There was little change in the financial markets last week. Equity markets ended the year near their highs, long rates continued their very slow rise and the euro strengthened slightly against the dollar. So despite the uncertainty and risks surrounding the Omicron variant, it seems that optimism continues to prevail. Very few economic indicators were…
Crude time spreads gave a boost to the crude complex, by hiking to 25 cents backwardation at the prompt, while front-month ICE Brent crude reached 76 $/b amid thin liquidity and a growing list of crude production outages in OPEC countries. Interestingly, Dubai crude swaps remained highly bid when ICE Brent markets were close to contango…
The European power spot prices continued to drop yesterday on retreating gas and carbon prices and forecasts of fading power demand and soaring wind production. The day-ahead prices averaged 270.38€/MWh in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, -86.75€/MWh day-on-day, and -68.58€/MWh week-on-week. After a slight rebound at the market open, the carbon quickly reversed and…
European gas prices dropped significantly yesterday, pressured by milder weather, higher LNG supply and profit taking. Prices have even ignored the drop in Russian supply to 236 mm cm/day on average (compared to 251 mm cm/day on Wednesday) due the drop in flows via Ukraine, while flows via Poland into Mallnow remained at 0. On…
Just after I sent the News yesterday (The year 2021 in 10 charts…), I was already regretting not highlighting the new performance of the equity market, especially in the US. The S&P 500 hit a new record yesterday and may end the year with a 30% gain. Its outperformance of the global index is the strongest…
