Stories Still Coming Fast And Furious -- January 15, 2015

Reuters is reporting: U.S. producer prices post biggest drop in more than three years. Your grocer is out there right now lowering the prices on all his/her products; beef and pork plummet; automobiles with huge discounts; airlines paying customers to fly; some airlines bringing peanuts back. For free.

[Note: except for that in bold, everything in that last paragraph was made up. I doubt any of it is true. Except for producer prices posting (great alliteration, huh?) drop in more than three years. Wanna guess why? Maybe I'll suggest something later on. Think: 800-lb gorilla. Think about the huge surge in unemployment claims reported this morning. Remember, 2015 was the year that the 800-lb gorilla moved back into your living room. From the linked article:

The Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand declined 0.3 percent, the biggest drop since October 2011, after falling 0.2 percent in November.

Fed officials largely view the energy-driven weakness in inflation as transitory. But with retail sales and average hourly earnings, another key inflation measure, falling in December, that could give pause to some policymakers.

U.S. producer prices in December recorded their biggest fall in more than three years on tumbling energy costs while underlying inflation pressures were muted, a cautionary note for the Federal Reserve as it ponders its next step on monetary policy.

Market Realist is reporting: Must-know: US leads global rig counts and oil growth.

According to Baker Hughes’ estimates, the US rig count currently exceeds the total number of rigs in the rest of the world combined. On average, there were 1,862 rigs active in the US in 2014—compared to 1,716 rigs combined for Africa, Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The Middle East is a distant second to the US. On average, it had 406 rigs for 2014.

From 2009 to 2014, the US continued to surpass the total international rigs combined by ~230 rigs, or 16%.

CNN Money is reporting Texas: America's boom-and-bust oil capital.

Survival of the fittest: While the oil meltdown is causing jitters in Texas, Danny Jimenez knows dramatic price moves also present opportunities.

"A drastic decline in commodity prices is going to result in winners and losers. The weak get weaker and the strong get stronger," said Jimenez, who is CEO of Craig Energy, a Denver-based oil services company.

Jimenez, who previously worked at Texas-based Halliburton and Schlumberger, said companies that are financially irresponsible and believed the good times were "going to last forever" will be in trouble.

"You have to stay within your means so you don't stretch yourselves too much," Jimenez said.