COVID-19   Entering June, there are incremental signs of economic life amid the pandemic news. While we shall mention some historical numbers later (which look horrible), this section will mention some more recent high-frequency data.  To start, in response to improving demand for air travel, American Airlines is planning to…

The April OPEC+ Cuts Kicked In for a Phase 1 target of 9.7 million barrels per day (mbpd) for May and June 2020. Compliance was fairly good with one report at 74% of target reached.  On June 6th, OPEC+ agreed to extend the cuts for another month (July) and worked…

During the month of May, the top 3 performing sectors were: energies (29.55%), the S&P GSCI (16.37%) and metals (8.33%). The bottom 3 sectors were: interest rates (-0.04%), the Barclays CTA Index (0.04%) and grains (0.81%). The S&P 500 along with other financial indexes saw strong gains in May as…

Commodities: Global   The April OPEC+ Virtual Meeting had the usual high drama as Mexico almost scuttled the deal, but the US weighed in to offer up some of its production in lieu. Even a chastised Russia ponied up over 20% of its production to make the deal happen.  In…