evening wrap, july 16

market vibes

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” G. B. Shaw

Despite being a desultory summer morning, New York started the day in overdrive. Rumors about Powell were at a fever pitch. News wires were clogged with headlines in caps saying Trump will fire Powell. A letter had been drafted, they said, and circulated among senior politicians.

However, in a meeting with the Crown Prince of Bahrain later in the morning, Trump said he was not going to fire Powell, nor had he penned a draft letter to do it. The Dow, having gone from +150 to -300, rallied to +150. Gold rallied $60, and, well, everything slowly returned to where it started the session.

At 10:30 AM EDT, the DOE contradicted an API report from yesterday that said U.S. crude inventories rose 19 million barrels last week—a huge build! A Reuters report contradicted the API report, saying inventories rose just 800,000 barrels!

Obviously, these two reports were disregarded by the market, but the API voluntary private survey does have some correlated credibility. The DOE uses broad, mandatory industry surveys with legal penalties for noncompliance. Reuters is a prominent news agency with global reach but is known to use AI that taps into social media and other sources. Here is the report for the DOE as of July 11, which did not even slightly resemble either the API or Reuters reports.

Crude inventories fell 3.859 million barrels, gasoline was up 3.399 million barrels, most of it in PADD 3. Distillates were up 4.173 million barrels.

The usual list of futures awaits its usual dissection tonight, plus the vibe. Soooo… plug in the blender, toss in some rumors and BLS data, and hit purée.