Normally at this time of year natural gas prices retreat and companies actually stash natural gas in storage for use durin hurricane outages in the fall and winter heating season. Not this year, however. Today natural gas prices in the U.S. hit a new 18-year high. At 11:20 a.m. New York time natural gas for June delivery climbed to $8.08 per million BTUs, up 8.12% on the morning
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg project the Federal Reserve will hike its benchmark short-term interest rate by 50 basis points on Wednesday in an effort to damp inflation. And bond traders have just decided that the U.S.central bank will raise rates by 75 basis points at its June 15 meeting. The CME Fed Watch Tool, which uses prices in the Fed Funds Futures market to calculate odds of a fed move, puts the odds of a 50 basis point increase from the current 0.25% to 0.50% to 0.50 to 0.75% at 99.8%. That tool puts the odds of a 75 basis point increase air the June 15 meeting at 87%. That’s up from odds for just 18% on April 1. Bond prices are down and bond yields are up today.
Data, data everywhere in the next two days. From inflation to GDP. To begin with the Bureau of Economic Analysis is scheduled to report first quarter U.S. GDP growth on April 28. Economists expect to see that the economy has grown at an annualized rate of just 1.1% in the quarter. That would be a huge drop from the 6.9% rate in the fourth quarter of 2021. But they warn that the headline number will be extremely misleading.
China expanded coronavirus testing to most of Beijing as rising cases fuel fears about an unprecedented lockdown of the capital. Officials on Monday night said testing would take place in another 11 of Beijing’s 16 districts, moving beyond just Chaoyang, where most of the infections have been detected since Friday. The city of more than 20 million people has already locked down parts of the eastern district of Chaoyang, home to 3.5 million people, with plans to ease restrictions after residents complete a testing regimen on April 27. The bad news from Beijing added to new bad news from a locked down Shanghai
Going into this earnings season, the hope was that strong, surprisingly strong perhaps, earnings from the big growth stocks would put a stop to the selling. Earnings would be strong enough to convince investors that the market wasn’t over-valued since at these growth rates stocks would be seen to be quick growing into current extended valuations That hasn’t exactly worked so far. But this week the earnings story from growth stocks hits its stride. If the companies reporting this week can’t make the case for growth stock earnings, there probably isn’t a growth stock story to be made in the light of Federal Reserve interest rate increases, supply chain disruptions, and fears of a recession.
The financial markets have moved from pricing in 50 basis point increases in the Federal Reserve’s target interest rate at the May 4 and June 15 meetings to considering the possibility that the Fed will increase rates by 75 basis points in June and July. A 25 basis point increase is “business-as-usual” for a Fed tightening. 50 basis points at a pop (it takes 100 basis points to make up 1 percentage point) would be very aggressive, but comments from Fed chair Jerome Powell this week certainly put a move of that size on the table.A pair of 50 basis point increases would be the sharpest move by the Fed since January 1982 when the Volcker Fed was fighting to control double-digit inflation
Today, April 21, reports from a number of different sources are pointing to lower oil production–which will mean higher oil prices. Even from current levels. And oil prices are significantly higher in the past three weeks. At 3:00 p.m. New York time today U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate traded at $103.44 a barrel, up 1.61% on the day. On April 11 West Texas Intermediate traded for just $94.29 a barrel.
Here’s what caught my eye yesterday, April 18. For a big change from recent losses, the chip group of stocks was all in the green. And not just by a pinch either. Yesterday Nvidia (NVDA) was up 2.47%: NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) was up 1.91%; Synaptics (SYNA) was up 4.49%; and Qualcomm (QCOM) was up 1.76%. Is something going on in the sector?
U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery climbed 1% to $108.01 a barrel at 10:09 a.m. Monday in Singapore. International benchmark Brent crude for June delivery gained 1.1% to $112.97 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. Two Libyan ports have been forced to stop loading oil
The Producer Price Index (PPI), which tracks prices at the wholesale level, showed a 2.4% month to month increase in food costs for March from February. the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. That was the biggest month to month increase in 10 months. The jump was driven by increases in prices for grains, vegetables, cooking oils, and pork. This is bad news for future Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation–which hit an annual rate of 8.5% in yesterday’s report for March–since the CPI tends t track changes in the PPI with s long of month or two. Year over year food prices increased at a 16.2% rate.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose at a year over year rate of 8.5% in March. That’s the highest rate since December 1981.
State-owned Russian Railways has been ruled in default by a derivatives panel after missing a bond interest payment.
