OK, what day is it?
Yesterday was totally nuts and we ended up covering into that rally but, if you ignore the spike and pullback, it was a pretty strong day and we held our levels (the ones we wanted on Monday) so there is little to complain about but I didn't like the movement in energy and neither did the Donald, who must be reading my column as he hit all my talking points in this morning's interview, including my take that we can NOT have a strong economy with oil at $125.
The best part of this inteview is that Trump openly discussed (as Wilbur Ross was in studio) the 1,000, my name for the 1,000 people on this planet rich enough to move markets, as he flat our said "I think if Wilber, or one of our 10 friends, there are 10 of us, went over to see OPEC… I think things would change. If I had my way I would tax the oil companies into oblivion… They (OPEC) are laughing at the stupidity of this country. They can't believe they are getting away with it." Both Joe Kernin and Wilbur Ross quickly jump to defend the oil companies but this shows there is a possible rift growing in the 1,000 as more of our super-rich become concerned about the out of control price of oil and it will only, as Donald says, take 10 very rich people to topple that market if they have a mind to.
Asian markets were mixed this morning with not much happening there and Europe is fairly flat ahead of our open even though they too got better than expected economic data. BCS took a $2Bn hit on write-downs and there were other poor earnings reports keeping them down.
We're looking mixed too at the open and I'm generally glad we are very tightly covered today as things are very much up in the air. Industrial production was not good at all but UBS picked the day before expirations to upgrade the oil drilling sector and came out with a general bull call on oil. Day after day more and more people step up to defend the price of oil – if it's such a strong market, why does it need defending?
