For the 11th week in a row, US oil rig counts declined (down 8 this week to 392). This is the first drop below 400 oil rigs since Dec 2009.
Judgiung by the neat perfect correlation between rig counts and lagged oil prices, we would expect further declines before any re-increase occurred.
Perhaps even more stunning, the total US rig count dropped to 489 rigs last week. 1 above the all-time record low 488 seen in April 1999...
With the S&P 500 set to go green for the year, the best and worst performing hedge funds of the year demonstrate that while the bulk of the marquee names continue to substantially underperfom the broader market, with Tiger, Pershing Square, Glenview and Trian standing out, there are quite a few names that have generated positive results YTD.
The full breakdown of Top and Bottom 20 funds is shown below courtesy of HSBC; we will spare commentary on the fact that the year's best performing hedge fund is called the Tulip Trend Fund, a systematic trend follower.
For the seventh day in a row, WTI Crude futures have spiked dramatically intraday off a small dip. With April futures now up almost 9% on the week - the best since Aug 2015, crude is getting closer to unchanged on 2016 (at 2-month highs)...
Following the best 5-day performance of all 93 major global equity markets, the panic-buying in the Greek stock market has lifted the Athens Stock Exchange index over 32% in 3 weeks...
As is clear, we have seen this kind of exuberance before (in Sept/Oct) - and that did not end well.
Yesterday morning we noted a very disturbing trend: over the past three days, a shortage of 10 Year treasury paper has manifested that has grown more and more acute with every passing day, until the repo rate hit as low as -2.95% yesterday morning just shy of the "fails" -3.00% minimum rate, the lowest on record, and suggesting that the marketwide treasury shortage has never been worse as a result of a huge short overlay.