Business

Following IEA's report this morning which proclaimed OPEC production at record highs but forecast a drop in the global oil glut in the first half of the year (due to demand from India, as the current marginal demand driver - China's teapot refiners - have since slowed dramatically), WTI crude prices have jumped back above $47 for the first time since November 2015.

Strength in the first quarter was driven by China, Russia and by transport fuel use in India, which is “taking over from China as the main growth market for oil.”

Two former Deutsche Bank corporate brokers have been sentenced to one of the longest prison terms possible for the crime of insider trading in the UK.

According to data compiled by Haynes and Boone, in just the first four months of 2016 there had already been double the amount of bankrupt energy debt than in all of 2015, with the total secured and unsecured defaults rising to $34 billion, double the $17 billion total for all of 2015.

We can now add two more major names succumbing to the Saudi onslaught against marginal shale producers when overnightfirst Linn Energy announced a prepackaged Chapter 11 deal, followed by Penn Virginia defaulting just hours later.

When most Americans think about agriculture, they picture a small mom and pop farm with a few hundred acres and a small group of happy cows. Few realize that small agricultural enterprises are far from the norm today: as Leah Douglas wrote for Pacific Standard yesterday, “just four companies control 65 percent of pork slaughter, 84 percent of cattle slaughter, and 53 percent of chicken slaughter. Milk production is largely shaped by one large processor, Dean Foods, and one large cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America.” What are the practical results of this?

Following last week's Sohn Conference, where the overarching theme was one of prevailing bearishness topped by Stanley Druckenmiller's near-apocalyptic forecast that only gold will be left standing after all confidence evaporates in the "magic people" known as central bankers,  yesterday some 1,800 hedge fund industry executives gathered in Las Vegas at the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference or SALT, where the prevalent concern about the future of the world continued, driven primarily by worries about China.