Russia, OPEC and a Weaker Dollar - Oh my!

Line charts depicting the stock market scattered on a table

The markets are up across the board today, from stocks to Crude oil. 

ULSD was up +.0284 to 1.5483, and RBOB shot up +.0439 to 1.3853, front month, at the close. WTI Crude was up almost 2% to close at 46.26/bbl. 

What happened?

Reportedly, Russia is open to talks with OPEC and other oil producing nations to discuss pricing and global supply. Although no actual meeting has been proposed, traders were still optimistic, and both WTI and Crude jumped up on the news. (Prices were also bolstered by a perceived weakening dollar – more on that in a moment.)

Additionally, apparently Russia and the Saudi’s have a meeting scheduled this month to discuss energy projects, and one can probably assume this will include how they will approach the OPEC meeting, if there ends up being one.

On Wall Street, disappointing job numbers from last week, coupled with a statement from the Boston Fed Chair that growth would have to be hitting 2% target rates to justify an interest rate increase resulted in a semi consensus that the odds the interest rate goes up in October is around 10%. As a result, stocks were up….but for how long?

While the Fed delay was good for Wall Street today, it’s not really a good sign bigger picture, both for Wall Street and the US in general. We saw one effect of that today, where the jump in commodity pricing can be somewhat pegged on the dollar starting to weaken on soft economic data and the implication that the US economy is not strengthening on its anticipated trajectory, as implied by the Fed delays.

Something of note internationally, that could have broad impacts on the markets, is that tensions between the US and Russia are approaching Cold War levels as Russia continues air strikes in Syria. The strikes, ostensibly part of a multifaceted attack on ISIS in Syria have apparently actually been hitting anti-Assad rebels, who are at least nominally supported by the US. To add another splash of gasoline to the fire, this weekend a Doctors without Borders hospital was bombed in Afghanistan, and it appears a US aircraft may have been involved, which could obviously have devastating international consequences, both geopolitically and otherwise.

Stay tuned!

 

 

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