A lot of action on the earnings losses and economic announcements front. So, let’s start. Initial jobless claims came at 512k vs. 523k consensus and 530k the week before. Finally some improvement, but still at some 170k job losses a month.

Markets, off-course, cheered the data. All major indexes ended with nice gains of a 2% and more. We will see if the positive action continues after the tomorrows unemployment figures. Could be, consensus on non-farm payrolls is pretty low at 175k job loses, I think we could manage to beet that.

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I will today start with U.S. petroleum weekly which I will prepare every week based on the the new EIA data.

Most widely followed category – crude oil stocks came yesterday at -4 million barrels vs. consensus of 0.8 million barrels increase. A surprising figure on upon first impression, one warranting crude oil price increase, but if we review the the data in detail we will find that the fundamentals of petroleum supply and demand have not changed and the oil price rise is not supported by supply and demand fundamentals.

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