Oil prices are rising. We have a falling U.S. oil rig count and a surprise drop in Saudi oil production, against a backdrop of increasing geopolitical risk. Baker Hughes’ oil rig was countdown two, gas rig count dipped by three. Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia pumped around 10.29 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude…
Overnight Markets and News Sep E-mini S&Ps (ESU18 +0.05%) this morning are up +0.11% at a 1-week high and European stocks are up +0.56%. Strength in energy producers is leading the overall market higher with Sep WTI crude oil (CLU18 +1.23%) up +1.47% after Saudi Arabia said it cut its crude production to 10.3 million…
The consumer has always been a good gauge of the U.S. economy. Similarly, investors can gauge the health of the stock market by looking at consumer stocks. One way to gauge this is to look at the ratio of the Consumer Discretionary Sector ETF(NYSEARCA: XLY) to the Consumer Staples Sector ETF (NYSEARCA: XLP). The former represents growth and a…
The US yield curve, as indicated by the spread between the 10-year and 2-year T-Note yields, made a new 10-year extreme over the past fortnight, meaning that it recently became the ‘flattest’ it has been in more than 10 years. While this may indicate that the boom is nearing its end, it definitely indicates that…
Securitized real estate shares dominated last week’s performance rankings at the extremes for the major asset classes, based on a set of exchange-traded products. US real estate investment trusts (REITs) posted the highest return for the week through August 3 while foreign REITs/real estate suffered the biggest loss. Vanguard Real Estate (VNQ) popped 3.2% last week, the…
Voters tend to be rationally ignorant. Since a single vote does not matter, for most potential voters the cost of being politically well informed is greater than the benefit of being knowledgeable about political affairs. Therefore it’s rational for most voters to be ignorant regarding political issues. A main reason for the high cost of being…
The weekly chart for the EUR/USD is another that is now developing an interesting pattern and moving to test a key level of support that could ultimately define the longer term trend of this pair. Starting with the pattern itself, over the year the price action has built into a head and shoulders, albeit with…
Today I’m reviewing a small-cap oil & gas midstream firm by the name of GasLog Partners LP.Its trading ticker symbol is GLOP. I last reviewed GLOP December 22nd2017. GasLog Partners LP owns, operates & acquires liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers engaged in LNG transportation under long-term charters. As of February 8, 2018, it had a…
The People’s Bank of China announced Friday a re-introduction of reserve requirements on FX forwards trading which it had eliminated last September just after the Yuan soared against the dollar – a move aimed at taking pressure off the renminbi as the USDCNY rapidly closed in on 7.00. However, as ING’s Chris Turner writes, this looks only a temporary…
The US dollar edged higher against most of the major currencies, and emerging market currencies are heavier. Sterling’s quarter percent drop makes it the weakest of the majors in slow turnover and it was sufficient to record a new 11-month low. Sterling failed to get much of a lift from last week’s BOE rate hike,…