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COT

Covering (In) COT Blue

By |2020-12-28T18:34:29-05:00December 28th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It was late on a Tuesday night, in the middle of last week, Christmas week of all weeks, with most people already checked out. Having finally obtained Congressional support and approval, the $900 billion plus “stimulus” (read: stipend) was on its way to becoming reality after months of politically-motivated uncertainty. Not one to sit idly by while everyone else had [...]

COT Blue: OMG the 30s!!!!

By |2020-10-05T18:35:46-04:00October 5th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Crude oil futures continue to be more than a buck in contango in the most liquid part of the WTI curve out to three months. One of the more important anti-reflation indications, especially given the situation on energy’s supply side, hardly anyone cares about this glaring contradiction given this latest very minor sell-off in the bond market’s long end.That means [...]

COT Black: No Love For Super-Secret Models

By |2020-04-27T18:13:03-04:00April 27th, 2020|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

As I’ve said, it is a threefold failure of statistical models. The first being those which showed the economy was in good to great shape at the start of this thing. Widely used and even more widely cited, thanks to Jay Powell and his 2019 rate cuts plus “repo” operations the calculations suggested the system was robust.Because of this set [...]

COT Black: Not Transitory, The Landmine In Crude Means A Lot More Than Crude

By |2019-08-07T10:57:12-04:00August 7th, 2019|Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Supply glut or demand disappearing? We are back to asking that question again after four years. In late 2014 and early 2015, the conventional answer was shale. The US had begun producing so much oil there was a glut of supply. Without an outlet for it, all the crude began building up primarily in Cushing, OK. All that was true [...]

COT Blue Supplement: OI Warned Again Last Week

By |2019-05-23T10:37:09-04:00May 23rd, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Nervous people tend not to sit still. The term nervous energy means just that. When you’re worried about something, your mind is telling you to use up the resources your body is providing to search for a fix to whatever it is that’s bothering you. Mitigation at the very least. It really is a simple thing sometimes. In the UST [...]

COT Blue: Broad Interest For The Bond Next Move

By |2019-05-01T15:40:15-04:00May 1st, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In early February 1994, Alan Greenspan’s Fed would begin to raise the federal funds rate target for the first time in five years. Not since February 1989 had the FOMC thought economic conditions warranted an increase. In between, the 1990-91 recession which wasn’t especially bad, certainly not by contemporary standards set by the contractions in the seventies and early eighties. [...]

COT Blue: Distinct Lack of Green But A Lot That’s Gold

By |2019-04-23T18:50:50-04:00April 23rd, 2019|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Gold, in my worldview, can be a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. If it goes up, that’s fear. Nothing good. If it goes down, that’s collateral. In many ways, worse. Either way, it is only bad, right? Not always. There are times when rising gold signals inflation, more properly reflation perceptions. Determining which is which is the real [...]

COT Blue: The Velocity of Capitulation

By |2019-02-11T16:13:32-05:00February 11th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

On Friday, the CFTC posted its COT data for the first week in 2019. For crude oil, capitulation. For US Treasury bond futures, capitulation. In the latter financial market, unsurprisingly the net market position utterly collapsed during December. From a relatively high (meaning market overall short) +58k contracts that last week in November when everyone piled into liquidity hedges, the [...]

COT Black Is Partially Back With A Lot of Towels

By |2019-02-06T16:33:23-05:00February 6th, 2019|Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is in a bit of a tough spot. Being subject to the federal government shutdown meant shutting down the various Commitment of Traders (COT) reports for all the products listed on the exchange. There are a lot of them. Though the government and therefore the CFTC has reopened, it is going to be some [...]

COT Black: Term Oil Means Turmoil

By |2018-10-29T12:57:27-04:00October 29th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Inflation hysteria was as much crude oil as anything else. After all, it was the sudden spike higher in oil prices that would eventually push the US CPI, PCE Deflator, Europe’s HICP, and even Japan’s moribund inflation index. Central bankers were giddy, as was mainstream commentary extrapolating these trajectories into actual economic acceleration. For a time, even the unbreakable skepticism [...]

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