Europe

Authored by Paul Brodsky of Macro-Allocation.com,

The Triumph of Politics

 All of life’s odds aren’t 3:2, but that’s how you’re supposed to bet, or so they say. They are not saying that so much anymore, or saying that history rhymes, or that nothing’s new under the sun. More and more theys seem to be figuring out that past economic and market experiences can’t be extrapolated forward - a terrifying prospect for the social and political order.

 Consider today’s realities:

Via ConvergEx's Nick Colas,

Today we engage in a simple thought experiment: what 3 pieces of information would you need to confidently call the 2016 end-of-year level on the S&P 500?

 

A brief survey of senior Convergex traders yielded this list: year-end worldwide central bank rates, Chinese GDP growth in 2016, actual 2016 US corporate earnings, the winner of the U.S. presidential race, and the pace of increases in the Fed Funds rate for the year. 

 

Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

 

– Groucho Marx

Even as US crude oil inventories just hit a fresh record high for another week, both in Cushing and across all other regions, a more curious accumulation of excess oil inventory has emerged: according to the IEA, global oil production exceeded consumption by just over 1 billion barrels in 2014 and 2015.

The EU postponed a decision on whether to extend approval of the controversial weedkiller ingredient for another 15 years amid uproar that it may cause cancer. On Tuesday four EU states forced the delay of a vote to renew the licence for glyphosate -the main ingredient in Monsanto’s weedkiller ‘Roundup’- which has been found to be ‘probably carcinogenic’ Opposition to the relicensing also came from environmental groups, as well as an online petition that gathered 1.4m signatures.