Economic Reports Scorecard Of the 19 reports released over the last two weeks for which we track a consensus estimate, only four were better than expected. And two of those were the two weekly jobless claims reports. The only other two better than expected reports were the Richmond Fed manufacturing survey and the personal income report. We had a run of [...]
The front end of the oil price complex continues to get all the attention because it seems to further the more optimistic narrative. It is the back end, however, that is most significant. The nearer maturities of the futures curve reflect more the funding environment than the fundamental view of oil and the economy. The lack of continued liquidation has [...]
One of the things I like about posts like the Chart of the Week is that it gets people to think, share and collaborate. It can be a bit of echo chamber sometimes so we welcome other opinions and feedback about our work. This chart of the week comes from reader Bradley Parkes, former investment banker and current geologist (Check [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard Survey based economic reports continue to run counter to real world, actual data. Since the real data tends to lag, an optimist would probably take this as good news. A pessimist would dismiss it altogether as useless survey based data. Me? I'm a realistic optimist. I see the survey based data as potentially positive since attitude and [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard The economic reports since the last update present a dichotomy. While there has been an improvement in the surprises - more better than expected reports - the overall tone of the reports has been fairly negative. Part of the explanation for that is the plethora of regional Fed reports over the last two weeks, almost all of [...]
There are a few correlations that I find particularly compelling. The first is Chinese RMB (or CNY) next to WTI crude oil, as both are proxies in their own way of multi-dimensional crosscurrents between global “dollar” finance and real economy function. Since March, that correlation has come into renewed and tight focus. In the past few days, the CNY has [...]
Like industrial production, the condition of oil inventory in the US was updated today in contradiction of the expectations driving Federal Reserve models expecting “transitory” weakness to simply pass into history. Unlike the virtual conditions for the FOMC, crude oil markets are obliged to respect both the eurodollar and the physical realities of physical commodities. Last week, the US EIA [...]
While the media remains fixed on supply, the rest of the financial complex is prepared elsewhere. On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced what the mainstream has been waiting for (and often blatantly demanding) since the summer “rebound” faded into August liquidations. Given the mythical status of Saudi supply, this was the one country thought to be the only possible savior. Crude [...]
To say that the “dollar” is a mess to begin the week is to state the obvious. The condition left at Friday’s close has persisted, with commodities and such being sold heavily from the outset. Japan’s renewed “recession” (I use quotes only in the conventional sense, given that the Japanese economy never truly left) hasn’t helped in that regard, but [...]
Crude oil prices are being slammed again today, as the “dollar” continues to reek about the places where economy and finance come together. Crude oil is perhaps the most visible extension of that process, where finance helps figure out direction of prices that will eventually be necessary to physically clear (even and especially to storage) actual product. Given the position [...]
Stay In Touch