oil

The story of the unprecedented build up of various commodity tankers off the coast of Singapore, as well as everywhere else, has been duly covered here as well as the reasons behind it.

Notably, two weeks ago we cautioned that with the contango no longer leading to profitable offshore storage of oil, many shipping companies would have to start offloading their cargo, or as we recently reported, have started incurring debt to fund said storage costs in hopes of avoiding shifting storage to land:

With the OPEC meeting having started a little under two hours ago, it appears that the premature optimism raised yesterday about yet another imminent production freeze deal may have been mostly hot air. Indeed, yesterday's bounceback in oil was driven by the various reports of a potential reintroduction of a ceiling on production after the previous ceiling was scrapped in December. The WSJ ran a story suggesting that the willingness is shared by Saudi Arabia as well as smaller producers in Nigeria, Qatar, Algeria and Venezuela.

Earlier today, when Reuters quoted "sources" that OPEC may consider a new oil output ceiling, a recurring headline meant simply to spark algo-driven buying (which it did), we said that the "most likely next step: a denial from other "sources." That is precisely what happened moments ago when with hours until the OPEC meeting in Vienna, the UAE oil minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui repeated what he has said only yesterday when he said he was happy with the oil market, and confirmed there will be no unanimous oil freeze.

With the S&P500, seemingly unable to break decisively above 2090, investors are wondering what are the main catalysts that can push the market higher, and are asking questions. To help with the confusion, Deutsche Bank has laid out the top five recurring questions asked by investors who are trying to figure out what will push stocks higher. Among these are whether European (and global) equities will rally as Brexit fears are being priced out; is there scope for earnings upgrades and will value stocks finally start outperforming.

Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

$50 per barrel oil is clearly less impossible to live with than $30 per barrel oil, because most businesses cannot make a profit with $30 per barrel oil. But is $50 per barrel oil helpful?

I would argue that it really is not.

When oil was over $100 per barrel, human beings in many countries were getting the benefit of most of that high oil price: