Just In Time For Christmas -- December 6, 2017

Folks may have noticed that crude oil has started to go on sale. The explanation is down below. 

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LEGO

From a post on September 27, 2017:

The Lego NASA Apollo Saturn V remains "temporarily out of stock." This is the longest period of time I have ever seen a Lego product "temporarily out of stock."

We've talked about this before. 

The much-in-demand set is now available. It became available overnight. I believe this set has been unavailable ever since it was launched. Sales were limited to two sets/person and Lego could never keep up with demand. It was quite a story. It will be interesting to see how long the set remains available.

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Back To The Bakken

Active rigs:

$56.86↓↓	12/6/2017	12/06/2016	12/06/2015	12/06/2014	12/06/2013
Active Rigs	53	38	64	188	193

RBN Energy: the coming surge in US superlight crude and condensate production.

Back in 2015, U.S. production of superlight crude oil and condensate had been on the rise for five years, driven primarily by boom times in the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas. Condensate was selling for several bucks-a-barrel less than light-crude benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the U.S. government had recently approved the export of minimally processed condensate, and new condensate splitters were being built to allow refineries to use more high-API-gravity liquids.

Fast forward to now, though, and production of superlight crude and conde is off by one-third ­­— the lighter the material, the steeper the decline — a barrel of conde is selling for several dollars more than WTI and a lot of those new splitters are running at far less than full capacity. As for exports of neat conde, they’ve dropped to almost zero, and whatever superlight crude and conde that is being exported goes out as part of blended crude. But things could be about to change again, possibly in a big way. Today, we begin a new blog series on the chaotic U.S. conde and superlight crude market.

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Back To Re-Balancing

From Oilprice.com, oil prices fall after API reports huge build in gasoline inventories. Data points from the API (not EIA, which reports later today):

• US crude oil inventories: down 5.481 million bbls (forecast: a drawdown of 3.507 million bbls)
• a surprise and massive build of 9.196 million bbls (forecast: a much smaller build of 1.145 million bbls)

So, crude oil prices rose for reasons other than US crude oil inventories. We will have more data when the EIA numbers come out and when John Kemp reports on them.

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US Economy

Heard on the radio; will update / link when I find the link:

• good jobs report: ADP reports that jobs increased by 190,0000
• productivity increased by 3% during the most recent reporting period

I've long forgotten the "magic numbers" -- let's look them up:

Economists estimate the labor market needs to create about 125,000 jobs a month to keep the unemployment rate steady, though estimates vary -- Reuters.

So, 190,000 jobs is another incredible number, coming, again, during President Trump's first year in office. And it looks like he will server at least one full year as president.

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The Market

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. It's my hobby. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

The market is in "holy free-fall" according to some pundit(s). This is the time for one to have one's equity portfolio managed by professionals. These guys and gals are gong to do very, very well. Locking in huge profits; the computer algorithms will drive the market lower; the pendulum will swing too far to the left (or right, depending on which way you are facing the pendulum) and then these same guys and gals will back up their proverbial Ford F-350's to load up on equities that are way undervalued.

This is the kind of market traders lover. The numbers look huge; the percentages are not. Five hundred / 24,000 = 2%.

Most mom-and-pop investors will simply do what Mr Buffett says he does: sticks to his knitting.