oil

By Edward Hugh As Japanese officials continue to toil away in what we all hope will be a successful bid to avert a worst case nuclear meltdown, even while thousands of Japanese remain missing and unaccounted for, financial market…

Marc Chandler wrote a good piece on the politics of nuclear in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. I want to piggyback on his comments with some of my own thoughts and questions regarding what this could mean for the energy space. This is a…

Rising agricultural produce prices helped boost U.S. export prices, while oil boosted import prices. Exports were +8.6% and imports +6.9%.

Oil spills, coal mining disasters, concerns over Middle East revolutions and now nuclear meltdowns. What do all these events have in common? As I have written earlier, they are energy-related. They all have to do with desperate efforts to…

By Win Thin Malaysia central bank surprised the markets by hiking the statutory reserve requirement 100 bp bp while leaving policy rates unchanged at 2.75%. The bank noted that “While the stance of monetary policy is expected to remain…

Oil prices are moving higher today, due largely to news about Libya and OPEC. Algerian Oil Minister said that there was no shortage in the global oil markets and that an emergency OPEC meeting is not needed now. It also appears that…

We have found that the correlation between oil and the Canadian dollar has collapsed. We conduct the correlation analysis on a 60-day rolling basis, using percent change. The correlation peaked at the end of last year near 0.76. It now…

Mexico central bank kept rates steady at 4.5% today, as expected. However, it tilted a little more to the hawkish side and supports our view that tightening is likely to start in Q4 11 and not Q1 12 as market is pricing in. Central bank…

It looks so easy. Risk on and risk off. When risk trades are being put on, equity market and commodities prices, like gold and oil, rise. The euro appreciates and the yen sells off. When risk trades come off, just the opposite takes place.…

Hugo Chavez as peacemaker? Color us skeptical. Chavez is hardly an impartial third party in this conflict, as he has cozied up to Qaddafi over the years. As such, we would not expect opposition forces to be very open to any sort of Chavez…