Following last night's yuuge inventory build reported by API (+9.9m) and large rise in Cushing levels (+1.8m), DOE reported a crude build of even yuuger 10.37mm barrels (against the 7.1mm expectation) - the largest since early April 2015. Cushing saw a 1.2mm build - the most in 3 months.
Authored by Prof. Steve H. Hanke of The Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.
Ever since General Sisi ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian economy has remained in shambles. Businessmen are fed up. They are ignoring government gag orders, and are making their voices heard. And why not? They are losing sales, missing deadlines, and scrapping expansion plans because of limited access to U.S. dollars.
It’s not entirely clear whether Saudi Arabia knew what they were setting in motion when the kingdom moved to deliberately suppress crude prices at the end of 2014.
The idea (of course) was to preserve market share by bankrupting the US shale space and if there were “ancillary benefits” - like say forcing Moscow to give up its support for Bashar al-Assad - well then all the better.
The US markets are in a quandary.
On the one hand, some of the data (GDP growth, unemployment, etc.) suggests the Fed should continue to hike rates. On the other hand, other data points (food stamp usage, labor participation rate) suggest the US never actually entered a real recovery.
More importantly, how can the jobs data suggest such a strong employment situation… when one in seven Americans are on food stamps?
In a case of supreme poetic justice, the SEC probe into Valeant which was reported on Monday and which led to a 20% plunge in the price the company's shares and resulted in Pershing Square's -19.9% performance through the end of February, was started by Valeant itself following its request of an SEC investigation into short-seller Citron's claims which made the rounds last fall, and which were among the numerous catalysts that precipitated the historic drop in the price of VRX stock.