Business

Following Genscape's projection that Cushing inventories rose less than expected, various sources on Twitter report that API sees a 4.4mm build (in line with expectations of a 3.9mm build) after EIA's massive build of over 10.3mm barrels last week. Cushing saw a 692k build - the 6th week in a row but gasoline and distillates saw a draw. Crude sold off all day as the short-covering squeeze ended but as the data hit, WTI dipped, ripped, and dipped again... only to rally once more...

API

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Over 4,000 years ago during Sargon the Great’s reign of the Akkadian Empire, it took 8 units of silver to buy one unit of gold.

This was a time long before coins. It would be thousands of years before the Lydians in modern day Turkey would invent gold coins as a form of money.

Back in the Akkadian Empire, gold and silver were still used as a medium of exchange.

At 4:15pm ET, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach who continues to do no wrong in the market (even if it means buying stocks at his most doom and gloomish ahead of a record short squeeze), will hold his latest webcast titled "Connect the Dots" and in which he will explain why, as he told Reuters moments ago, "the rally in risk assets is nearing the end", which in turn explains why when the short covering frenzy had gripped the market last week, Gundlach was cashing out.

To register for the webcast, click on the image below.

More details from Reuters Jennifer Ablan:

In late January, when Haruhiko Kuroda took Japan into NIRP, he made it official.

He was full-everything. Full-Krugman. Full-Keynes. Full-post-crisis-central-banker-retard.

In fact, with the BoJ monetizing the entirety of JGB gross issuance as well as buying up more than half of all Japanese ETFs and now plunging headlong into the NIRP twilight zone, one might be tempted to say that Kuroda has transcended comparison to become the standard for monetary policy insanity.

Now that the massive USO-driven squeeze appears to be over (congratulations to whoever managed to sell equity and their secured lenders) the bad news can return. First, it was Goldman slamming the "unsustainable rally, and then just a few hours ago, the EIA released its latest monthly short-term outlook report in which it brought even more bad news for long-suffering bulls who thought the pain was finally over.