Tag Archive: contango

Weekly Market Pulse: Look Up In The Sky! It’s A UFO! Or Not!

2023-02-13

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2023-02-13

As I sit here writing this Sunday afternoon, the US has just shot down a third UFO in the last 3 days in addition to the Chinese “weather” balloon last week. I have no insight into what these things might be but I do wonder if we haven’t declared war on the National Weather Service. The federal government has become so sprawling that it could easily be the case that NORAD has no idea what the NWS has up in the air.

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Crude Contradictions Therefore Uncertainty And Big Volatility

2022-05-18

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2022-05-18

This one took some real, well, talent. It was late morning on April 11, the crude oil market was in some distress. The price was falling faster, already down sharply over just the preceding two weeks. Going from $115 per barrel to suddenly less than $95, there was some real fear there.But what really caught my attention was the flattening WTI futures curve.

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Inflation Hysteria #2 (WTI)

2020-12-12

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2020-12-12

Sticking with our recent theme, a big part of what Inflation Hysteria #1 (2017-18) also had going for it was loosened restrictions for US oil producers. Seriously.

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What’s Going On, And Why Late August?

2020-10-29

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2020-10-29

ICE: US$ Index Futures, DX1
This isn’t about COVID. It’s been building since the end of August, a shift in mood, perception, and reality that began turning things several months before even then. With markets fickle yet again, a lot today, what’s going on here?

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Widening Bid-Ask Spreads, Gold and Silver Market Report 17 February

2020-02-17

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2020-02-17

Gold Term Structure
The price of gold rose $14 and the price of silver fell $0.07. The gold-silver ratio rose further with this price action. Welcome to our new Gold and Silver Market Report, or “Market Report” for short. We are separating this from the economics essay, which was attached for many years. As they used to say in many toy commercials of yore, “batteries sold separately”—or in this case essays.

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COT Black: German Factories, Oklahoma Tank Farms, And FRBNY

2020-02-09

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2020-02-09

Germany Factory Orders, SA 2014-2019
I wrote a few months ago that Germany’s factories have been the perfect example of the eurodollar squeeze. The disinflationary tendency that even central bankers can’t ignore once it shows up in the global economy as obvious headwinds. What made and still makes German industry noteworthy is the way it has unfolded and continues to unfold. The downtrend just won’t stop.

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Tidbits Of Further Warnings: Houston, We (Still) Have A (Repo) Problem

2019-10-18

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2019-10-18

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet, 2001-2019
Despite the name, the Fed doesn’t actually intervene in the US$ repo market. I know they called them overnight repo operations, but that’s only because they mimic repo transactions not because the central bank is conducting them in that specific place. What really happened was FRBNY allotting bank reserves (in exchange for UST, MBS, and agency collateral) only to the 24 primary dealers.

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Nothing To See Here, It’s Just Everything

2019-01-04

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2019-01-04

NYMEX WTI Futures 2016-2018
The politics of oil are complicated, to say the least. There’s any number of important players, from OPEC to North American shale to sanctions. Relating to that last one, the US government has sought to impose serious restrictions upon the Iranian regime. Choking off a major piece of that country’s revenue, and source for dollars, has been a stated US goal.

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Economics Through The Economics of Oil

2017-03-23

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2017-03-23

The last time oil inventory grew at anywhere close to this pace was during each of the last two selloffs, the first in late 2014/early 2015 and the second following about a year after. Those events were relatively easy to explain in terms of both price and fundamentals, though the mainstream managed to screw it up anyway (“supply glut”).

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