Despite a denial by the Russians, and now an outright statement that Russia "doubts any freeze deal is possible in the foreseeable future," crude prices are surging as momo algos jump on every headline!
As The FT reports,
The Fed's troubling, recurring and perhaps criminal data "leakage" problem has been thoroughly documented over the past years: from Tim Geithner telling bank CEOs what the Fed will do will in advance of it becoming before, to early leaks of Fed Minutes, to breached embargoes, to the release of material non-public information to consultants such as Medley (which the FBI has been supposedly probing for the past year, and which cost Pedra da Costa his WSJ job), to the Fed's cozy relationship with the WSJ's Hilsenrath over the years, by now everyone knows that when it comes to giving advance lo
Following API's 3.1mm reported build overnight, expectations were for a 3mm build and DOE reported a 2.08mm build. Cushing saw a 235k draw from API and was expected to drop 1mm barrels but DOE reported just 248k drop in inventories as Gasoline inventories drewdown just 110k barrels (drastically less than the 1mm exp) and Distillates saw a large 3.55mm draw - the most in 3 months.
Existing home sales rose more than expected in March, bouncing back from a dismal February (+5.1% in March from revised -7.3% Feb). Year-over-year, existing home sales rose just 1.5% to a SAAR of 5.33m (vs 5.28m expectations). However, sales dropped at the lowest-end (due to unaffordability and lack of supply) and sales at the highest-end (above $1mm) disppointed, rising at onbly 4.6% YoY due to buyersbeing "spooked by January's stock market correction."
Home Sales growth has stagnated...
As NAR explains,
With oil - until recently the key signal for the S&P - down substantially overnight, many were scratching their heads why US equity futures not only rebounded from overnight lows but proceeded to wipe out all overnight losses and are currently trading in the green. The reason: another overnight ramp in the USDJPY which is the default fallback signal for stocks whenever oil isn't going higher.
But what precipirated the bounce in USDJPY?