With all of Europe and the Americas closed for holiday, what little market action there was overnight came out of Asia, where China once again was engaged in its last hour "National Team" market manipulation, which saved the SHCOMP from a red close after the now traditional last hour buying spree, pushed the Shanghai Composite from red on the session an hour before close to near the highs of the day.
“Investors could be forgiven for heading for the hills given the tumultuous start to 2016,” so writes Andrew Oxlade in The Telegraph today who advises investors to diversify into gold as an “insurance policy”:
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
If the four structural trends highlighted below don't reverse, the middle class is heading for extinction.
Everyone knows the middle class is fading fast. I've covered this issue in depth for years, for example: Honey, I Shrunk the Middle Class: Perhaps 1/3 of Households Qualify (December 28, 2015) and What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)
Following yesterday's dollar spike which topped the longest rally in the greenback in one month, the prevailing trade overnight has been more of the same, and in the last session of this holiday shortened week we have seen the USD rise for the fifth consecutive day on concerns the suddenly hawkish Fed (at least as long as the S&P is above 2000) may hike sooner than expected, which in turn has pressured WTI below $39 earlier in the session, and leading to weakness across virtually all global risk assets.
One month ago, just as Cushing storage was rapidly approaching its operational capacity, we warned that Cushing (and increasingly all parts of PADD 2) is denying storage requests. We also said that overall PADD 2 inventories had risen to a new record high 155 million barrels...
... hinting that it was just a matter of time before excess production would be shifted to other regions, most notably the Gulf Coast, or PADD 3.