Tag Archive: Crude Oil

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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Weekly Market Pulse: Currency Illusion

2022-11-28

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2022-11-28

When we think about the challenges facing an investor today, the big problems, the things we worry about that could cause a lot more harm than some interest rate hikes, are mostly outside the United States. China is prominent this weekend because of demonstrations against their zero COVID policies. The Chinese people appear to be pretty well fed up with the endless lockdowns and have finally decided to try and do something about it. Unfortunately,...

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Weekly Market Pulse: The Real Reason The Fed Should Pause

2022-10-11

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2022-10-11

The Federal Reserve has been on a mission lately to make sure everyone knows they are serious about killing the inflation they created. Over the last two weeks, Federal Reserve officials delivered 37 speeches, all of the speakers competing to see who could be the most hawkish.

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Weekly Market Pulse: A Most Unusual Economy

2022-07-11

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2022-07-11

The employment report released last Friday was better than expected but the response by bulls and bears alike was exactly as expected. Both found things in the report to support their preconceived notions about the state of the economy.

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Market Pulse: Mid-Year Update

2022-06-24

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2022-06-24

Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other risky assets.

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Is It Being Demanded?

2022-05-29

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2022-05-29

Shipping container rates have been dropping since early March – right around the time when we had just experienced our “collateral days” and then stood by to witness chaotic financial fireworks, inversions, the whole thing.

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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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I Told You It *Wasn’t* Money Printing; How The Fed Helped Cause, But Can’t Solve, Our Current ‘Inflation’

2022-04-21

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2022-04-21

Trust the Fed. Ha! It’s one thing for money dealers to look upon Jay Powell’s stash of bank reserves with remarkable disdain, more immediately damning when effects of the same liquidity premiums in the real economy create serious frictions leaving the entire world exposed to the consequences. When all is said and done, the Federal Reserve has created its own doom-loop from which it won’t likely escape.

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Weekly Market Pulse: What Now?

2022-04-05

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2022-04-05

The yield curve inverted last week. Well, the part everyone watches, the 10 year/2 year Treasury yield spread, inverted, closing the week a solid 7 basis points in the negative. The difference between the 10 year and 2 year Treasury yields is not the yield curve though. The 10/2 spread is one point on the Treasury yield curve which is positively sloped from 1 month to 3 years, negatively sloped from 3 years to 10 years and positively sloped again...

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Weekly Market Pulse: Is This A Bear Market?

2022-03-16

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2022-03-16

I don’t know the answer to the question posed in the title. No one does because the future is not predictable. I don’t know what will happen in Ukraine. I don’t know how much what has already happened there – and what might – matters to the US and global economy. I don’t know if the Fed is making a mistake by (likely) hiking interest rates by an entire 1/4 of 1% this week.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Fear Makes A Comeback

2022-01-24

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2022-01-24

Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.

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One Shock Case For ‘Irrational Exuberance’ Reaching A Quarter-Century

2021-12-22

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2021-12-22

Have oil producers shot themselves in the foot, while at the same time stabbing the global economy in the back? It’d be quite a feat if it turns out to be the case, one of those historical oddities that when anyone might honestly look back on it from the future still hung in disbelief. Let’s start by reviewing just the facts.

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Playing Dominoes

2021-12-19

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2021-12-19

That was fast. Just yesterday I said watch out for when the oil curve flips from backwardation to contango. When it does, that’s not a good sign. Generally speaking, it means something has changed with regard to future expectations, at least one of demand, supply, or also money/liquidity.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Has Inflation Peaked?

2021-12-13

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2021-12-13

The headlines last Friday were ominous: Inflation Hits Highest Level in Nearly 40 Years. Inflation is Painfully High… Groceries and Christmas Presents Are Going To Cost More. Inflation is Soaring..

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Far Longer And Deeper Than Just The Past Few Months

2021-10-20

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2021-10-20

Hurricane Ida swept up the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the Louisiana coastline on August 29. The storm would continue to wreak havoc even as it weakened the further inland it traversed. By September 1 and 2, the system was still causing damage and disruption into the Northeast of the United States.

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Perfect Time To Review What Is, And What Is Not, Inflation (and why it matters so much)

2021-10-13

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2021-10-13

It is costing more to live and be, so naturally people are looking for who it is they need to blame. Maybe figure out some way to stop it. You know and feel for the basics since everyone’s perceptions begin with costs of just living. This is what makes the subject of inflation so difficult, even more so in the era of QE.

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Weekly Market Pulse: As Clear As Mud

2021-07-19

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2021-07-19

Is there anyone left out there who doesn’t know the rate of economic growth is slowing? The 10 year Treasury yield has fallen 45 basis points since peaking in mid-March. 10 year TIPS yields have fallen by the same amount and now reside below -1% again. Copper prices peaked a little later (early May), fell 16% at the recent low and are still down nearly 12% from the highs.

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Another Round of Transitory: US Retail Sales & (revised) IP

2021-06-16

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2021-06-16

U.S. Retail Sales, Jan 2016 - May 2021
Same stuff, different month. We can basically reprint both what was described yesterday about supply curves not keeping up with exaggerated demand as well as the past two months of commentary on Retail Sales plus Industrial Production each for the US. Quite on the nose, US demand for goods, anyway, is eroding if still artificially very high.

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Extending the Summer Slowdown

2020-11-20

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2020-11-20

US Retail Sales, 2016-2020
A big splurge in September, and then not much more in October. While it would be consistent for many to focus on the former, instead there is much about the latter which, for once, is feeding growing concerns. Retail sales, American consumer spending on goods, has been the one (outside of economically insignificant housing) bright spot since summer

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Counting The Corroborated Stall, Not The Coming Lawfare Election Mess

2020-11-06

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2020-11-06

CPS Household Survey, 2003-2020
While we wait for the electoral count to be sorted out by what we hope are competent and honest people (not holding our breath), there’s a greater muddle growing where it actually counts and where it’s never fully nor properly accounted. By a large and growing number of accounts, the US economy’s rebound seems to have stalled out back around June or July, an inflection unrelated to COVID case counts, too.

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