With crude soaring despite DOE showing inventories surging, production up fgor the 7th week in a row, and demand plummeting, Baker Hughes oil rig count dropped 5 more to 510 this week - the lowest since April 2010 (after a de minimus 1 rig drop last week). Crude had ripped higher into this print but was thoroughly unimpressed in its unchangedness.
Submitted by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,
Despite the reformers endless efforts to encircle mankind, some persist beyond the broad extent of their casted net. In the backwaters of the new Republic, for instance, the distant rumble and flicker of Saturday night hootenannies still befall yonder the mighty oak groves.
Having laid off 10,000 employees (and boosted his share buyback program by $10 billion - because that has worked out so well in the past), it appears Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard unleashes some very uncomfortable truthiness on his audience this morning during the earnings call... "For many of our customers, available cash and annual budgets were exhausted well before the halfway point for the fourth quarter... as pricing levels for frackers has dropped into unsustainable territory."
Last May, after the "harsh snowfall" of Q1 crushed US GDP (when it was really the bursting of China's shadow banking bubble) leading to sellside analysts first, and then the Bureau of Economic Analysis to decide the time has come to double seasonally GDP data to avoid such embarrassments as a negative print in the middle of a recovery, Bank of America's chief economist Ethan Harris rushed to declare victory.
Explicitly targeting the "perma-bears" this is what Harris said:
Just around half an hour ago, we pointed out that while the rest of the market was surging, one stock - a core commodity bellwether - was not buying it:
no bounce for FCX?
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 22, 2016
Fast forward when things have gone from bad to worse for the copper giant: either biggest holder Icahn is dumping his stake or the "real" economy is not buying this short squeeze in commodities, or China was just "unfixed" yet again...