Energy Market Updates

Crude jumped on today’s inventory report after jumping up on the overnights last night as well. Post close yesterday, the API numbers were indicating significant draws and the EIA release backed that projection up.
The EIA report this morning indicated that Crude inventories dropped by 14.5 million barrels for last week, which is the biggest drop we’ve seen this millennium (since 1999).
Analysts are partly blaming the effects of Hermine on the Gulf Coast delaying production and explaining the draw down in stocks.  
Gasoline stocks also dropped, by 4.5 million barrels, and also unexpectedly.
Today closed out up across the board, with diesel up .0557 to $1.4822, Gas up .0701 to $1.4165 and Crude closing out at $47.62. (significantly up from yesterday’s Crude settle of $45.50)
An interesting aside on gasoline’s jump today was that the lowest Labor Day retail gasoline prices in 12 years were seen this past weekend, and if you jump online there are literally dozens of articles projecting that the post summer driving season price levels for gasoline will drop below $2 per gallon. It’s more likely than not that these articles are correct versus today’s inventory and price rebound. Nothing has changed fundamentally with either Crude or gasoline in terms of long term supply and demand outlooks (despite some new rumblings about Russia and Saudi Arabia, as usual).

August has been all over the place. Crude futures this month were up 23% in less than 3 weeks as of the 28^th. We've bounced from an August 10^th low of $41.71 to an August 19^th a high of $48.52 -  and today we’re in the middle at $46.35.

After a strong start to the month of July post Brexit, markets settled down again today after closing out August's futures yesterday. 

Yesterday traders across the globe were all but certain that Britain would never vote to leave the EU. As a result we saw confidence in the markets, including oil.

Crude closed out at $51.23 this afternoon, the highest it’s been since July 2015, up from yesterday and holding firm over the $50 benchmark.  

Before todays across the board tumble, the markets had been rather stable this week, comparatively speaking, even in the wake of several major relevant news events and economic reports. Let's start it from the top: 

In a suprise move today, the oil minister of Iran stated that Iran would support the effort by OPEC and non-OPEC countries to stabilize the oil market and oil prices. The now-confirmed rumor that the Saudis and Russians were amenable to agreeing on a production ceiling has been circulating for a while, and served to briefly prop prices Tuesday - but the lack of a solid agreement, and the assumption that Iran would not cooperate had backed prices off their intraday highs. 

Another wild week!

Today saw a swift and decisive reversal of last week's out-of-nowhere rally on Crude, Commodities, and Stocks. Not too surprising, given there were really no changes in fundamentals that justified a rally of the magnitude we saw, outside of the ever present fear of supply disruptions whenever the East Coast faces major snowfall, and the market being technically oversold. 

Overnight and early trading on Crude was up - bolstered by the performance of the Chinese Markets (they went up instead of crashing hard enough to trigger the circuit breaker this time). US Stocks, bonds and equities all climbed along, and it looked like today was poised for a rally, or at least the proverbial "dead cat bounce"