Tag: finance

As previewed last week, a record big $112BN quarterly refunding auction kicks off today with $48BN in 3-yr Notes, a record size for the tenor with yields edging up from 11bp to 15bp in the last week to make room for the supply.

AS SocGen’s Kit Juckes notes, while selling humungous amounts of debt in the middle of August would never be easy – and with
large swathes of the market working from home, the whole process gets even harder – in this financial market enactment of the fight between King Kong and Godzilla, he expects the world’s voracious appetite for safe assets to swallow up the US government’s massive funding needs with barely a burp.

Was he right? Well, one month after the US sold a record amount of 3Y paper at a record low yield, it did so again at 1pm today, when the Treasury placed a record $48BN in 3Y notes at another record low yield despite the recent rebound in yields.

To be sure, there was a small burp, because while the yield was a new all time low of 0.179% which benefited from the modest concession resulting from the recent selloff in rates, it did tail the When Issued 0.176% by a modest 0.3bps. That said, the market is still making it quite clear that it does not expect any rate hikes for more than 3 years.

The Bid to Cover of 2.44 was unchanged from last month, and just fractionally higher than then 6-auction average.

Finally, the internals were extremely solid with Indirects taking down 57.0%, far above last month’s 54.3% and the recent average of 52.3%; in fact it was the highest foreigner takedown since December 2017.

And with Directs taking down 12.3%, effectively on top of the 11.1% six auction average, Dealers were left holding 30.7% of the auction, below the 41.3% recent average and the lowest since December 2019.

Overall, a stellar auction despite the modest tail, and as Juckes said, a tremendous start to a record large refunding week.

 

For the sixth straight month in a row, customers are bailing on Boeing.

The embattled manufacturer saw customers abandon plans to buy 43 of its 737 MAX planes in July, where cancelled orders once again outpaced the company’s sales, according to CNBC. 

Boeing has net negative orders of 836 planes this year, inclusive of aircraft it took out of its backlog. The company “routinely removes orders from its running tally when customers are financially strained, among other reasons,” the report says.

The company’s backlog now stands at 4,496 orders. 

Most of the cancelled orders have come from aircraft leasing companies. Boeing said last month it was going to cut production targets for some of its aircraft, including both the 737 MAX and the Dreamliner, citing the coronavirus pandemic hurting demand.

It could also have something to do with the constant setbacks, lax quality control and the 346 people who have died as a result of the 737 MAX – but we digress…

Recall, just weeks ago we wrote that Boeing was running out of space to park its Dreamliner aircraft that nobody wanted to buy. 

“It’s not just the company’s ill-fated Boeing 737 MAX which may or may not fly again,” we said. “Boeing is now also running out of space to stash newly-built 787 Dreamliners, as unsold jetliners are now crammed onto every available patch of pavement on airfields near its factories in Washington and South Carolina.”

“Dozens of the planes are sitting on the company’s premises,” we reported, with Uresh Sheth, a closely followed blogger who meticulously tracks the Dreamliners rolling through Boeing’s factories, putting the total somewhere above 50.

That’s more than double the number of jets typically awaiting customers along Boeing’s flight lines.

According to Sheth, brand-new widebodies are lined up on a closed off runway at the airport that abuts Boeing’s hulking plant north of Seattle. In North Charleston, 787s are tucked around the delivery center and a paint hangar. The U.S. planemaker has even started sending aircraft to be stored in a desert lot in Victorville, California.

By Mark Cudmore, former Lehman FX trader and currently macro strategist at Bloomberg Markets Live

The Gold and Bitcoin Bull Run Is Just Beginning

A long-term trend of investor demand for stores of value has only just begun, with policy doors now open that won’t be easily closed again. That’s a huge mark in favor of gold and Bitcoin.

Something changed this year. After sparking years of heated debates on the sidelines, the once-seen-as-preposterous concept of Modern Monetary Theory is being adopted by stealth with barely a whimper of protest. That means a new market paradigm that brings an end to the “default” state of U.S. real yields being positive.

It’s beyond the remit of this piece to discuss the pros and cons of MMT; I’m just drawing attention to the fact that it’s happening and suggesting that those who fail to adapt their investment approach accordingly will regret it. If orthodox economic theory is being upended, then conventional market approaches also need to be reexamined.

The U.S. has three choices in the coming decades for how to deal with the government’s extraordinary debt burden:

1. Default on its debt;

2. Inflate it away;

3. Impose sufficient austerity to slowly pay it down.

Option 1 is politically unfeasible and completely unnecessary given that the U.S. controls the dollar printing presses. The decades ahead might bring the occasional nod toward option 3 but that is politically unsustainable for more than a few years, especially now that both sides of the political divide have shown a willingness to significantly increase borrowing.

That leaves option 2 — already the assumed base case for many investors in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The difference now is that recent actions have rendered moot any further debate. The market consequences — which investors have yet to fully register — include that the default state for U.S. real yields will now be negative until the financial system gets completely overhauled. Or collapses.

And as the volume of negative-yielding global debt rises, so crypto and precious metals remain preferable non-negative-yielding assets…

Yes, this will erode the value of fiat currency, but not at the rapid pace that too many people rush to conclude. That’s a valid tail risk but not the base case as there are so many structural disinflationary forces and policymakers have many levers to manage the process. It’s far more likely that the devaluation of fiat currencies happens gradually over many years — and what that means is that stores of value will retain a premium.

As for what assets make a good store of value, the phrase itself is a misnomer. Just like beauty, value is in the eye of the beholder and perception of it is all that matters.

For much of history, gold has retained a premium far beyond any practical use. Apocalyptic forecasters recommending gold, guns and tinned food haven’t thought through the logistics or usefulness of lugging bullion through zombie-infested wastelands, but it’s precisely this illogical thinking that imbues gold with a special status as a store of value.

Bitcoin engenders a similar perception of value. It’s poorly constructed to be a viable transactional currency and has no inherent value, which has left me cynical of its long-term prospects. But, helped by the network effect and even “official validation” by the likes of the CFTC, which sees it as a tradeable commodity, I have been convinced it has reached sufficient critical mass to be perceived as “digital gold” and thus a popular store of value in the years ahead.

Of course, there are other adequate stores of value. And, most importantly, I’m not suggesting there won’t be short-term deflationary shocks to the financial system that will prompt massive corrections in gold, Bitcoin and their alternatives. It’s just that we now know the eventual policy response will be to print enough money into the system until real yields are once again negative, only reinforcing the long-term underlying demand for those perceived stores of value at the expense of fiat currencies.

Readers may recall as early as April we outlined how mortgage lenders were preparing for the most significant wave of delinquencies in history as tens of millions of people lost their jobs because of the virus-induced recession.

Mortgage lending standards have since tightened as mass foreclosures and mortgage market mayhem appears to be ahead.

The Trump administration has found creative ways to prevent the foreclosure wave during the election year – which has placed millions of homeowners in forbearance programs to shift the mortgage crisis until after November. 

Property data and analytics firm CoreLogic published a new report Tuesday warning about early-stage delinquency rates are starting to rise. 

CoreLogic said on a national level, 7.3% of mortgages were 30+ days or more overdue (in May). This is a 3.7-percentage point increase in the overall delinquency rate compared to 3.6% in May 2019.

Stages of delinquency: 

• Early-Stage Delinquencies (30 to 59 days past due): 3%, up from 1.7% in May 2019.
• Adverse Delinquency (60 to 89 days past due): 2.8%, up from 0.6% in May 2019.
• Serious Delinquency (90 days or more past due, including loans in foreclosure): 1.5%, up from 1.3% in May 2019. This is the first year-over-year increase in the serious delinquency rate since November 2010.

National Overview of Loan Performance

CoreLogic’s chief economist Dr. Frank Nothaft said, “the national unemployment rate soared from a 50-year low in February 2020, to an 80-year high in April. With the sudden loss of income, many homeowners are struggling to stay on top of their mortgage loans, resulting in a jump in non-payment.”

Government and industry relief programs have provided a temporary safety net for millions of homeowners unable to service their mortgage. The housing crisis is expected to begin after the election: 

“U.S. serious delinquency rate to quadruple by the end of 2021, pushing 3 million homeowners into serious delinquency,” said CoreLogic. 

Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic, said, “barring additional intervention from the Federal and State governments, we are likely to see meaningful spikes in delinquencies over the short to medium term.” 

All states logged increases in overall delinquency rates in May from a year earlier. New Jersey and Nevada, both still hot spots for the virus, experienced the largest overall delinquency gains with 6.4 percentage-point increases each in May, compared to one year earlier. New York again remained atop the list with a 6.1 percentage-point increase, while Florida experienced a gain of 5.8 percentage points.

On the metro level, nearly every U.S. metropolitan area posted at least a small annual increase in their overall delinquency rate, with tourism destinations such as Miami, Florida (up 9.2 percentage points), and Kahului, Hawaii (up 8.8 percentage points), posting two of the largest increases. Odessa, Texas — which has a local economy strongly tied to the oil industry — also logged a considerable increase, posting an annual gain of 9 percentage points.

Meanwhile, over 75% of all metro areas logged at least a small increase in their serious delinquency rate. Odessa, Texas, and Laredo, Texas, tied for largest increase with gains of 1.1 percentage points each. McAllen, Texas; Midland, Texas and Hattiesburg, Mississippi all followed with gains of 0.7 percentage-points each. -CoreLogic 

And while the Trump administration is now in “bailout everyone mode” – their ability to dissolve the financial crisis in its entirety will likely not succeed but only push off part two of the crisis until after the election. 

Authored by Ben Wilson via SaraACarter.com,

Shocking remarks made by the Federal Elections Commission Commissioner Ellen Weintraub on Monday confirmed many Americans’ fears about mail-in ballots: the winner likely won’t be declared on election night — and she said “this is okay” that we may have delayed results.

“Let me just tell everybody, we’re all going to need to take a deep breath and be patient this year,” Weintraub said on CNN Monday morning.

“There’s a substantial chance we are not going to know on election night what the results are.”

There’s “a substantial chance” that the results won’t be out on election night, says Federal Election Commission’s Ellen Weintraub. “If it takes a little bit longer to count all the votes accurately, that’s what we need to do in order to ensure that everyone’s vote counts.” pic.twitter.com/mNdwuzjvyt

— New Day (@NewDay) August 10, 2020

She made it clear: just take a deep breath and be patient and let the government decide if Donald J. Trump won reelection – what could go wrong?

Weintraub dismissed the President’s concerns about mail-in voting, despite previous issues and indictments surrounding voter fraud with this form of voting.

Her admission about not knowing results – especially the Presidency and other races “that are important to people” – should come as a concern to voters.

She did not provide a deadline for when results would be known.

The Commissioner also warned Americans against believing everything they read on the internet and to be vigilant of the content they share and to know that it could be false information produced by Russian or other foreign actors.

On Monday, NBC News published a puff-piece for the Wuhan Institute of Virology – giving controversial lab which ‘could pass for a college campus’ a glowing review after a five-hour visit and interviews with several employees.

The report slams the Trump administration for showing “no credible proof to back up claims that the coronavirus was either manufactured at or accidentally leaked from the lab,” while helping the CCP dispute an April Washington Post report over US Embassy cables warning of safety issues at the facility.

The author of that WaPo piece, Josh Rogin, has just shredded NBC News over their report – which he says contains ‘several errors.’

The NBC story says that U.S. officials “said they observed” serious safety issues at the lab. That’s just wrong. The officials reported the Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists TOLD THEM about the safety issues. https://t.co/kgwc21YwBP There’s more…

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 10, 2020

Rogin continues (condensed thread via Twitter, emphasis ours): 

Wang Yanyi, director of the WIV, told NBC reporters the U.S. officials visited in March 2018, two months after the first cable was written. The truth is they visited three times, both before and after the Jan. 2018 cable. Did U.S. officials make an entire visit? Not likely..

That calls into question Wang’s credibility. She also says biosafety was not discussed. Again, calling several U.S. diplomats fabricators? NBC reports that without any pushback. But there’s more…

The NBC reporters toured the lab, as if that would tell them anything. What did they expect to find, a piece of paper they forgot to throw out that says “Coronavirus Origin Evidence”? It’s absurd to think that has any probative value. But there’s more…

The NBC piece also launders more warped logic by Peter Daszak, who has a direct conflict of interest. “The fact that they published the sequence so quickly suggests to me that they weren’t trying to cover up anything.” Or, maybe they were so quick because they recognized it.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 10, 2020

This, from Yuan, the Wuhan institute’s vice director is interesting and true: “So far, there is no evidence to show that the novel coronavirus jumped from animals to people in Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.” No evidence.

Overall, the Chinese scientists can’t be blamed for toeing the Party line. They deviate from that under penalty of death. But U.S. news organizations must do better than presenting a walk around a lab and an interview with falsehoods in it as telling us anything about the virus.

Rogin then explains why the truth matters:

The actual origin story is critically important scientifically to understanding how the outbreak started and therefore how to fight it and how to prevent the next one. Should we spend our time shutting down wet markets or stopping risky bat research? Get it?

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 10, 2020

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Trump Destroys Abusive Democrats In Stimulus Showdown

President Trump won re-election this weekend with his four executive orders.

We haven’t even reached the DNC convention in Milwaukee and it looks to me like this election season is over.

I know the polls keep trying to convince me that Joe Biden, most likely suffering from dementia, is leading President Trump but I just don’t buy it.

And neither do the Democrats.

Because if they did they wouldn’t be so desperate to push through unlimited mail-in voting as their political hill to die on.

And die on it they have.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi held up a new round of stimulus legislation over this issue. The massive gap between the GOP and DNC proposals highlight only part of the political divide between the two sides (see graphic, H/T Zerohedge).

The real divide was in enshrining in law the kind of mail-in voting which would ensure near unlimited cheating and ballot harvesting which would give the Democrats their best chance at “winning the election.”

Pelosi thought she had Trump cornered on this because he had to cave to spend that $1.7 trillion he’s already collected through treasury auctions which prove the Big Lie that the dollar is about to die false.

But all he had to do was make payroll tax irrelevant for a majority of taxpayers in this country.

Go over those Executive Orders he signed. And each one attacks a core position the Democrats carve out for themselves in the public discourse.

1. Defer Payroll Tax Collection — Here Trump is doing at least two things. First, he’s a Republican lowering taxes on the poor and middle class. Second, he lowers the cost of U.S. labor, cuts away red tape and makes it easier for businesses in a cash flow crunch to stay open not having to worry about paying monthly/quarterly tax payments. This attacks a core Democrat talking point, “Republicans don’t care about the little guy, we do!”

2. Extend Student Loan deferments – This is one step closer to debt jubilee on debt that, again, freezes people in place, dealing with debt servicing rather than creating demand in the real economy for goods and services. This also attacks the banks who made these predatory loans, which most student loan debt is, which undermines the “Occupy Wall. St.” talking point that all the money goes to the banks.

3. Extend Renter and Mortgage Eviction Moratorium – Again Trump hits the banks where they live by stopping the eviction of people whose income the Federal and State governments destroyed with their COVID-19 lockdown orders. This is a direct attack on the DNC’s plan to see the banks throwing millions of people out of their homes during the height of the election campaign. Restates the argument that the GOP is only for the rich vulture capitalists.

4. Lower and extend Unemployment Assistance — Trump’s no dummy. At this point the budget deficit is ludicrous. Lowering the assistance through the election season, again, says he’s helping and they are obstructing. It’s not perfect, but it extends the fiscal cliff people are facing until after the election allowing him to make more sweeping changes to the tax code while keeping people in their homes, fed and capable of maintaining some semblance of normality. Trump claims the ‘I care about you’ moral high ground.

The only thing the Democrats could do in response was fulminate about funding Social Security. But that’s an irrelevant argument to anyone other than Boomers who aren’t paying into the system anyway.

Their checks are coming and will continue to come.

High unemployment only makes Social Security’s future less secure. The people out of work aren’t contributing to Social Security now anyway. If you want to get the economy back on its feet you have to let the money circulate.

Removing the deduction from people’s paychecks highlights for the poorest working people in this country just how much of a burden that 15% actually is on their ability to build wealth or even maintain a home.

I never thought I’d see the day where an American President called the social engineers’ bluff about enforced retirement savings. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go death tax for so many people and a blatant wealth transfer system from younger generations to older ones.

This depression will kill off a lot of people, including those Social Security recipients Andrew Cuomo effectively murdered in New York, before they collect on it.

When coupled with inflationary fiat funny money it is an egregiously (and ingeniously) abusive system which ensures the lower and middle classes never get off the hamster wheel no less get out of the cage it’s in.

And it needs to end, at least in its current form.

Between social security and abortion they’ve been the two biggest shibboleths in American politics for the past fifty years. Only one of them is relevant this time around because Trump just made it one.

Trump threatened during the press conference to make the payroll tax exemption permanent if re-elected as well as revamp the capital gains tax. He understands, better than anyone, how difficult it is to build wealth while paying off debt.

Social Security, in its purest form, is a 12.4% interest payment on your labor before you even begin working. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare and robs people of the choice as to how to deploy their capital at the earliest stages of their careers.

Enforced savings for the future for people without a present is not just moronic, it’s counter-productive.

It’s not disciplined, it’s truly abusive.

And once people see how much easier their lives are without carrying that burden before they make their first dollar, the more they will reject all of this social engineering on which the Democrats have based their entire political persona.

This is the first step towards sunsetting the biggest unfunded liability in the U.S. today.

End the fiction that people like me will ever collect Social Security. Begin the hard political fight to face the reality of its insolvency and use the manufactured COVID-19 crisis to get that done.

Local governments are out there today telling you to live in fear of a virus and that they can’t protect your home from rioters and looters.

The cops are overwhelmed and, worse, should be disbanded.

And these are the same people who are also telling you that if you give them power over the Federal Government they will take away all those guns you just bought to protect yourself.

They are also the ones saying they can best safeguard your retirement by extracting one-eighth of your earnings before you ever show up to work for the first time.

Morover, next week they’ll tell you something different because Trump took away another one of their talking points.

With these executive orders, regardless of their legality at this point, Trump is single-handedly changing the entire narrative on which the federal government is premised.

Between now and the election the next narrative to fall will be the idea DNC is running a campaign for any other reason than for its leadership to stay out of jail for treason.

But that narrative only sticks after Trump has made sure things don’t get worse for those already abused by them.

*  *  *

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Over the weekend, Morgan Stanley’s global macro strategist Andrew Sheets published his latest market outlook, which as we noted, boiled down to one thing: investor duration exposure is at all time highs, and it won’t take much of a reflationary trigger to spark a liquidation puke in fixed income securities which would send yields higher and trigger a risk asset selloff even if ultimately the reflationary signal will push beaten up value stocks higher. 

As Sheets noted, “this is one reason why my US colleagues have downgraded software from overweight – a sector with very high valuations and interest rate sensitivity. With duration exposure surfacing across portfolios, we like owning interest rate volatility (while we prefer to sell equity volatility). And for central banks, this dynamic should highlight the dangers of overcooking markets that are already doing quite well.”

Looking ahead, the MS strategist was cautious, warning that “the rise in duration across asset classes, at its most expensive levels on record, suggests that the transition won’t be smooth.”

Picking up on this warning, Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson echoes Sheets’ caution, but not before taking a victory lap first, saying that “we have been bullish since late March on the view that a new bull market began with the beginning of the worst recession in modern history. Since then, the bull market has followed the typical script with some of the most cyclical and levered companies showing the best performance. Note the top ten performers in the S&P 500 and S&P 1500…”

“… from the beginning of this new bull market are classic “cyclicals” just as our recession playbook suggested. Furthermore, despite all of the hoopla over the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 has been the better performer.”

In short, as Wilson concludes “it’s paid to move down the quality and cap curve assuming you did it early on.”

Wilson also notes that much of the relative performance in the classic cyclicals and small caps since the March lows occurred in the first 10 weeks of the recovery:

As we’ve been noting, most stocks have been in a correction/consolidation since June 8th when the equal weighted S&P 500 made its recovery highs (that have yet to be taken out). Many of the weakest stocks since then were some of the biggest winners during the initial rally of this new bull market–i.e. the reopening/recovery winners.

So fast forward to today, when the Morgan Stanley strategist sees a “trio of reasons to worry has the market questioning the recovery” which are behind the post-June 8 “correction” to wit:

1. The New COVID case spike,
2. Concerns about a potential Blue Sweep in this year’s US election, and
3. The looming fiscal cliff.

It is these concerns that Wilson believes “convinced some investors to pare back on these classic cyclicals and migrate back to the pandemic beneficiaries”, however as Sheets wrote over the weekend, the bank disagrees with that strategy and thinks portfolios need to have a balance of COVID beneficiaries and recovery/reopening winners.

After the recent run of the former, we believe the better relative opportunity at this point is with the latter–i.e. cyclical stocks most levered to the recovery over the next 12 months.

Ultimately, Wilson’s optimistic view is based on 4 key points which are as follows:

1. We have not lost faith in the recovery despite these very real concerns. Instead we view all three as simply bumps along the road of what should ultimately be a very sharp and persistent — i.e. V-shaped — recovery.
2. Our thesis that earnings will likely far surpass investor forecasts over the next year due to sharply increasing operating leverage is starting to play out (see our analysis below). We think economically sensitive companies that have slashed expectations and operating costs in this pandemic will experience the greatest operating leverage over the next year.
3. While the economic recession in which we find ourselves is unprecedented in terms of its depth, personal disposable income growth in 2Q has never been higher. Not only is such a divergence unusual, but the magnitude is remarkable (Exhibit 4). This is the direct result of the massive fiscal stimulus being provided to offset the effects of the lock down on employment. Based on Exhibit 4, the programs appear to be accomplishing their goal more effectively than expected

As for the impact on rates, Wilson writes that “given the points above we have high conviction that 10 year Treasury yields are like a coiled spring and are likely to be much higher over the next 3-6 months.“

Wilson also goes back to a point he made a month ago, discussing how the dramatic improvements in corporate operating leverage (read mass layoffs with government stimulus programs picking up the welfare slack), will lead to a surge in corporate profits:

What this really means is that our thesis for a sharp increase in operating leverage is more likely to play out. To recall, at the market trough in March we suggested the government was essentially underwriting this unemployment cycle with its massive Paycheck Protection Program, $1200/$2400 stimulus checks, and supplemental unemployment benefits (Bear Markets End with the Cycle, Time to Employ a Recession Playbook). As with all recessions, companies cut costs aggressively and that includes labor. Usually, cutting employment can have a negative effect on revenues, but this time that may not be the case. Instead, revenues may hold up better than expected as the government subsidizes the unemployed at an even greater level than  normal. The impact to the bottom line will be dramatic for those companies that cut costs the most. We think this is already starting to play out. Indeed, the S&P 500 is simply following the impressive rebound in both PMIs (Exhibit 5) and Earnings Revision Breadth (Exhibit 6) as we expected back in April.

Looking ahead, Wilson’s conclusion is that “hile earnings will likely surprise on the upside next year for the S&P 500, “the surprise will be greatest from the parts of the market that are most levered to the economic recovery. While we think the market has it right directionally, the best opportunities from here are likely to be in those stocks that have higher operational gearing to economic activity and low expectations.“

This may well explain the last two days’ surge in beaten down value stocks at the expense of bond-like tech/growth stocks.

Finally, will Wilson be right and are yields indeed about to soar? We’ll know in “3 to 6 months”, but his track record has so far been impressive: just after the March crash, Wilson raised his 12 month S&P base case target for the S&P to 3,350… and we just took it out about 9 months early.

 

Mired in recession and dealing with the toughest environment for auto sales over the last several decades, the U.S. auto industry has seen another top executive depart. Just days after we reported turnover at the CEO role at Ford, General Motors is following with a C-suite shakeup of its own, as its CFO leaves after just two years to work at a fintech startup.

The company announced today that John Stapleton, GM North America chief financial officer, has been named its acting global chief financial officer, effective Aug. 15, after the resignation of the company’s current CFO, Dhivya Suryadevara.

Suryadevara is leaving the company on short notice, similar to the departure of Ford’s CEO, Jim Hackett, who quit last week. According to Bloomberg, Suryadevara will join PayPal competitor Stripe, as its CFO, the San Francisco-based company said.

GM CEO Mary Barra said that “Dhivya has been a transformational leader in her tenure as CFO. She has helped the company strengthen our balance sheet, improve our cost structure, focus on cash generation and drive the right investments for our future. We wish her every success.”

Suryadevara said: “I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given at GM. While I look forward to a new opportunity that will allow me to apply my skills in a new sector, I have great confidence in GM’s trajectory and future.” Stapleton, who is temporarily taking over duties, has been with General Motors since 1990 and has served in several different finance roles with the company.

GM shares were up as much as 3.5% to 28.96 shortly after the open of regular trading Tuesday.

In a continuing clean-up effort amid a dangerous and potentially toxic environment, leaking chemical containers are posing a challenge to crews working to inspect and secure the Beirut port section which was site of what’s being deemed the largest non-military munitions explosion in history on August 4.  

“Chemical experts and firefighters are working to secure at least 20 potentially dangerous chemical containers at the explosion-shattered port of Beirut, after finding one that was leaking, according to a member of a French cleanup team,” the AP reports.

Chemical containers were in many cases found punctured following the detonation of over 2,500 tons of ammonium nitrate. 

“French and Italian chemical experts working amid the remains of the port have so far identified more than 20 containers carrying dangerous chemicals,” AP continues.

“We noted the presence of containers with the chemical danger symbol. And then noted that one of the containers was leaking,” one French chemical expert working at the site said. “There are also other flammable liquids in other containers, there are also batteries, or other kind of products which could increase the risk of potential explosion,” he added.

An international response team working with the Lebanese government is attempting to identify and contain any leaked chemicals at ground zero for the blast — which was feared to have emitted dangerous gases into the air over the city in the wake of last Tuesday’s deadly accident. The death toll has risen to over 200, including more than 6,000 injured, many of them severely.

More has been learned and confirmed about what precisely started the deadly fire which detonated the highly explosive and volatile ammonium nitrate, commonly used in fertilizer and professional explosives.

Lebanese media as well as Reuters has widely reported the fire started after welding work was done in the very warehouse containing the volatile chemical compound.

It appears the welding crew had no idea that both ammonium nitrate and (astoundingly) a cache of fireworks were being stored on site.

ROCKED: Eyewitness video shot from a boat off Beirut shows a dramatic new angle of the explosion that killed at least 160 people and injured thousands, with the Lebanese government resigning on Monday amid anger and unrest in the wake of the blast. https://t.co/6tgFYYPUPA pic.twitter.com/vjlwKm4brS

— ABC News (@ABC) August 11, 2020

It was reportedly maintenance work on the door of Warehouse 12 – now location of a huge crater which has forever altered the port and coastline.

Port officials reportedly tried to warn top government officials and the Lebanese judiciary for years that the ammonium nitrate, stored there since 2013 in unsafe conditions, was a ticking time bomb in their midst.