Doha

The biggest catalyst for overnight markets, first reported on this site, was the announcement by Kuwait that its oil workers had ended their strike which disrupted oil production in the 4th largest OPEC producer for 3 days cutting it by as much as 1.7 mmb/d, and had served to offset the negative news from the Doha debacle. Kuwait Petroleum also added that it would boost output to 3m b/d within 3 days, which in turn has pressured the price of oil overnight, and the May WTI contract was back to just over $40 at last check, sliding 2%.

The Doha-disappointment appears to have sparked some risk-aversion as yesterday saw Russia's biggest exchange-traded fund - Market Vectors Russia ETF - suffer its largest outflows since May 2015.

However, in a perfect example of ill-timed moves, Russian stocks have soared over 6% from the knee-jerk lows pushing back up towards cycle highs.

"Low oil price is a function of excessive supply+true demand realization" - Reggie Middleton

It's crazy pills time - no doubt... Doha was a dud and Morgan Stanley's 52% crash in earnings was better-than-expected...

Did you really expect anything else...?

While much of the blame for the failed Doha agreement (which impacted the price of oil for about 12 hours before another squeeze pushed both Brent and WTI back to unchanged for the day), a new allegations has emerged, this time from the Venezuela oil minister Del Pino who, after saying that he is disappointed with the Doha results (but why - oil is basically unchanged) accused none other than the US for sabotaging the Doha deal, saying that the US acted to block the Doha oil production freeze accord.