Weekly EIA Petroleum Report Unremarkable; 1Q24 GDP Estimate At 3.2 -- February 7, 2024

Locator: 46757B.

Weekly EIA petroleum report:

• US crude oil in inventory: 4% below five-year average;
• US crude oil imports running 6% less than same period last year;
• refiners remain at historic lows, 82..4%
• distillates decreased again and remain 7% below five-year average;
• jet fuel supplied: essentially flat compared to last year

GDP Now: link here. Dropped significantly from last estimate, from 4.2% last week to 3.4% today.

Gasoline demand: Economy is surging and gasoline demand is identical to one year ago, link here: 

*****************************
Economy "On Fire"

Liz Sonders today over at twitter.

• food inflation:

• retail sales:

JPM pivots / reverses today over at twitter. It should be noted that there was also a tweet that "JPM quants" noted a "plethora" of signs in the current market to the market during the dot-com bubble.

**********************
The Downfall of Trump

Tracked here.

This is the story that caught my attention today.

So much behind the headline. Huge fact seldom reported: when one loses a case with monetary penalty, in some (most? all?) jurisdictions the judgement must be put in escrow if the defendant appeals. And apparently in some (most? all?) jurisdictions the escrow comes with a huge interest attached that the plaintiff must also pay. In other words, an appeal if lost, will cost significantly more than the original judgement and that's without considering legal fees. And the penalty (dollars) must be real money in a bank account monitored by the judge.

Right or wrong, based on this article and comments by millionaire / billionaire political donors news networks, it sounds like GOP donors are not eager to support Trump. Once Trump replaces the RNC chairperson with his own pick, the contributions will likely fall, all things being equal, again based on public sources noted above. The Guardian has that story.

I consider this guy a pretty good straight-shooter. He noted this from a FT op-ed.