ICYMI
market vibes
February 12…)
“The real problem is not whether machince think, but whether men do. “ B F Skinner
CPI this morning. Powell was less than sanguine about inflation yesterday. Bloomberg’s lede in “top news” this morning: “A Hot Inflation Print Is Set to Derail S&P 500’s Run to Record.”
Quoting JP Morgan; “[the S&P 500] could fall as much as 2% if consumer prices rise 0.4% or more in January from the previous month.” Note: 0.4% is unchanged.
The sun Also Rises! Alibaba is up 46% since Jan. 13. A few years ago Jack Ma was on the ropes for criticizing the apparatchiks in China. They fined him 3 billion and shut down his IPO which was expected to be the largest in history. Now Baba is China’s new darling.
J D Vance to meet Zelensky on Friday in Munich … peace approaches, imo.
The Gabbard vot at 5:30 PM EST. The cloture for RFK Jr. and Patel tomorrow. These are the bishops, rooks and knights moving into the board.
In the markets
After a day of random rallies on the NYMEX, WTI is heavy this morning. We have DOE petroleum data today, total crude inventories were +8 mm bbls last week. As I like to say often when writing about crude, “rallies make the market weaker.”
March/April (chart below). April/May is just as weak. The front of the WTI curve is quite weak…
Next up Bonds, S&Ps, goldd, copper and silver. A discussion on DOGE and it’s findings in the vibe…
