United States

In his latest slidepack, BofA's chief technician Paul Ciana sees nothing but head & shoulder reversal patterns in virtually every currency pair and rate chart: i.e., the unwind of "Trump trade." As he writes in a just released note, "many US dollar and euro crosses, US rates, US 2s10s and US 10y TIPS have just formed or are developing a head and shoulders reversal pattern. The breadth of these patterns suggests the January correction of the 4Q16 trends will continue in 1Q17, or at least delay a continuation of stronger USD and higher rates."

Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Oil and refined products inventories in the U.S. continue to climb at a worrying pace, raising some red flags for an oil market that was supposed to be on the mend.

Crude oil inventories jumped by a whopping 6.5 million barrels last week, rising to 494.8 million barrels. Oil stocks have now increased every week of 2017, and are now not far off from the 80-year highs reached in 2016.

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Just last week, Americans were reassured (twice) that everything is awesome in the US labor market as ADP and BLS data showed jobs-jobs-jobs everywhere. However, along with wage stagnation (and a rising unemployment rate), there is a bigger problem, as Deutsche Bank warns, aside from soft earnings, hiring at America’s biggest companies is slowing down for the first time since 2010.

Submitted by Jason Leach via FusionPointCapital.com,

Submitted by Arthur Berman via OilPrice.com,

The Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL) is a bet on much higher oil prices several years from now. It will take at least $85 oil prices to develop the new oil sand projects needed to fill the pipeline.

It is also a bet that U.S. tight oil output will continue to grow and will need heavy oil to blend for refining. Both bets are risky.

A Bet On Higher Oil Prices