The US Dollar has been able to hold onto its gains since Friday’s November US NFP report was released, but nothing else has materialized in a meaningful way since then. The news flow around the reconcilliation of the US House and Senate tax bills has been surprisingly quiet (which probably means it will make waves again some point soon), and with the December FOMC meeting due up tomorrow, there is little incentive for traders to stake out new, large positions at present time. Fed funds have been pricing in a 100% chance of a 25-bps rate hike in December since October 26. Given that inflation readings of recent have disappointed, there s...
Forties Oil Field is down till Christmas, in the old North Sea, it will slow those oil flows into Scotland’s refineries. Christmas will find price hikes, all the way downstream. Forties is down until Christmas and the oil price will scream. Ho Ho Ho. A shut down of the major Forties pipeline, a major artery in the global oil market, caused a spike in the dated Brent market and is supporting oil products around the globe. The shut-down should go to at least Christmas and maybe even longer.A detected crack in the pipeline led to a total shutdown of the system for the first time in at least 7 years. This is going to further tighten an already...
OVERNIGHT MARKETS AND NEWS Mar E-mini S&Ps (ESH18 +0.07%) this morning are up +0.03% and European stocks are higher by +0.15% as gains in energy stocks lead the overall market higher. Jan WTI crude oil (CLF18 +0.83%) is up +0.62% at a 1-week high on carry-over support on a rally in Brent crude prices to a 2-1/2 year high of $65.75 a barrel. Brent crude continues to surge on supply concerns after the Forties Pipeline System, which carries 400,000 bbl of oil a day, was shut down due to a crack in one of the pipelines. The shutdown of the pipeline will last two weeks until repairs are made, and it forced Apache to suspend operations at its n...
Goldman, like everyone else in the world, is still trying to figure out what Bitcoins is and what it does. Back in October, the crypto crowd was excited to learn that just weeks after Jamie Dimon famously called Bitcoin a “fraud”, Lloyd Blankfein was weighing the merits of starting a Bitcoin trading operation. He would walk back the speculation a few days later on Twitter as follows: Fast forward a month (give or take) and, in an interview with Bloomberg, Lloyd came across as pretty open-minded about the crypto space. A couple of weeks after that, following a truly absurd bout of volatility that saw Bitcoin plunge more than 20% after hi...
Liftoff: Bitcoin futures are up and trading. Given the huge buzz around the cryptocurrency, its first day was surprisingly tame – at least by Bitcoin standards. Futures rocketed 20% at open before dropping back beneath $18,000. That’s still nicely above the $16,649 mark Bitcoin was sitting at midday yesterday, but you’ve got to remember, Bitcoin’s up more than 66% since Dec. 1. Reuters‘ “Breakingviews” noted futures volume was around $50 million, just 0.5% of the volume of actual bitcoins in the prior 24 hours. Now, it’s possible lots of would-be traders were sitting out the first day, pulling a ...
Last week on our podcast, I spoke with Bruce Lavine, my former boss and colleague and current member of the WisdomTree Investments board of directors, along with his current colleague John Davi, founder and CIO of Astoria Portfolio Advisors. We had a great conversation on Lavine’s background and history, going back to his early days at WisdomTree and the founding of the iShares business. The discussion with Davi touched on portfolio themes Astoria has worked into clients’ exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolios for 2018. In March of this year, Davi saw a dream scenario for stocks: earnings were inflecting higher globally, liquidity was tr...
The iPath Bloomberg Coffee SubTR ETN (JO) hit the fresh all-time low that I did not think would happen. A report on surplus sent the iPath Bloomberg Coffee SubTR ETN (JO) to a fresh all-time low on high selling volume. Source: FreeStockCharts.com The proximate news was a report of surplus from the CoffeeNetwork as reported by Reuters (I could not find mention of this forecast on the group’s twitter or Facebook feeds). According to Reuters: “The world coffee market is likely to see a larger global surplus in the 2018/19 season with production boosted by an on-year in Brazil’s biennial crop cycle, CoffeeNetwork said on Monday. The anal...
On Monday, New Zealand Dollar (NZD) jumped after Adrian Orr was appointed the new Central Bank Governor. Orr is an experienced central banker who has worked as the deputy governor and economist. Previously, he led the country’s $26 billion sovereign wealth fund. Investors were optimistic that he will be able to change the RBNZ without weakening the bank’s resolve of fighting inflation. RBNZ is trying to transition to a Fed-style central bank aimed at price stability and maintaining full employment. Yesterday’s gained to the NZD continued overnight when the pair reached a two-week high against the dollar. 15-Minute chart At this price le...
This past weekend, I discussed the current extension of the market. To wit: “In the short-term, the market trends are CLEARLY bullish, very overbought, but nonetheless bullish.” “As such, our portfolios remain ‘long’ on the equity side of the ledger…for now. “ The current momentum behind the market advance is clearly bullish, and with the “smell of tax reform” in the air, there is little to derail the bulls before year-end. As I previously wrote, I am still somewhat suspicious of the markets going into 2018. As I laid out over the last couple of weeks, I believe the risk of “tax-related” selling is a strong pos...
WTI Crude Oil The WTI Crude Oil market continues to be bullish longer-term, even though it is rather noisy in general. You can see that I have a nice uptrend line that I have marked on the chart, and it has in fact offered support again. We will probably go looking toward $60 over the longer term, and I believe the pullbacks will continue to offer buying opportunities, but I also recognize that there will be a lot of noise. If we were to break down below the $55 handle, that should send this market down to the $52 handle, and I think that the volatility will continue. Pay attention to the US dollar, with the Federal Reserve speaking on Wednes...