After a surprise surge last week, the US oil rig count resumed its decline this week (dropping 3 to 538). Gas rigs dropped 6 in the last week (as the Nattie glut continues). Crude oil prices fell very modestly on the rig count data (having run stops to FOMC day gaps).
Rig count continues to track lagged oil price almost perfectly...
Crude slipped very modestly...
Having run stops to last week's major inventory build...
Charts: Bloomberg
We exposed the ugly truth below the surface of Santa's rally yesterday, but today it just got even more fantastical...
The "Arms Index" or "TRIN" is a technical analysis indicator that compares advancing and declining stock issues and trading volume as an indicator of overall market sentiment.
Remember, you have to believe (in The Fed) to receive (from The Market) before these jaws of doom will snap shut one way or the other.
And it's not FANGs that are dragging the index higher...
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner,
Our point yesterday was that the Fed and its Wall Street fellow travelers are about to get mugged by the oncoming battering rams of global deflation and domestic recession.
Back in March, we brought you “Drugs, Prostitution, Violence Plague Oil Boom Towns Gone Bust,” in which we detailed the plight of towns like Sidney and Bainville, Montana, where the slump in oil revenue has made it all but impossible for local authorities to cope with surging crime rates that some attribute to the influx of oil workers the communities experienced in the good old days of high crude prices.
Moments ago, after the latest disappointing durable goods report, the Goldman economist team was the first to cut its Q4 GDP forecast from 2.2% to 1.9% (and down from 2.4% yesterday), saying "the durable goods report implied weaker capital spending and inventory accumulation for the quarter; details on November consumer spending were also slightly weaker than we had projected."