Written by Gary
Germany’s move to electric vehicles will affect thousands of workers (SPY +0.8%). Rail Week Ending 01 May 2021 – Growth Surge Over Lockdown One Year Ago.
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
North and South American markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Bovespa gained 1.21%, while the IPC led the S&P 500 lower. They fell 1.14% and 0.06% respectively. |
What Is Moving the Markets
Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
Oil Prices On Track For Another Weekly Gain Despite Indias COVID CrisisOil prices fell early on Friday, yet they were still headed for a second consecutive weekly gain, for a first such back-to-back weekly gain in nearly two months. Bullish demand outlooks thanks to the reopening in the United States and Europe and a large draw in U.S. crude oil inventories have mostly prevailed this week over the concerns about a slowdown in oil demand in the worlds third-largest oil importer, India. As of 9:51 a.m. EDT on Friday, WTI Crude prices were down 0.28 percent at $64.53 and Brent Crude was trading down 0.29 percent | |
Why Exxon And Chevron Are Not Going All-Out In The PermianThe U.S. oil supermajors are leading by example what shale drilling discipline should look like. Neither ExxonMobil nor Chevron are rushing to boost production in the biggest American shale play, the Permian, despite the oil price rally this year that has sent WTI prices to above $60 per barrel. The two biggest U.S. oil corporations are now prioritizing debt reduction and increased cash flows to pay down the excess debt they had accumulated last year when oil prices crashed. Their crude oil production targets in the Permian remain unchanged | |
U.S. Shale Pre-Hedge Revenues Set To Hit All-Time High In 2021The US shale industry is set to achieve a significant milestone in 2021: If WTI futures continue their strong run and average at $60 per barrel this year and natural gas and NGL prices remain steady, producers can expect a record-high hydrocarbon revenue of $195 billion before factoring in hedges, a Rystad Energy analysis shows. The previous record of $191 billion was set in 2019. The estimate includes hydrocarbon sales from all tight oil horizontal wells in the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, Niobrara and Anadarko regions. The Permian Basin alone | |
The Energy Crisis That No One Is Talking AboutWe live in a world where words are very carefully chosen. Companies hire public relations firms to give just the right spin to what they are saying. Politicians make statements that suggest that everything is going well. Newspapers would like their advertisers to be happy; they certainly wont suggest that the automobile you purchase today may be of no use to you in five years. I believe that what has happened in recent years is that the truth has become very dark. We live in a finite world; we are rapidly approaching | |
Gasoline Prices Set To Soar This SummerA shortage of tanker truck drivers in the United States made headlines recently, sparking fears that Americans may face higher prices at the pump this driving season, just as traveland gasoline demandbegins to really recover. Yet not all agree there are good reasons for this fear. In an article for Forbes, Suzanne Rowan Kelleher noted several experts’ opinions that were on the calm side. According to these experts, the tanker truck driver shortage was a temporary problem, not a dramatic event that would send prices at the pump soaring. | |
ERCOT Expects Record Power Demand In Texas This SummerThe Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) expects record demand for electricity this summer, but sees a low risk of emergency conditions, the manager of the Texas power grid said on Thursday. ERCOT, however, will visit some select power plants to inspect their preparedness for summer heat and extreme weather events for the first time, after the Texas Freeze in February left millions of people without electricity for days. Back in the middle of February, ERCOT called for rotating outages across the state as extreme winter weather forced | |
CDC official who issued early warnings about the threat of Covid will resignMessonnier’s stark warnings contrasted sharply with then-President Donald Trump’s messaging at the same time. | |
Labor secretary says pandemic is still weighing on the economy but confidence is coming backMarty Walsh, the Secretary of Labor, said after April’s disappointing jobs report that in normal circumstances 266,000 jobs “is a good number.” | |
AMC CEO Adam Aron raved about its new investors who are at odds with Wall StreetAMC’s new investors are rallying around the stock, but Wall Street is far more bearish on the company’s performance. | |
Confidence in the safety of the J&J vaccine is low following U.S. pause, Kaiser survey showsJust 46% of respondents said they were at least somewhat confident in the J&J shot, compared with 69% who said the same for Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines. | |
Peloton shares rise as treadmill recall impact not as bad as fearedPeloton shares climbed about 6% Friday as investors realized the financial hit from the company’s treadmill recall isn’t as bad as some had feared. | |
UK to offer under-40s alternative to AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine given rare blood clot concernsA very small number of people who have been inoculated with the AstraZeneca vaccine have suffered blood clots. | |
Pfizer and BioNTech begin the process of seeking full U.S. approval for their Covid vaccinePfizer and BioNTech are the first companies to seek full regulatory approval of Covid vaccines in the U.S. | |
Germany’s move to electric vehicles will affect thousands of workers, new study saysIn some countries a transition to electric vehicles appears, slowly but surely, to be underway. | |
India reports over 400,000 daily cases for the third time in a week as second wave hammers countryHealth ministry data released Friday showed there were 414,188 new cases over a 24-hour period, where at least 3,915 people succumbed to the disease. | |
Adidas reports 150% sales hike in China despite local boycott over human rightsAdidas said sales in China grew by 156% over the first three months of the year, despite a boycott by consumers in mainland China. | |
India’s rich are not the only ones fleeing the Covid crisis on private jets, says CEOThe situation in India has become so dire that even upper-middle class families are pooling their resources to escape, says private jet charter company JetSetGo. | |
CDC can consider lifting indoor Covid mask mandates now, former FDA chief says“I think we should start lifting these restrictions as aggressively as we put them in,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the FDA. | |
Every DOGE Has Its DayEvery DOGE Has Its Day Via Doomberg substack,
How quaint. I am an avid consumer of written history. As a doom-oriented pattern recognizer, the written chronology of historically transformative events provides an endless source of almost-relevant analogies to fret over. For those of us in the gold/hard money/real asset/Austrian school of economics, the ultimate doom porn is Adam Fergusson’s seminal book on the hyperinflation experienced in Germany after World War I, When Money Dies. Unlike most of you, I’ve only read it three times. | |
Psaki Out: White House Spox Signals She’ll Step Down Next YearPsaki Out: White House Spox Signals She’ll Step Down Next Year White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday all but announced that she plans to step down next year. “I think it’s going to be time for somebody else to have this job, in a year from now or about a year from now,” she told longtime Democratic operative David Axelrod on his CNN podcast, “The Axe Files.” This, despite being hit with nothing but scripted softball questions when she can avoid Fox News’ Peter Doocy, comes on the heels of remarks she made earlier this year to the New York Times, when she discussed giving someone else a shot at the job, according to The Hill. “I think there frankly needs to be diverse spaces and voices as communicators,” she told the Times. “Women, certainly, but beyond that,” whatever that means.   | |
“Paying People Not To Work” Is Killing The Recovery, US Chamber Of Commerce Urges Biden To End Pandemic Handouts“Paying People Not To Work” Is Killing The Recovery, US Chamber Of Commerce Urges Biden To End Pandemic Handouts Update (1055ET): Right on cue, just after Minneapolis Fed chief Neel Kashkari admitted that expanded unemployment insurance was keeping workers out of the labor market, contributing to Friday’s disappointing employment number, the US Chamber of Commerce released a statement calling for ending the $300 weekly supplemental benefit. Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley released the following as a statement, saying that while there might have been a time when the benefit was needed, that time has now passed. “Paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market” and is hurting the overall recovery, he said.
While Dems often butt heads with … | |
Tesla Admits Its Still “Firmly In Level 2” Autonomy, Won’t Have Full Self Driving By Year’s EndTesla Admits Its Still “Firmly In Level 2” Autonomy, Won’t Have Full Self Driving By Year’s End Elon Musk said in January of this year that he was “highly confident [a Tesla] will be able to drive itself with reliability in excess of human this year.” To many of us, we knew it was nonsense. Musk has been crowing about Full Self Driving in Tesla vehicles – a feature that neither exists, per what its name claims, nor has been proven to be reliably safe – for years. On top of that, Tesla has sold billions of dollars in vehicles and taken deposits for years based on the idea that Full Self Driving technology would come to fruition at some point in the future. Now, an admission from Tesla seems to confess what anyone paying attention already knew: there will be no Full Self Driving by the end of 2021. And if we were betting people, we’d bet we’re not going to see it anytime shortly after that, either. The company “told a California regulator that it may not achieve full self-driving technology by the end of this year,” according to Reuters on Friday. The memo was originally unearthed by legal website PlainSite. | |
US jobs growth much slower than expectedEmployers hired 266,000 people last month, figures show, despite a $1.9tn stimulus package. | |
Virgin Media customers left waiting longest on phoneVirgin Media and Virgin Mobile had the longest average customer call waiting times, Ofcom has found. | |
Covid travel rules: ‘Green list’ countries to be revealedEngland’s list of œgreen countries , with fewest restrictions, is expected to be released later. | |
Sovereign wealth funds, FIIs lap up SBI Life stock as Carlyle pares stakeCA Emerald Investments sold 42.3 million shares or 4.22 per cent stake in the life insurer through several block deals on the BSE earlier today. | |
UltraTech Cement Q4 results: PAT rises 61.5% YoY to Rs 1,778 cr, beats estimates; firm to pay Rs 37 dividendœWhile rural and semi-urban housing continue to drive growth, pick-up in government led infrastructure aided incremental cement demand. Pent-up urban demand is also expected to improve, the company said. | |
D-Street keeps Covid blues at bay, but upside may remain capped in near termThe buying momentum seen this week in shares of metals, corporate loan-focused banks, state-owned banks and the outperformance of smallcap stocks further indicated that risk appetite of investors remained strong. | |
April 2021 BLS Jobs Situation – Job Gains DisappointWritten by Steven Hansen The headline seasonally adjusted BLS job growth was well below expectations, with the unemployment rate worsening from 6.0 % to 6.1 %. | |
The Moneyist: I have crypto FOMO! ‘I’m too old to sit and hope I can make up for the lost time by safely investing my little bit of money’‘I have a $3,000-a-month pension. I am living with my ill father, and I am currently not working and looking for a job. I am going to college using the GI Bill. I am almost 50, and have no 401(k).’ | |
: Beer brewers around the world are stacking shelves with hard seltzersA number of new products have already hit shelves as alcohol companies try to get their share of the growing hard seltzer market. | |
: This Mother’s Day, moms need a lot more than flowersA new survey suggests an even better gift would be offering mom more financial peace of mind — but it’s likely there’s a dining splurge coming too. |
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