“The industrial environment is in a recession - I don’t care what anybody says,” Fastenal CFO Daniel Florness exclaimed in frustration back in October when William Blair analyst Ryan Merkel dared to suggest that the US economy wasn’t in fact in the doldrums on the company’s Q3 call.
WTI crude prices are up almost 6% this morning with April (the new front-month) trading above $33.50 - testing post-DOE plunge stops. The irony of the ramp is that it comes amid terrible global PMIs (demand), a report from IEA of oil staying in glut for longer than expected (supply), and warnings from Abu Dhabi's biggest bank that $20 oil is possible. Oh well, we are sure the algos know what they are doing... despite veterans of the 1980s oil glut warning it could take 7 to 10 years to emerge from the current slump.
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush announced on Saturday night that he would leave the 2016 Presidential race, after a disappointing finish in South Carolina. Donald Trump may have helped destroy Jeb’s candidacy by repeatedly challenging him on 9/11 by saying that the terror attack was the fault of his brother George W. Bush Or perhaps America has had enough of the Bush family… Press TV reports: Bush, who was once considered Republican frontrunner, finished in sixth place in the Iowa caucuses and in fourth places in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Just as the government did in the lead up to The Scottish Referendum in 2014, it appears David Cameron is already unleashing resorting to the so-called Project Fear. As The Telegraph reports, following Boris Johnson's lack of acquiescence to Cameron's call for no Brexit, more than a dozen of the country's most senior military leaders will argue that Britain should vote to stay in the European Union because of its importance to national security.
On Saturday night, all doubts about whether Donald Trump was a serious contender for the White House were erased.
That’s not to say he’s locked up the nomination.
But with last night’s decisive victory in South Carolina, Trump served notice that this is no longer a matter of whether he can make a serious run at the presidency, it’s now a matter of whether Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio can mount a serious challenge.