Archive - Mar 17, 2015 - Story

For what appears to be the 10th week in a row, API reports a massive 10.5 million barrels (far bigger than the 3.1 million barrel expectation) and a 3 million barrel build at Cushing. If this holds for DOE data tomorrow (and worryingly API has tended to underestimate the build in recent weeks) it will be the biggest weekly build since 2001. WTI has plunged on this news hitting $42.60 on the April contract.

"The boom years of the past decade and a half were the exception and not the rule. Australia and Canada will have a bit of rough patch in the years to come, but will manage through as they always do. The much touted growth prospects of many of the BRICs will prove to be nothing more than a commodity-boom-fuelled mirage."

Just blame it on the weather, because everyone knows no self-respecting 1%-er would be caught dead driving (or being driven) to their nearest Maserati dealership in their snow-ploughing $100K Range Rover, when it is snowing outside. In the middle of winter.

While investors have grown to used to knife-catching heroics in equity markets, the Energy credit markets have been a poster child of yield-reaching, bottom-guessing, dip-buying exuberance in the past six months. As every leg lower in oil was met with more Oil ETF buyers and bond buyers (or loan financers) as "the bottom is in," so each low has failed and new lows are made. The last few days have seen credit risk soar the most in 2015 in the energy sector as numerous firms enter bankruptcy or approach it with huge looming coupon and principal due. What is even more telling is the news of a huge liquidation sale of energy heavy equipment which will be the 'tell' for the entire industry if it is weak...

When we first exposed the world to The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow forecasting model (just 2 weeks ago), expectations were for 1.2% growth in GDP in Q1. A week later it was cut in half to 0.6% as dismal data just poured on. And today, The Fed model now predicts another 50% cut in growth to just 0.3% in Q1, led by a near 20% collapse in non-residential investment.

In the past month, a group of radical Islamic extremists based in the Middle East beheaded at least 23 people and enforced a ban on Christianity by arresting a group of people for practicing the faith in a private home.

No, we're not talking about ISIS. The real culprit is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the America’s closest global allies. It would appear, some human rights are more equal than others.

While Bridgewater's Ray Dalio "hopes that The Fed will be very cautious about tightening," Saxobank CIO Steen Jakobsen explains in this brief clip that The Fed "is wrong, always wrong," and will likely raise rates in June no matter what. The Fed is boxed in, Jakobsen notes, and despite the weak macro data, changing direction now is unlikely - leaving the market surprised as it recognizes that "this is a margin call on assets," seemingly confirming Dalio's conclusion that, "inadequate attention is being paid to the risks of a downturn in which central bankers' abilities to ease are significantly impaired."

Those who refuse debt, regardless of the sacrifice, are starving the parasitic, exploitive machine; those with debt are feeding it.

While the west huffs and puffs, and threatens to unleash even more "costs" on Russia in the form of additional sanctions which will assure that Europe's latest deflationary recession is even more acute, an "isolated" Russia is looking to outside, and to the east, and as part of its most recent de-dollarization initiative, the Moscow Exchange announced it has started trading Chinese Renminbi-Russian Ruble currency futures.

10 days we warned "the sharp slide in crude prices may be leading the proverbial sheep to slaughter," as we noted ther surge in Oil ETF USO's shares outstanding and the spike in Oil price contango - a potentially ugly combination for an ETF ahead of the roll. Since then, USO has indeed tumbled over 14%. However, it;s not over yet - in the last 3 days alone, the USO share count has soared 10% (the fastest pace in 2 months) almost at its Feb 2009 record highs as investors "know" the bottom is in now and continue to catch the gapping-lower-every-day, massively contango'd, ETF knife...

It appears the sea of de-dollarization has reached the shores of Europe. With Australia and UK having already moved in the direction of joining the China-led AIIB, The FT reports that France, Germany, and Italy have now all agreed to join the development bank as 'pivot to Asia' appears to be Plan B for Europe. As Greg Sheridan previously noted, "the saga of the China Bank is almost a textbook case of the failure of Obama’s foreign policy," but as The FT concludes, the European decisions represent a significant setback for the Obama administration, which has argued that western countries could have more influence over the workings of the new bank if they stayed together on the outside. As Forbes notes, this leaves Obama with 3 uncomfortable options...

The increasing ugliness of the ‘negotiations’ between the Greek Syriza government and the rest of the eurozone, which is ruled by the German government, needs to be halted and put in reverse. There is an urgent need for a detente, for cooler heads and for trust. And there is only one person who can act to create these things: Angela Merkel. But Merkel is nowhere to be found or seen. Merkel has been sorely lacking and missing, and if she doesn’t get her act together very quickly, she will be known as the person who let Europe slip into war, for no good reason whatsoever.