Why I Love To Blog -- Reason #5 -- January 17, 2018

Is the rig count still relevant? -- from oilprice.com. I won't post any excerpt, the question says it all. And the writer says that rig count is just one of many data points, and a very minor one at that, in trying to predict US production.

I've been saying that for years. I don't know when I first posted that observations but it was at least as far back as 2013: some thoughts about the "rig count" in North Dakota.

The market: While we are at it, just the other day I posted sixteen reasons for the surge in the stock market, listing "easy money" as the #1 reason. Today, in The Wall Street Journal, stocks are headed for a fall:

Year after year, the stock market has roared ahead, driven by the Federal Reserve’s excessively easy monetary policy. The result is a fragile financial situation—and potentially a steep drop somewhere up ahead.

To deal with the Great Recession, the Fed cut interest rates to a historic low. The short-term federal-funds rate hit 0.15% in January 2009 and stayed there until the end of 2015. In a strategy aimed at reducing long-term rates, the Fed under then-Chairman Ben Bernanke promised to keep short-term rates close to zero until the economy fully recovered. The Fed also began buying long-term bonds and mortgage-backed securities, more than quintupling its balance sheet from nearly $900 billion in 2008 to $4.4 trillion now.

I'm lovin' it. Too bad The WSJ doesn't include music videos on-line. LOL.