United States

It was just last week when we said that Cushing may be about to overflow in the face of an acute crude oil supply glut.

“Even the highly adaptive US storage system appears to be reaching its limits,” we wrote, before plotting Cushing capacity versus inventory levels. We also took a look at the EIA’s latest take on the subject and showed you the following chart which depicts how much higher inventory levels are today versus their five-year averages.

While algos patiently await the only thing that matters for US stocks today which is Janet Yellen's testimony before Congress. expected to be released at 8:30 am (and previewed here), the rest of the world this morning is a hot mess of schizophrenic highs and lows.

While the markets have been generally lacklustre in the past two days, much of the enthusiasm associated with the last hour spike on both Monday and Tuesday had to do with optimism involving a significant relent by Janet Yellen during her semi-annual 2-day testimony in Congress starting tomorrow at 8:30 am.

Two months ago the Australian media, which unlike its US counterpart refuses to be spoon fed ebullient economic propaganda, called bullshit on the spectacular October job numbers, when instead of adding 15,000 jobs as consensus expected, Australia's Bureau of Statistics reported that a whopping 58,600 jobs had been added.  We covered this in "Australian Media Throws Up All Over 'Stellar' Jobs Report: "Don't Believe The Jobs Figures!"

Moments ago S&P continued its downgrade cycle, this time taking the axe to the regional banks with the highest energy exposure due to "expectations for higher loan losses." Specifically, its lowered its long-term issuer credit ratings on four U.S. regional banks by one notch: BOK Financial Corp., Comerica Inc., Cullen/Frost  Bankers Inc., and Texas Capital Bancshares. The  outlooks on these banks are negative.

It also revised the outlook on BBVA Compass Bancshares to negative from stable and affirmed the 'BBB+/A-2' issuer  credit ratings.