Business

While it has yet to be officially confirmed by the Trump transition team, moments ago the NYT reported that - in what had previously been leaked on several occasions on various other outlets most notably the WSJ - former Goldman banker and Soros employee, Steven Mnuchin "a financier with deep roots on Wall Street and in Hollywood but no government experience" is expected to be named Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary as soon as Wednesday.

While not nearly as controversial as his still unconfirmed pick of Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, in another widely telegraphed choice the WSJ reports that Donald Trump is expected to name billionaire Wilbur Ross Jr. "a fellow businessman whose name rings out in the Rust Belt" to serve as his Commerce secretary, according to a transition official. 

While speculation swirls over Trump's pick for the next Treasury Secretary, with eyebrows raised after the President-elect unexpectedly met with Goldman COO Gary Cohn earlier in the day, one of the more interesting names to have emerged in the running for the top economic post is that of John Allison, former CEO of the bank BB&T and of the libertarian non-profit think tank the Cato Institute.

With OPEC headlines driving every tick today (and machines seemingly going to sleep late on), we suspected tonight's API inventory data would be a non-event and the reaction was indeed muted as crude inventories drewdown 717k barrels (against expectations of a 577k build). The bigger deal was much more than expected builds at Cushing (biggest build since March 2015) and also notable builds in Gasoline and Distillates.

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Well that didn't last long did it? Nasdaq hit a new intraday record high... But...Ugly Close though... VIX 13, S&P 2,200, and Dow 19,100 seem all that matters.

Stocks were up despite oil's tumble...