Business

The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, is when the holiday shopping season in the United States traditionally begins and is the day when retailers (at least in the past) finally turned a profit, going from “being in the red” to “in the black.” However, in recent years, this trend has seen turned upside down, with sales on Black Friday slipping, as retailers offer pre-Thanksgiving deals ever earlier than in recent years to capture heavily discounted market share (think OPEC) and draw shoppers as "Black Friday" no longer marks the spending peak at brick-and-mortar chains.

A crude draw and bigger than expected gasoline build overnight from API did nothing for oil prices as OPEC headlines dominate trading and DOE data confirmed API with a modest crude draw and bigger than expected Gasoline build. Oil prices are rising on Iraq headlines even as crude production rose very modestly.

API

• Crude -1.28mm (+1mm exp)
• Cushing -140k (-100k exp)
• Gasoline +2.68mm (+900k exp)
• Distillates -350k

DOE

Happy Thanksgiving eve. This is the day of the rope for Dollar bears, as demand for the greenback soars to new highs -- sending shockwaves throughout credit markets. The euro is trading with a 105 handle against the dollar, off by 0.7%.

German bund yields are rising again, in addition to the rest of Europe.

[image]https://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/files/2016/11/IMG_5694.jpg[/image]

With mortgage rates soaring, it is only a matter of time before US housing is adversely impacted. And while the just released October new home sales data focused on sales of houses based on contracts signed in the month before the election, some concerns were already evident, when the number of new homes sold tumbled to 563K from a pre-revised 593K, badly missing expectations of a 593K print.

This was the weakest new home sales print going back to the 558K new homes sold in the month of June.

The Dollar Index has surged almost 7% in the last two months - one of the fastest spikes in 8 years - with the post-Trump spike the most significant. Today's buying panic has sent the Dollar Index to a crucial resistance level at around 101.80 (the 61.8% retracement of the 2001-2008 collapse).

101.80 is a line in the sand...

And that is where USD Index stopped today..

Yen is the biggest loser on the day against the greenback but all the majors (and Yuan) are tumbling....