Crude Oil

Remember China's 6% crash last week? It is now a distant memory made even more remote thanks to the latest batch of ugly data out of China, coupled with hints of even more liquidity injections, which led to the latest surge in the Shcomp, an index that has put most pennystocks to shame. In Europe, the big story remains Greece, and as everyone expected, the doomed country and its creditors failed to make a deal on Sunday. This is after Greek Officials were said to have prepared a draft agreement, which was expected to be announced on Sunday. Not helping things, Greek PM Tsipras came out in fully defiant mode and accused bailout monitors of making “absurd” demands and seeking to impose “harsh punishment” on Athens. A bunch of final PMI number showed a modest improvement in the periphery at the expense of Germany whose deterioration is starting to be a concern.

Having detailed the less status-quo-sustaining side of things, thanks to some frankness from Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller, who warned "unlike 1929, this time everything - Stocks, Bonds and Housing - is overvalued," we thought it only fair-and-balanced to illustrate the alternative perspective and who better than Jeremy Siegel to deliver it. In his anti-thesis of Shiller's facts, Siegel unleashes textbook dogma to pronounce, "in no way do current levels quality as a bubble", that stock returns should remain supported by fundamentals, there is no sign of a recession in the next 18 months, The Dow's fair-value currently is 20,000, and "not much" could dissuade him from holding stocks.

Combination of important events/data and large move in last two weeks, the dollar may pullback/consolidate in the days ahead.

While it is likely oil prices could get a bit of a bump from a decline in the U.S. dollar, ultimately it will come down to the fundamentals longer term. It is quite clear that the speculative rise in oil prices due to the "fracking miracle" has come to its inglorious, but expected conclusion. What is interesting is that most have not figured out that the same thing will occur with the artificially driven surge in financial markets as well. It is quite apparent the some lessons are simply never learned.

The most prominent market event overnight was once again the action in China's penny-index, which after tumbling at the open and briefly entering a 10% correction from the highs hit just two days ago, promptly saw the BTFDers rush in, whether retail, institutional or central bankers, and after rebounding strongly from the -3% lows, the SHCOMP closed practically unchanged following a 2% jump to complete yet another 5% intraday swing on absolutely no news, but merely concerns what the PBOC is doing with liquidity, reverse repos, margin debt, etc. Needless to say, this is one of the world's largest stock markets, not the Pink Sheets.

Courtesy of central planning, virtually every single capital market has become an illiquid penny stock, with wild swings from one extreme to the other, the latest example of this being the Shanghai Composite, which after soaring 10% in the past ten days, crashed 6.5% overnight tumbling 321 points to 4620 after it briefly rose just shy of 5000. This was the biggest drop since January 19 when the Composite dropped 7.7% only to blast higher ever since. Putting the "plunge" in perspective, now the SHCOMP is back to levels not seen in... one week.

UPDATE: Denial *GREEK CREDITORS NOT YET DRAFTING FINAL ACCORD, EU OFFICIAL SAYS

Another day, another rumor (not yet denied) of a report that Greece and its creditors are crafting a deal (well durr)... The result, vertical buying panic in US equities, USD dumped (on EUR strength), TSY yields spike 3bps, and Crude oil surges... what a "market"

Crude oil prices are tumbling as the USDollar pushes on to new highs driven by the continued stretch of renewed weakness in the Euro. As Bloomberg's Richard Breslow notes, however, "it’s not all about Greece. Not even close."

It had been a painfully quiet session in Asia (where Chinese levitation continues with the Shanghai Composite up another 0.6% oblivious of yesterday's rout in the US, because as we explained for China it is now critical to blow the world's biggest stock bubble) and Europe, where the only notable news as that for the first time in months the ECB had not increase the Greek ELA, keeping it at €80.2 billion on conflicting reports that Greek deposit withdrawals had halted even as Kathimerini said another €300MM had been pulled just yesterday, suggesting the ECB has reached the end of its road when it comes to funding nearly two-thirds of what Greek deposits are left in local banks. But the punchline came moments ago when Bloomberg reported that "Greece will likely miss a deadline for a deal with creditors by the end of the week as the two sides have made little progress during talks in recent days."

"We shall do our best then to remain as we have been: pleasantly long of equities on balance. There really is no other course of actions we can take.... Long of One Unit of Ten Year Notes/short of One Unit of the Long bond future: Friday, May 22nd we wished to sell into the strength of the bond market"

Storage withdrawals and falling rig count have been the main sources of hope that U.S. tight oil production will fall and that oil prices will rebound. That hope is fading as it is now clear that recent withdrawals from U.S. crude oil storage are because of price, not falling supply, and that the drop in rig count has stalled. Present data, however, suggests that the global over-supply has gotten worse, not better, that overall demand for liquids remains weak, and the world economic outlook is discouraging. At the same time, market movements are not always based on fundamentals. In the long run, however, fundamentals rule suggesting the current price surge is at best premature.

While yesterday most markets were closed and unable to express their concerns at the very strong showing of "anti-austerity" parties in Spain's municipal election from Sunday, then today they have free reign to do just that, and as a result European stocks are broadly lower, alongside the EURUSD which dripped under 1.09 earlier today, with Spanish banks among the worst performers: Shares of Banco Sabadell, Bankia, Caixabank and Popular were down 1.8 to 2.3% earlier this morning, and while the stronger dollar was a gift to both the Nikkei and Europe in early trading, after opening in the green, Spain's IBEX has since slid into the red on concerns of what happens if the Greek anti-status quo contagion finally shifts to the Pyrenees.

Israel is refusing to comply with an order by a Swiss court that it pay $1.1 billion that it has owed to Tehran since before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution for its share of a jointly owned oil pipeline. “Without referring to the matter at hand, we’ll note that according to the Trading with the Enemy Act it is forbidden to transfer money to the enemy, including the Iranian national oil company,” the Israeli Finance Ministry said in a statement.

"Like pushing a rock up a hill," is how some trader’s view the current disconnect between the physical market for crude oil and the futures market with speculators pushing futures prices higher while the physical market remains moribund.

It looks like US dollar's two-month downside correction ended.  Is the bull market resuming?