Business

With crude production at 13-month highs, the trend of rising rig counts (now up 10 weeks in a row) suggests OPEC remains anything but in control as the global inventory glut deepens. The last week saw the oil rig count rise by 21 (the most since January) to 652 - the highest since September 2015.

From 318 at its trough in May 2016, the US oil rig count is now up 332 to 652 (a double) - tracking the lagged WTI price perfectly...

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Andrew Cosgrove and William Foiles wrote in a note Monday.

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Venezuela’s economic crisis continues to deepen. The South American OPEC member is thought to be sitting on nearly 300 billion barrels of oil, far more than any other country in the world, including Saudi Arabia (estimated at 268 billion barrels). But the economy has been in freefall for several years, with conditions continuing to deteriorate.

Back in the summer of 2015, Deutsche Bank mistakenly paid $6 billion to a hedge fund client by mistake in a “fat finger” trade on its foreign exchange desk. The embarrassed bank recovered the money from the US hedge fund the next day, and quickly accused junior member of the bank’s forex sales team of being responsible for the transfer in June while his boss was on holiday. AS the FT then reported, instead of processing a net value, the person processed a gross figure. That meant the trade had “too many zeroes”, said one of the people.

Following Europe's surging PMIs (to six year highs), US data was extremely disappointing. Both Services and Manufacturing PMI disappointed, tumbling to the lowest levels since before the election. Simply put, the 'soft' data is converging back lower to the dismal reality of the 'hard' data.

Hope is hot in Europe...

And not in USA...

As Output slows dramatically..

Commenting on the flash PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:

Gold ETFs vs. Physical Gold - Dangers Of Exchange Traded Funds

 by Olivier Garret on Forbes

Gold ETFs are rising in popularity due to their convenience. They’re easy to trade, there’s no need to store anything, and no one is going to break into your house to steal your GLD shares.