OptionEye - Macro Outlook - Dec. 23rd

[ShelladyOptions]

Good morning. 

Overnight corn unchanged, beans down 3 and wheat up 3. 

As things get quieter they also become more volatile. Today's action will be thin and hard to navigate. Be careful. 

Crude bouncing this morning up .81 cents to $56.07 as spending is being slashed in the US, but output is still going higher. OPEC has been clear since their Nov meeting: they will not be cutting production regardless of the price of oil. OPEC considers this a US shale problem and is waiting until American output starts to come offline. However, that isn’t going to be happening soon. CLR is the poster boy for US shale and the company provided a production/spending update Mon night – CLR now plans to spend $2.7B in ’15, nearly $2B below its prior guidance ($4.6B) and below its ’14 capex level ($4.55B). However, the co is still planning to hike output 16-20% in ’15 – that is down from the prior guidance (23-29%) but still a healthy upper-teens rate - Bloomberg.

Gold having the same hard time that oil is with a rally. Today it is up $2.14 to $1178.58. $1200 seems to be the comfortable level for the time being. 

The 10 year yield is at 2.16% telling us that inspite of the stock rally, things are not doing that well and rates need to stay low. 

Stocks again are higher after the 50th record close yesterday in the S & P yesterday. Are your personal finances at an all time high this year? I think not. More central bank engineering. 

The dollar is basically unchanged at 89.74 down .02. 

Economically speaking we get Durable Goods today as well as 3rd Q. GDP. We also will get a read on Personal Consumption and New Home Sales which will give us further insight into this central bank sponsored recovery.