A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading today on the Web
An oil spill form the Keystone pipeline led to the announcement that flows will fall 85 per cent in November, and West Texas Intermediate crude is climbing as a result,
'Keystone, which carries 590,000 barrels per day of crude from Alberta's oil sands to markets in the United States, was shut last week after a 5,000-barrel spill in South Dakota … A report from the American Petroleum Institute (API) showed a big drop in U.S. crude stocks, ahead of Wednesday's official inventory data. 'There is a shortage of crude oil into the United States. Hence the rally in the prices,' PVM Oil Associates strategist Tamas Varga said."
"U.S. crude extends rally to $58, first time since 2015" – Reuters
"China's Energy Gorilla Will Eat Less and Do More" – Businessweek
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J.P. Morgan is predicting a difficult 2018 for investors in commodity-related assets despite strengthening global economic growth,
"To make money, traders will need to pick assets, such as agriculture, and play short-term trends to take advantage of price swings, rather than buying and holding a broad basket of commodities, wrote [JP Morgan] analysts including John Normand in the bank's outlook for 2018 … JPMorgan recommends going long on aluminum. Copper and nickel supply will increase next year, leading to lower prices. Copper will average $5,700 a metric down in the fourth quarter of 2018, compared with a current price of $6,900."
Like Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan expects balanced energy markets next year.
"Commodities Facing Another Tough Year in 2018, JPMorgan Says" – Bloomberg
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I'm currently working on a "Most Important Chart of 2018" column focusing on the withdrawal of global central bank monetary stimulus. Bloomberg's story estimating that Tesla Inc., unencumbered by profitability, is burning through $500,000 (U.S.) of borrowed funds every hour fits with the central bank-led finance bubble theme. So, to some extent, does the U.S. shale oil boom and we're all aware of the effects of low borrowing costs on Canadian housing markets,
"Tesla's Burning Through Nearly Half a Million Dollars Every Hour" – Bloomberg
"Your Junk-Bond Worries Are All Wrong" – Bloomberg
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Car sharing service Uber is in a lot of trouble for allegedly hiding a major security breach in 2016 that allowed hackers to acquire employee and customer data. This is another example of the importance of cybersecurity, but while Palo Alto Networks reported better than expected profit results Tuesday, the cybersecurity sector has yet to generate big returns,
"Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People" – Bloomberg
"The Sorry State of Cybersecurity" – Institutional Investor
"Palo Alto Networks Q1 non-gaap earnings per share $0.74" – Reuters
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Tweet of the Day: "@bluff_capital $AMT $CCI "Wireless network infrastructure market to reach $56B by 2020, analyst predicts" fiercewireless.com/wireless/wirel… " – Twitter
Diversion: How George Soros broke the Bank of England and why China could be next. I'm not really buying this as a possibility, but it's a good discussion,
"China's Mundell-Fleming Trilemma " – Macro Ops
Scott Barlow