Not The Onion: Kimbal Musk Dated Jeffrey Epstein’s Ex-Girlfriend After Epstein Hooked Them Up
Just when you thought you couldn’t handle any more wonderful factoids about Elon Musk’s total airhead of a brother/Board Member, Kimbal, we find out that he was fixed up with a previous girlfriend by sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Even better is the fact that the woman was reportedly Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, too.
Epstein was in “regular contact” with Kimbal Musk, who serves on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX, according to a stunning new report from Business Insider.
BI reports that although it was “unclear” how Epstein met Kimbal, Elon’s brother began dating a woman in “Epstein’s entourage” who lived in an apartment building that Epstein’s brother owned. The building had also been used by Epstein himself to house people close to him, including Eastern European models.
Nothing to see here…
Musk and the woman reportedly dated from 2011 to 2012 after being set up by Epstein personally. Their relationship is said to be what brought Epstein in touch with the Musk family, as we have previously reported on.
Business Insider says it shows how Epstein may have “used the women in his inner circle to develop strategic relationships with prominent people in the world of tech and business.” But we can’t help but wonder if Epstein may have had another angle to play, as many have speculated that he specialized in using “honeypots” to get dirt on, then blackmail, powerful people.
Could Kimbal have gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar? Is is possible to thwart this man’s brilliance?
We may never know. Regardless, people close to the couple said the relationship “seemed a little more transactional.”
They concluded: “The rumor has always been that Epstein facilitated introductions to beautiful women, looking for deal flow or access to capital. And the provenance of [Kimbal Musk’s relationship to the woman] was right down the path of that.”
Meanwhile, Tesla stock, currently in the midst of a VW-style short squeeze, will probably rally 20% on the news.
Far-left activists don’t just want Americans to approve of transgender ideology and to call people by preferred pronouns unmoored from biological sex – they also want to force taxpayers to foot the bill for dangerous experimental surgeries that leave people infertile and scarred for life.
On December 23, Illinois joined 19 other states and the District of Columbia to explicitly require Medicaid to pay for transgender surgeries. The Department of Healthcare and Family Services, the state’s primary Medicaid agency, published new administrative rules mandating the coverage of certain “gender-affirming” services. Illinois formerly excluded “transsexual surgery” from the taxpayer-funded program.
“Health care is a right, not a privilege, and I’m committed to ensuring our LGBTQ community and all Illinoisans have access to that right,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) said in a statement in April.
“Expanding Medicaid to cover gender affirming surgeries is cost effective, helps avoid long-term health consequences, and most importantly is the right thing to do. With continued attacks coming from Washington, this administration will always stand with our transgender community and their right to lead safe and healthy lives.”
Almost everything in this statement was dead wrong. Health care should not be considered a “right,” because it involves the hard work of doctors and nurses, who deserved to be compensated for their work. Perhaps most importantly, however, the idea that “gender-affirming” surgeries help “avoid long-term health consquences” is false, as is the idea that covering these surgeries is necessarily “the right thing to do.”
Transgender activists have pushed this narrative based on the idea that the only way to curb the high rate of suicide among people who identify themselves as transgender is to force society to accept transgender identity. Te thinking goes like this: When transgender people have surgery to “affirm” their identity as the opposite sex, they will be less likely to commit suicide. Therefore, transgender surgery is essential to their health, and the government paying for it actually saves money in the long run.
The evidence actually suggests the opposite. While there are few long-term studies on transgender health available, the most thorough follow-up study involving transgender people — extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where there is a strong pro-transgender culture — found that transgender surgery does not paper over mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone the surgery rose to 20 times that of their peers!
Many of those who undergo the surgery experience deep and painful regret.
“Now that I’m all healed from the surgeries, I regret them,” a 19-year-old man who had himself surgically mutilated to affirm a female identity, wrote in a letter. “The result of the bottom surgery looks like a Frankenstein hack job at best, and that got me thinking critically about myself. I had turned myself into a plastic-surgery facsimile of a woman, but I knew I still wasn’t one. I became (and to an extent, still feel) deeply depressed.”
Transgender activist Jazz Jennings experienced complications during the surgery to remove his male genitals, leaving him with scars across the top of his legs.
“I am a real, live 22-year-old woman, with a scarred chest and a broken voice, and five o’clock shadow because I couldn’t face the idea of growing up to be a woman, that’s my reality,” admitted Cari Stella.
The medical establishment has rushed to affirm transgender “health care” that often involves giving healthy people a disease or urging genital mutilation on perfectly healthy men and women.
After the case of the 6-year-old boy James Younger seized national attention, states across the nation are expected to pass laws protecting children from the damaging effects of transgender drugs.
Yet Illinois joined 19 other states and the District of Columbia in going the opposite direction — forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for transgender surgery. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin also use Medicaid funds for transgender surgery.
Sixty-two percent of Americans said employers should be able to opt-out of covering transgender surgeries, and 80 percent of them said doctors and medical professionals should be able to opt-out of performing surgeries they think dangerous to their patients.
If businesses should be able to opt-out of footing the bill for dangerous and controversial surgeries, why shouldn’t taxpayers?
New Jersey took two major steps yesterday toward reforming law enforcement’s use of civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police and prosecutors to seize property even when the owner isn’t convicted, or sometimes even charged with a crime.
The Democratic-controlled New Jersey Senate passed a bill Monday by a 36-3 vote requiring a criminal conviction in certain cases before police and prosecutors can take property using civil forfeiture.
That same day, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed a transparency bill into law that will require quarterly reporting by police departments detailing their forfeiture activities. Murphy said the new law will be “a huge step forward for transparency and accountability.”
“New Jersey law enforcement agencies currently have no permanent statutory requirement to disclose civil asset forfeitures,” Murphy said. “This legislation would boost confidence in our justice system by requiring county prosecutors to track and report data on this practice.”
Jennifer McDonald, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that has challenged asset forfeiture laws in several states, called the new transparency requirements “fantastic.”
“This bill not only codified existing practices but also drastically improved at what they were doing in the past,” she says.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed a similar transparency bill in 2017.
A 2018 report by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey found that there were almost no transparency requirements surrounding civil asset forfeiture in the state, and that the practice disproportionately affected minorities.
The new requirements will create an online database showing the public what police seized, the value of the item, the exact location of the seizure, whether the forfeiture case was settled, and the ultimate fate of the property.
Civil asset forfeiture laws were intended to allow police and prosecutors to target the illicit proceeds of organized crime, and law enforcement groups say they are a vital tool to disrupt drug trafficking.
However, civil liberties groups say there are too few procedural protections for innocent property owners, who bear the burden of going to civil court to challenge the seizure, and too many perverse profit incentives for police departments and prosecutors, whose budgets are often padded by forfeiture proceeds.
Reason has detailed numerous cases of people whose cars, money, and even homes were seized for petty drug crimes or, in some cases, just for having large amounts of cash on hand.
Cases like those have led more than half of U.S. states to pass some form of civil forfeiture reform over the past decade.
A few states—New Mexico, North Carolina, and Nebraska—essentially abolished civil forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited. Others have passed laws funneling forfeiture revenues into general funds, rather than police department budgets, or set threshold limits on when property can be seized through civil forfeiture.
The bill passed by the New Jersey Senate on Monday will require a criminal conviction in forfeiture cases involving under $1,000 in cash or $10,000 in property.
McDonald said the bill was a “modest improvement,” but “it still allows civil forfeiture to go on and it doesn’t even require a conviction for all property types.”
“We want them to continue to push forward for ending civil forfeiture entirely and replacing it with criminal forfeiture.”
The legislation now goes to the desk of Murphy, who will decide whether to sign it into law.
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Shopping malls across the country are under severe financial distress, with vacancy rates hitting two-decade highs in 2019, reported the Financial Times, citing a new report from Reis Moody’s Analytics.
Mall operators saw a surge of store closures in 2H19 and ahead of Christmas despite a relatively stable consumer that has been leveraging up via the use of credit cards.
Barbara Denham, a senior economist at Reis, said one notable trend during the 2019 holiday season was the shift in spending habits from brick and mortar stores to online.
Denham said recent vacancy statistics paint a disastrous picture for shopping malls as vacancy rates have surged to a record high of 9.7%.
Mastercard data for the 2019 holiday season confirmed Denham’s view that consumer shifts are underway from brick and mortar to online. Retail sales growth at physical stores between Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve was about 1.2% Y/Y. Overall retail sales, including online sales, for the same period was a modest 3.4%.
Roxanne Meyer, an analyst at MKM Partners, said sales promotions at brick and mortar stores were “shocking” in late 2019. Many of these stores heavily discounted items to attract consumers but even that wasn’t enough to draw in crowds.
Mall landlords have sought to find alternatives for ailing properties; one option has been designating 50% of the mall to retail space and the other 50% to entertainment, such as sports fields to amusement parks. Another option has been the construction of multifamily complexes on the property to keep consumers close to stores.
The death of American malls is real, and it’s not being overstated, the worse has yet to come as more stores are expected to close in 2020.
New Jersey took two major steps yesterday toward reforming law enforcement’s use of civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police and prosecutors to seize property even when the owner isn’t convicted, or sometimes even charged with a crime.
The Democratic-controlled New Jersey Senate passed a bill Monday by a 36-3 vote requiring a criminal conviction in certain cases before police and prosecutors can take property using civil forfeiture.
That same day, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed a transparency bill into law that will require quarterly reporting by police departments detailing their forfeiture activities. Murphy said the new law will be “a huge step forward for transparency and accountability.”
“New Jersey law enforcement agencies currently have no permanent statutory requirement to disclose civil asset forfeitures,” Murphy said. “This legislation would boost confidence in our justice system by requiring county prosecutors to track and report data on this practice.”
Jennifer McDonald, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that has challenged asset forfeiture laws in several states, called the new transparency requirements “fantastic.”
“This bill not only codified existing practices but also drastically improved at what they were doing in the past,” she says.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed a similar transparency bill in 2017.
A 2018 report by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey found that there were almost no transparency requirements surrounding civil asset forfeiture in the state, and that the practice disproportionately affected minorities.
The new requirements will create an online database showing the public what police seized, the value of the item, the exact location of the seizure, whether the forfeiture case was settled, and the ultimate fate of the property.
Civil asset forfeiture laws were intended to allow police and prosecutors to target the illicit proceeds of organized crime, and law enforcement groups say they are a vital tool to disrupt drug trafficking.
However, civil liberties groups say there are too few procedural protections for innocent property owners, who bear the burden of going to civil court to challenge the seizure, and too many perverse profit incentives for police departments and prosecutors, whose budgets are often padded by forfeiture proceeds.
Reason has detailed numerous cases of people whose cars, money, and even homes were seized for petty drug crimes or, in some cases, just for having large amounts of cash on hand.
Cases like those have led more than half of U.S. states to pass some form of civil forfeiture reform over the past decade.
A few states—New Mexico, North Carolina, and Nebraska—essentially abolished civil forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited. Others have passed laws funneling forfeiture revenues into general funds, rather than police department budgets, or set threshold limits on when property can be seized through civil forfeiture.
The bill passed by the New Jersey Senate on Monday will require a criminal conviction in forfeiture cases involving under $1,000 in cash or $10,000 in property.
McDonald said the bill was a “modest improvement,” but “it still allows civil forfeiture to go on and it doesn’t even require a conviction for all property types.”
“We want them to continue to push forward for ending civil forfeiture entirely and replacing it with criminal forfeiture.”
The legislation now goes to the desk of Murphy, who will decide whether to sign it into law.
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Three Florida deputies have been placed on administrative leave while the department investigates a harrowing video showing them tasing and beating a man during an arrest.
First Coast Newsreports that Florida Highway Patrol attempted to pull Christopher Butler over on the evening of December 29, 2019, for driving too slow and swerving on Interstate-95. Butler sped up and began to drive 80 miles per hour after the officers initiated the traffic stop. Deputies with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office (SJSO) also aided in the chase. After driving through two red lights, Butler pulled into a Winn Dixie parking lot in St. Augustine.
Butler braced himself against his vehicle when the officers attempted to pull him out. Reports say that he also kicked and punched the officers. Butler denies resisting arrest. He told Action News Jax that he was feeling unwell that night and only began speeding so that he could return the vehicle to his girlfriend.
Video taken by a bystander captures what happened after Butler was finally removed from his vehicle.
The video showsSJSO deputies ordering Butler to place his hands behind his back. One deputy shouts at Butler to get on his stomach and then tases him. Another deputy commands, “Get on your stomach, motherfucker! Now!”
Butler is seen lying on the ground crying out in pain while the deputies continue to tase him and shout at him. Butler slowly turns on his stomach.
The deputies then tell him to put his hands behind his back. The video then captures audio of what sounds like the deputies punching Butler.
(Warning: Images may be disturbing to viewers.)
Arrest records show that Butler was booked that night and charged with driving under the influence, reckless driving, fleeing an officer, resisting arrest, and battery.
St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Charles Mulligan says the department learned of the video last Friday when a member of Butler’s family brought it forward. The department reviewed the video and immediately launched an investigation into the incident.
Mulligan also confirmed that the officers were placed on administrative leave “shortly thereafter.”
“At the sheriff’s office, we take situations like this very seriously,” Mulligan says. “The investigation is ongoing, so we’re hoping to complete it as soon as possible so the sheriff can make a determination of the outcome.”
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Three Florida deputies have been placed on administrative leave while the department investigates a harrowing video showing them tasing and beating a man during an arrest.
First Coast Newsreports that Florida Highway Patrol attempted to pull Christopher Butler over on the evening of December 29, 2019, for driving too slow and swerving on Interstate-95. Butler sped up and began to drive 80 miles per hour after the officers initiated the traffic stop. Deputies with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office (SJSO) also aided in the chase. After driving through two red lights, Butler pulled into a Winn Dixie parking lot in St. Augustine.
Butler braced himself against his vehicle when the officers attempted to pull him out. Reports say that he also kicked and punched the officers. Butler denies resisting arrest. He told Action News Jax that he was feeling unwell that night and only began speeding so that he could return the vehicle to his girlfriend.
Video taken by a bystander captures what happened after Butler was finally removed from his vehicle.
The video showsSJSO deputies ordering Butler to place his hands behind his back. One deputy shouts at Butler to get on his stomach and then tases him. Another deputy commands, “Get on your stomach, motherfucker! Now!”
Butler is seen lying on the ground crying out in pain while the deputies continue to tase him and shout at him. Butler slowly turns on his stomach.
The deputies then tell him to put his hands behind his back. The video then captures audio of what sounds like the deputies punching Butler.
(Warning: Images may be disturbing to viewers.)
Arrest records show that Butler was booked that night and charged with driving under the influence, reckless driving, fleeing an officer, resisting arrest, and battery.
St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Charles Mulligan says the department learned of the video last Friday when a member of Butler’s family brought it forward. The department reviewed the video and immediately launched an investigation into the incident.
Mulligan also confirmed that the officers were placed on administrative leave “shortly thereafter.”
“At the sheriff’s office, we take situations like this very seriously,” Mulligan says. “The investigation is ongoing, so we’re hoping to complete it as soon as possible so the sheriff can make a determination of the outcome.”
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We’re still only a few days into 2020 but a very reliable trend has already emerged and bears watching. The trend: No matter what happens anywhere in the world or even if markets flush a quick 50 handles in overnight (i.e. on the recent Iran mini crisis) by morning all is well. Why? Because the Fed’s daily liquidity injections are filtering into market behavior every single day and you can see it in the chart action.
Every trading day this year the Fed has unleashed repo operations of varying size in premarket. These are the daily liquidity injections the New York Fed provides in overnight repo markets to keep overnight rates artificially suppressed and to meet rising demand of banks for liquidity. The temporary liquidity crisis has apparently become permanent.
What do you call all this? Some call it a subsidy:
The New York Fed is basically giving big banks a subsidy with its ongoing repo operations because its rate is below the market’s rate: @irajersey of Bloomberg Intelligence on @BloombergRadio
I call it a perversion of financial markets. Why? Because it has now become permanent and it distorts everything.
See here’s the thing: Every day is the same. Whether markets open down (up mostly) the ample liquidity appears to make it immediately into markets.
The New York Fed publishes its running repo operations and sizes for each day on their website. You can see the daily operations there every day.
All these operations occur prior to US market open, and then lightning strikes. Spot the trend:
Each market open gets vertically jammed higher. The only obvious exception was the first trading day of the year, also the smallest repo operation of the year. Initial selling came in, but not to fear, the lightning effect took hold after all with a vertical ramp into close.
Correlation does not necessarily equate causation, but we can observe regular, get me in at all cost, vertical jams in prices with little to no price discovery in between except the now also regular tight intra day ranges.
How to test the theory? Simple. Try not doing repo for a few days and watch what happens. Just try it. But of course they won’t. Too scary.
This has been going on for a while, since September and in full force with $60B per month in treasury bill buying on top of that.
Why are markets not going down? Perhaps because they can’t. Fed liquidity is too overwhelming and the Fed, all too eager to toss cash around like a drug dealer coke packets at a frat party, does not appear to want to stop.
The Fed once was an insurance vehicle for the economy. No longer:
I’m so old I remember when the Fed was to be a lender of last resort. An emergency backstop.
Now they’re just reckless liquidity hacks.
And don’t think they are content to stop here. Now that they see themselves as the permanent intervener in everything one can never be sure of what they’ll come with next.
Since the Fed has so much cash to throw around to lend to banks worth hundreds of billions of dollars how how about some cash for the most needy in society?
Fear not, the Fed has apparently already identified the needy, the most obvious next choice: Hedge funds.
Federal Reserve officials are considering lending cash directly to hedge funds through clearinghouses to ease stress in the repo market. But that could be a tough sell for policy makers. https://t.co/CUlI4o943Q
Good, because I was really worried about needy hedge funds:
The Fed has appointed itself to be the fighter of danger everywhere in the world not realizing itself has become the danger. The danger that fuels asset bubbles in markets and in stocks.
What? You think this one way asset price inflation nonsense they have unleashed is normal, safe or sound?
$AAPL:
$TSLA:
Yea I too remember two way price discovery. Repo striking like lightning before market open has killed it. For now.
At the heart of it the Fed is trying to keep the ball in the air and has done so for years and you all know it:
In process they’ve now created a massive asset bubble. When and how will it pop? We can only know after the fact, but if it does you know who to blame:
If this market ever crashes you can blame the Fed who was too scared to endure a larger correction when trying to normalize and instead proceeded to blow an even bigger asset bubble with even more liquidity injections.
In “Biggest Change To Econ Data Releases In Decades”, Dept Of Labor Set To Remove Computers From Media “Lockups”
Any time the US Department of Labor releases the jobs report on the first Friday of the month, wire agencies such as Bloomberg and Reuters already have a prepared barrage of market-moving data points ready to go to their paying subscribers (and, on the nanosecond, to frontrunning HFT clients) together with a commentary wrapper that is prepared in the 30-60 minutes before the official data release, prepared by journalists who are in “lockup” in a given government data room, which is meant to prevent them from leaking the data to other, more interested (and better funded) parties.
This is shown schematically in the image below.
However, starting as soon as this week, the “lockup” may now be history, as well as those flashing red jobs headlines that set the market mood for the day, and often, the rest of the month (assuming, of course, that eventually fundamentals will matter again), because in what Bloomberg dubbed the “biggest change to economic data releases in decades“, the Trump administration plans to limit the news media’s ability to prepare advance stories on market-moving economic data, such as the monthly jobs report, “in a move that could create a logjam in accessing figures such as the monthly jobs report.”
Needless to say, Bloomberg – along with Reuters, and countless other wire services, who sell lockup data to extremely generous HFT clients for a lot of money – are not happy.
As noted above, currently the Labor Department hosts “lockups” for major reports lasting 30 to 60 minutes, where journalists receive the data in a secure room, write stories on computers disconnected from the internet, and transmit them when connections are restored at the release time.
However, for reasons not fully clear, the department under pressure from the administration, is looking at changes such as removal of computers from that room, and an announcement could come as soon as this week, said Bloomerg sources.
That, as Bloomberg which would be directly and very adversely affected notes, “could hinder the media’s ability to provide headlines, comprehensive stories and tables at the exact release time.”
That’s one interpretation, another is that it will further democratize information, allowing, or rather forcing, everyone to come up with their own fast take of the data, and even open up the field to new competitors who currently don’t have access to the lockup.
Indeed, as one FX strategist noted, “Quant strategies focusing on reading headlines will need a rethink. Will lead to huge info asymmetry post data releases. Although may boost role of market economists who need to digest raw data as quickly as possible.“
This is big for markets. Quant strategies focusing on reading headlines will need a rethink. Will lead to huge info asymmetry post data releases. Although may boost role of market economists who need to digest raw data as quickly as possible. Watching closely 👀 #GameChangerpic.twitter.com/y0vPeLYGcP
Did we mention that Bloomberg isn’t happy? As the news organization belonging to the Demcoratic presidential candidate notes, “the move would upend decades of practice, and media organizations including Bloomberg News and Reuters have challenged prior changes to procedures. The shift could also spur an arms race among high-speed traders to get the numbers first and profit off the data, raising questions about fairness in multitrillion-dollar financial markets.”
Thank you for the spin Bloomberg, but the arms race between HFTs has been going on for a decade, and it is companies like Bloomberg that not only enabled it but profited generously from it. In fact, a contract that shoots over the data with zero latency is said to cost millions of dollars, something which Bloomberg will not be too happy to see flee to those who are faster and more accurate at reading the data in real time.
There is another fringe benefit such an action would deliver: the US government would finally have to enter the 21st century with modernized websites:
Without news services transmitting their reports at the release time and allowing additional access points, the government may have to prepare its websites to handle potentially heavier loads under the new system, which could mean adding security measures or increasing the traffic capacity.
To be sure, this is not the first time the government tried to overhaul the lockup structure: in 2012, Obama’s Labor Department sought to alter lockups to require journalists to use government-owned computers to write their stories. Officials at the time framed the change as addressing security risks.
After protests from Bloomberg News and other news organizations, and a congressional hearing in which editors testified, the department agreed to allow the media to continue using their own equipment and data lines. Reporters are required to leave mobile phones and other electronic devices in lockers outside of the lockup room, along with personal effects such as umbrellas and purses.
On the other hand, it’s not like this move would be unprecedented: the Labor Department move would follow a similar decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2018 to scale back lockups covering farm products, particularly the closely-watched monthly crop forecasts that typically move markets in soybeans, corn and wheat.
Finally, the big question remains: why is Trump doing this? One potential explanation is that Trump is seeking to hit his political challenger, Mike Bloomberg, where it hurts: As we noted earlier, if the BLS removes lockups, “billions in HFT data feed fees to wire services like Reuters and Bloomberg go up in smoke.” Leading to the logical question: “Is this Trump targeting Bloomberg terminal?”, which for decades has been Mike Bloomberg’s golden goose, spewing billions in annual subscription fees, allowing him to spend a similar amount to remove Trump at any cost…
If BLS removes lockups, billions in HFT data feed fees to wire services like Reuters and Bloomberg go up on smoke.
After 5 straight down days, oil managed modest gains today with WTI bouncing off $58.00 on the heels of some optimism surrounding the imminent signing of the trade deal.
“The broader energy market is likely falling back into its familiar range with WTI trading between $52 and $63” a barrel, analysts at Sevens Report Research wrote in their latest newsletter.
Fundamentals are largely bearish due to oversupply concerns, especially given the huge build in stockpiles reported in the refined products last week, so all eyes will be on tonight’s API data (barring any geopolitical headlines)…
API
Crude +1.1mm (-1.1mm exp)
Cushing -69k (-1.0mm exp)
Gasoline +3.2mm (+3.4mm exp)
Distillates +6.78mm (+1.1mm exp)
After the prior week’s surprise build, analysts expected a small draw in crude (but continued builds in products). However, crude saw a build and products saw significant builds…
Source: Bloomberg
WTI hovered around $58.40 ahead of the data, and dropped modestly on the surprise build…
“Unfortunately for the bulls, the fundamental outlook over the first half of this year is not overly constructive. The market is set to see a sizable surplus, which should mean weakness for both the flat price and time spreads,” said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING, in a note.
