Earnings 11/26

Earnings will continue to taper off this week with just sporadic reporting expected from a select group of both retail and tech names. Today’s economic data will start out extremely light with only regional data coming out of Chicago and Dallas on the manufacturing front.  Tomorrow will feature consumer confidence readings along with a string of Fed speakers which will be constant through Friday. Mid-week will usher in comments from Chairman Jerome Powell along with a glimpse into key preliminary GDP figures to assess how much the economy may have cooled down after a record pace. Thursday’s most important checkpoint will come from the releasing of the last Fed Meeting Minutes from earlier this month to better extrapolate how likely a hike will occur in December  or into early next year.  Attention will shift towards Buenos Aries at the tail end of the week as The G-20 summit commences with the United States and China squaring off to hopefully pave the way for some type of de-escalation of the ongoing trade war. 

Crude (/CL)

Crude (/CL) continues to take on heavy losses after Wednesday’s 4.9 million weekly barrel build stunned investors as supply quickly reaches over-capacity. Oil is currently trading a staggering 7% lower on the day, now likely securing 7 straight weeks of decline as global demand comes into question.  Natural Gas Futures (/NG) have slipped 1% this morning for a 4^th straight pullback following last week’s record rise. 

Crude Futures (/CL)

Crude Futures (/CL) dropped 6.6% to $53.43, after President Trump reiterated the strong ties between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.  Some felt that President Trump’s  comments were an attempt to keep Saudi Arabia from cutting oil production at the OPEC meeting in December.  Besides the comments, concerns over a global slowdown and oversupply have driven crude oil into a bear market.

shortened holiday week

With the shortened holiday week, most of the earnings reports will take place earlier in the week as the markets are closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving and have a shortened session on Friday.  The retail sector will take center stage with earnings from the likes of Best Buy (BBY), Kohl’s (KSS), Loews (LOW) and Target (TGT) will all release their results tomorrow.  As of this writing, U.S. crude oil futures (/CL) are 1% lower near $56 per barrel and S&P 500 futures (/ES) are 0.4% lower near 2731.

Brent crude

Their combined wagers against West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude soared for a seventh straight week, the longest global short-selling streak in data going back to 2011. The bearish bets jumped 14 percent in the week ended Nov. 13 and have tripled since the end of September, according to data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trade Commission and ICE Futures Europe on Friday.

With oil prices slipping into a bear market, OPEC has promised to do what it takes to cut output. Still, it’s unclear how far the cartel and its allies will go and it may take a reduction well beyond the 1 million barrels a day that’s been publicly discussed to restore faith, said Daniel Ghali,