June 9, 2016 -- No Sign Of Rising Layoffs Even As Companies Cut Back On Hiring

It's Thursday, so it's the jobs data we'll start with, as usual. I'm off to a later start than usual due to driving granddaughters to computer coding camp at UT-Dallas. Traffic was horrendous coming out of Grapevine but after that it was clear sailing, but the trip was about 25 minutes longer than usual.

Of course, after the past few reports, things got so bad, I assume the spinmeisters worked overtime to a) get a better number; and, b) find a way to spin it to make whatever the number is look better than it really is. So, here we go. From MarketWatch: jobless claims drop 4,000 to 264,000. At 264,000, this is the lowest level in six weeks, "showing that layoffs remain low despite a nationwide slowdown in hiring."

You know, that pretty much makes sense when you think about it. Analysts had forecast new claims to hit 270,000. The 4-week average dropped 7,500 to a seasonally adjusted 269,500.

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Energy Data

Thursday is also the day we start seeing energy data for the week. I'm most interested in gasoline demand, of course, and we will see that later.

French strikes are still affecting refineries in that country, and now Belgium's labor unions call for a nationwide strike on June 24th. Doesn't this happen every summer somewhere in the EU?

Japan buys Alaskan crude oil for first time since 2000. Platts has the interesting story:

JX Nippon Oil & Energy received an Alaskan North Slope cargo earlier this month, Japan's first ANS crude imports since May 2000 and surprising markets at a time when arbitrage economics are heavily loaded in favor of Asian and Middle Eastern crudes.

JX took the cargo on a Suezmax tanker at its Kiire oil storage terminal in Kagoshima prefecture in Japan's southwest on Saturday. The size of the cargo was not known. The US-flagged Alaskan Legend, a 193,050 DWT Suezmax tanker, loaded ANS from Valdez, Alaska, on May 16, to be delivered on a CFR basis to the buyer.

Alaskan crude was exempted from the US' 1975 crude export ban in 1995.

Two EIA graphs spotted by John Kemp (and others) are also very, very interesting:

And this one: