Despite the name, the Fed doesn’t actually intervene in the US$ repo market. I know they called them overnight repo operations, but that’s only because they mimic repo transactions not because the central bank is conducting them in that specific place. What really happened was FRBNY allotting bank reserves (in exchange for UST, MBS, and agency collateral) only to the [...]
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is in a bit of a tough spot. Being subject to the federal government shutdown meant shutting down the various Commitment of Traders (COT) reports for all the products listed on the exchange. There are a lot of them. Though the government and therefore the CFTC has reopened, it is going to be some [...]
The politics of oil are complicated, to say the least. There’s any number of important players, from OPEC to North American shale to sanctions. Relating to that last one, the US government has sought to impose serious restrictions upon the Iranian regime. Choking off a major piece of that country’s revenue, and source for dollars, has been a stated US [...]
The week is only two days so far, but the oil crash in it has now been taken into elite company. The WTI benchmark is now down about 40% from its high set just a month and a half ago. As noted yesterday, this isn’t normal, healthy behavior. Crude isn’t exactly fickle, so a crash like this should be appreciated [...]
The FOMC had voted to taper the final purchasing levels of its third and fourth QE programs at the end of October 2014. Just two days later, the Bank of Japan’s policy committee would vote to expand theirs (already with the extra “Q”). The diverging outlooks punctuated a period of high uncertainty. No more so than global asset markets. When [...]
At the end of June, the crude curve really got out of hand. WTI futures had returned to backwardation many months before, and then the eurodollar/collateral explosion May 29 sapped some crude strength. Over the following month, curve backwardation would become extreme as the benchmark price seemed ready to skyrocket. After getting up near $80 a barrel, the price reversed. [...]
On December 5, 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that in the month of November 2014 nonfarm private payrolls had surged by +321k. Typically bureaucratic, the introduction to the report was unusually blunt. “Job gains were widespread.” The text didn’t come right out and say it so the media did it all for them. TD Ameritrade’s Chief Strategist [...]
Why aren’t more people talking about this? It’s a huge development and nary a peep anywhere. The mainstream media is filled with baited expectations for 3% wage growth on Payroll Friday. All eyes are on the labor market, which is a lagging indication, instead of on the oil market, which is forward looking. As of this writing, the futures curve [...]
Inflation hysteria was as much crude oil as anything else. After all, it was the sudden spike higher in oil prices that would eventually push the US CPI, PCE Deflator, Europe’s HICP, and even Japan’s moribund inflation index. Central bankers were giddy, as was mainstream commentary extrapolating these trajectories into actual economic acceleration. For a time, even the unbreakable skepticism [...]
There is an interesting, ongoing academic debate about what shape the crude oil futures curve “should” take. Quite naturally, it seems backwardation is the market baseline. Most people, I think, presume otherwise because of their familiarity with commodities like gold. Backwardation in that market implies a physical shortage. Unlike that precious metal, crude oil is a usable commodity whose value [...]
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