Submitted by Dwayne Purvis via OilPrice.com,
In the geopolitical and oligopolistic global oil market, purely financial supply and demand has often been a secondary force, acting when it is allowed to act. It is the strategic behavior of the producing titans, not their talk or the slow-motion supply-demand balance, which has the real power to move markets. That is the case in the last two years and remains the case in 2016.
The market's volatile swing are clearly too much for the central banker-incubating hedge fund known as Goldman Sachs, because just three days after Goldman said there has "never been a better time to buy S&P calls", when it said that "our GS-EQMOVE model estimates there is a 21% probability of a 5% up-move over the next month based on the current levels of S&P 500 Free Cash Flow yield, Return on Equity, ISM new orders and US Capacity Utilization"...
... moments ago the same Goldman announced that:
Obama’s Atlantic interviews on foreign policy contains some interesting remarks, but they are difficult to square with Obama’s own policies. The New York Times summarizes some of his views this way:
President Obama believes that Saudi Arabia, one of America’s most important allies in the Middle East, needs to learn how to “share” the region with its archenemy, Iran, and that both countries are guilty of fueling proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Global stocks and U.S. equity futures are mostly higher this morning (despite China's historic NPL debt-for-equity proposal) as traders await the main event of the day: the ECB's 1:45pm CET announcement, more importantly what Mario Draghi will announce during the 2:30pm CET press conference, and most importantly, whether he will disappoint as he did in December or finally unleash the bazooka that the market has been desperately demanding.