Oil: WTI At $101.10 -- March 1, 2022

Updates

Later, 11:13 a.m. CT: that "US truck convoy" headed to Washington, DC? 

I have not followed the story; I do not know the status, but wow, talk about ill-timed? Exactly what are they protesting? High oil prices? As if a truck convoy to DC will have any effect? Inflation? Ditto. Covid mandates? Covid? It's over. The mandates are done.

Later, 11:08 a.m. CT: holy mackerel -- if we had only known that killing Keystone XL, the Mountain Valley, the Trans Mountain; vacating leases; banning fracking; slow-rolling the leasing process -- if we had only known this would have all led to higher oil prices if there was some major geopolitical event that might affect strategic energy security -- if we had only known -- look at this. This was not on my bingo card today:

• Oil:
• WTI: up $10.50/bbl; trading at $106.22.
• Brent: up $9.20 / bbl; trading at $107.17; it also had been trading slightly higher.
• the Brent-WTI spread continues to narrow
• the surge in prices came after countries agreed to release 60 million bbls of oil from their strategic reserves over the next 30 days;
• we've discussed this before; the computer algorithms interpret a release of SPR oil differently that "humans" do. And that's the problem.
• maybe I will watch the SOTU address tonight. Nope. Just kidding.
  

Later, 9:29 a.m. CT:

• Oil:
• WTI: up almost $7/bbl; trading at $102.63
• Brent: up $6.80 / bbl; trading at $104.77
  

• Equity market:
  

• HES: up 1.50 cents; trading at $102.50; hit a 52-week high;
• EOG: up $1.36; trading at $116; trading at 52-week high;
• CVX: up 3.26%; up $4.64; trading at $148; trading at 52-week high.
  

Original Post

Oil:

• WTI: up almost 6%; up $5.38; trading at $101.10
• Brent: up almost 6$; up $5.91; trading at $103.38
• spread: narrowing, back to $2.28

Equity market:

• HES: up 86 cents; trading at $102; hit a 52-week high;
• EOG: up $2.06; trading at $117; trading at 52-week high;
• CVX: up 3.85%; up $5.55; trading at $150; trading at 52-week high.

Winners and losers: one week into the Ukraine invasion, another blogger provided a list of winners and losers. I added a few of my own winners and losers. 

I suggested that one winner was cryptocurrency. And now this story from Yahoo!Finance: bitcoin demand explodes as Russian ruble collapses to less than one cent. 

There are obviously several story lines here but can you imagine! The ruble collapses to less than one US penny. See chart here.

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The Book Page

How the beat generation created the uniform for disaffect youth, Sophie Wilson, March 1, 2022.

Link here.

The essay begins:

William Burroughs once said that On the Road “sold a trillion Levi’s.” The iconic denim brand is just one of the fashion companies to benefit from the disaffected, worn-out look popularized by the Beat Generation. The group of writers—including Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso—were staunch anti-capitalists who railed against American materialism, but that didn’t stop them from setting the tone for style in the 20th century.

Blue jeans, white t-shirts, workwear jackets and battered canvas holdalls were practical essentials for a life on the road, and they soon came to define the uniform for a generation of post-war youth disenchanted with traditional values. Along with counterculture icons like James Dean and Bob Dylan, the Beat writers spearheaded a look that became associated with alienation and rebellion. The movement—a reaction to mid-century, mainstream American society, which valued conformity and consumerism above individuality and freedom of expression—expressed their anti-establishment values through the way they dressed.

In the 1940s and 50s, casual wear was certainly more acceptable than it had been in the past, but men in America were still generally expected to wear suits at work and most social events. In contrast, the Beats’ sartorial vocabulary was rooted in dressed-down functionality. Many of the Beat writers were very poor—Kerouac grew up in a working-class immigrant family in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts—so this functional style was often born from necessity rather than it being a conscious fashion choice. Their wardrobes also featured purposeful nods to bookish academia and the modern jazz artists who sound-tracked the movement, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. The thrown-together style they championed continues to echo through college hallways today.

The women of the Beat Generation are often undercredited, but writers like Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, and Hettie Jones also pioneered the counterculture wardrobe. Their look was the antithesis to Christian Dior’s New Look, which reintroduced opulence and ultra-femininity to womenswear in the post-war period. Cinched waists and full skirts reigned supreme, setting the tone for women’s fashion throughout the 1950s. But, for Beat women, black jeans, capri pants, and pencil skirts, paired with silk shirts and oversized sweaters, defied the popular hourglass fashions of the 1940s and 50s.