Bitcoin traded at a record high, $66,974.77 on Wednesday.
Price of Bitcoin Reaches Record, WSJ Thursday
If in fact all the stock indexes have already hit their respective highs, this is a perfect headline to record the ending of the great bull stock market from 2009. Indeed, play money has reached a new peak as the first linked ETF begins trading. Even Tesla claims it is now profitable.
Last we opined that as crude oil is both an economic and a financial instrument, it could well reach triple digits again. It is down a couple of bucks today at $81.64. But the uptrend needs to be respected. It would not reverse until a weekly close under $78. Natural gas futures have soared closing yesterday at $5.17. Here in San Antonio CPS Energy plans to raise monthly bills 10% to pay for the high priced natural gas purchased last February as the lights literally went out in San Antonio. Several executives including the CEO have or will shortly resign their positions.
Team Biden’s approval rating is sinking as fast as crude and pump gasoline are rising. The latest poll numbers are in the high 30s, lower than the previous three Presidents t this first year in office. The solution has been, incredibly, to ask OPEC to increase output to lower the price of refined gasoline. Now why would OPEC do that? OPEC was created to stabilize or raise the price of gasoline. Strangely Team Biden has not reached out to the domestic energy industry. He has been throttling them with pipeline shutdowns, increased regulations, and fewer permits ever since taking office. The result has been $5.00 gasoline on both coasts and $3+ here in Texas. Once this sort of trend begins it is hard to reverse, especially the negative attitude about the President.
Europe has rushed to shut down coal-fired plants. Germany even closed its nuclear plants based on an incident in Japan in 2011. But that had to do with a coastline plant. Germany is land locked. France, on the other hand, derives 70% of its energy from nuclear power. Note, France is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity due to its low cost of generation. Surely Bernie and APC could like this French custom.
Vladimir Putin must be delighted. Half of the Russian economy is oil based. And now he is demanding more concessions from Europe to allow greater delivery of natural gas this winter. Europe lurched into solar and wind without keeping back up coal systems, now putting Vlad in charge of keeping the lights on.
I suspect the stock indexes have recorded their highs for the year. We are in a period of seasonal weakness with the bullish percentage of stocks much lower than last February. Caution is warranted.
