This week, the market remained about as relaxed as a bull on Redbull. A few drowsy comments from “Sleepy Joe” were enough to get everyone on edge as we hit the one-year mark since the October 7th Hamas attacks. But the real action came when investors started sweating over China, thanks to the NDRC. Turns out, unless people start swiping those credit cards like it’s Black Friday, all that monetary stimulus is about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane. Speaking of storms, the EIA data offered a bit of good news for the bulls. Crude stocks didn’t pile up as high as expected, and commercial oil stockpiles dropped faster than my motivation on a Monday—over 8mb gone, with gasoline inventories taking a 6.3mb plunge. Refiners were busy, cranking out 21.2mb/d of products, with 9.7 million of that being gasoline. It seems U.S. demand is chugging along, possibly boosted by some good old hurricane panic-buying.
