Month two of the grand OPEC (and friends) experiment of how long compliance can stay in place while Saudi Arabia attempts to get the oil market higher before its IPO late this year.  As the graphic to the right indicates, those countries that pledged to reduce production have met that…

Macro: Americas The Federal Reserve kept rates steady at its end-of-January meeting and gave no indication that one was offing in March. Yellen will run out of time soon if she wants to make it three increases this year, though we still hold onto our forecast of two.  Q4 GDP…

A new year and a month worth of lower oil output by OPEC and friends.  Did they really cut?  And by how much?  Per the early February chart to the right by Bloomberg, one can see that OPEC itself did a decent job of reaching the pledged cuts, with Saudi…

Americas The Federal Reserve raised rates at its December meeting and projected three increases for 2017.  Q3 GDP growth was good at +3.5% and Q4 GDP looks promising at +2.9% per the Atlanta branch of the Fed.  December unemployment is a low 4.7% and wages grew 4% annualized over the…