycans in health and disease. This talk will focus on advances in chemical synthesis along with application of synthetic mucins in study of tumorigenesis.


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You can strike gold and silver investment opportunities at Costco

Costco (NDAQ:COST), known for its wide array of products, also offers a distinct opportunity for investors: gold and silver.
The post You can strike gold…

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Costco known for its wide array of products ranging from groceries to electronics and sporting goods, also offers a distinct opportunity for investors: precious metals Costco began selling 1-ounce 24-karat gold bars, in the United States in October 2023 and sold more than US$100 million by November Investors are looking for inflation-proof opportunities and as Stockhouse’s recent Thematic Insights report details, the gold supply has remained essentially flat over time, so it is never diluted Costco Wholesale Corp. stock last traded at US$725.63 on the NASDAQ and C$34.01 per share on the NEO Exchange

With gold prices hovering around all-time highs, one of the top warehouse retailers and Canada’s favourite grocer has brought the precious metal to its consumers.

Costco (NDAQ:COST), known for its wide array of products ranging from groceries to electronics and sporting goods, also offers a distinct opportunity for investors: precious metals. While the retail giant might not be the first place that comes to mind when thinking about gold and silver investments, Costco’s offerings in Canada have caught the attention of savvy investors looking to diversify their portfolios.

Let’s delve into what Costco Canada has to offer in terms of gold and silver investments and explore the potential benefits and considerations.

Gold and silver bullion at Costco

Costco began selling 1-ounce 24-karat gold bars, in the United States in October 2023 priced around US$2,000 and sold more than US$100 million by November.

Observing Costco shoppers can provide interesting economic and cultural indicators. Just like the early days of COVID-19 in 2020 when consumers emptied pallets of toilet paper, the supplies of gold and silver at Costco might reveal how confident the public is in Canadian currency and the economy.

Costco Canada stocks a selection of gold and silver bullion available online at Costco.ca, providing investors with the opportunity to add physical precious metals to their investment portfolios. Gold and silver bullion are typically offered in the form of bars or coins, each carrying intrinsic value based on the metal content.

(Source: Costco.ca) Benefits of investing in gold and silver Portfolio diversification: Gold and silver have historically served as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty. By adding precious metals to their portfolios, investors can diversify risk and potentially protect their wealth during times of market volatility. Tangible assets: Unlike stocks or bonds, which exist only as digital entries or paper certificates, gold and silver bullion offer investors tangible assets they can hold in their hands. This physical presence can provide a sense of security and stability, especially during turbulent economic times. Liquidity: Gold and silver are globally recognized as valuable commodities, making them liquid assets. Investors can easily buy and sell gold and silver bullion in various markets around the world, providing flexibility and accessibility. Store of value: Throughout history, gold and silver have maintained their value over the long term. While fiat currencies may depreciate because of factors such as inflation, political instability or economic crises, precious metals have proven to retain their purchasing power over time. Considerations when investing in precious metals Price volatility: Like any investment, the prices of gold and silver can fluctuate based on supply and demand dynamics, geopolitical events, and macroeconomic factors. Investors should be prepared for price volatility and hold a long-term perspective. Storage and security: Owning physical precious metals requires adequate storage and security measures to protect against theft or damage. Investors might opt for secure vault storage services or invest in home safes to safeguard their bullion. Transaction costs: When buying and selling gold and silver bullion, investors might incur transaction costs such as premiums, commissions or storage fees. It’s essential to factor these expenses into investment decisions to accurately assess potential returns. Costco also marks up its precious metals at a few hundred dollars above its market value, but you will likely find it slightly cheaper than what the big Canadian banks offer, if their stock isn’t sold out. Market timing: Timing the market is notoriously difficult, and attempting to predict short-term price movements in gold and silver can be challenging. Instead, focus on the long-term fundamentals and consider dollar-cost averaging as a strategy to mitigate market timing risk. Why buy gold and silver at Costco?

Already up more than 5 per cent since the beginning of the year, the value of gold is expected to continue to climb this year. Earlier this month it hit record highs above $2,181/oz. as speculation rises around the prospects of June interest rate cuts.

… but is it a good investment?

In an interview with CBC Radio’s The Current, Will Huggins, an associate professor of finance and economics at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business called this a good marketing strategy by Costco, but believed that buying gold from Costco doesn’t offer any advantage compared with the big Canadian banks.

“It’s not like a herd of cattle or some land or a corporate entity that we can keep bringing new people into,” he said. “It’s just a yellow rock.”

(Source: Costco Wholesale Corp.) Final thoughts on buying gold and silver

Costco Canada’s offering of gold and silver bullion presents an intriguing opportunity for investors seeking to diversify their portfolios with tangible assets.

Investors are looking for inflation-proof opportunities and as Stockhouse’s recent Thematic Insights report details, the gold supply has remained essentially flat over time, so it is never diluted and is essentially immune to inflation.

Whether you’re a seasoned investor looking to bolster your portfolio’s resilience or a newcomer exploring alternative investment avenues, the availability of gold and silver bullion at Costco Canada may offer a convenient and accessible option to incorporate precious metals into your investment strategy.

While investing in precious metals carries certain benefits and considerations, it is important for investors to conduct due diligence, assess their risk tolerance, and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions. As with any investment, prudent decision-making and a long-term perspective are key to navigating the complexities of the financial markets.

Costco Wholesale Corp. (NDAQ:COST) stock last traded at US$725.63 on the NASDAQ and C$34.01 per share on the NEO Exchange.

Join the discussion: Find out what everybody’s saying about this stock on the Costco Wholesale Corp. Bullboard, and check out the rest of Stockhouse’s stock forums and message boards.

The material provided in this article is for information only and should not be treated as investment advice. For full disclaimer information, please click here.

The post You can strike gold and silver investment opportunities at Costco appeared first on The Market Online Canada.

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