The Trouble with Oil

President Biden just announced that his administration will release 50 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to combat rising fuel prices. 🥊

The United States, India, China, Korea, and the United Kingdom have all coordinated to release crude supply to control surging global energy prices. As oil prices reach 7-year highs, the average for just 1 gallon of gas in the U.S. is $3.409 right now, +$2.11 YoY. Yikes. The White House issued an official statement:

“The President stands ready to take additional action, if needed, and is prepared to use his full authorities working in coordination with the rest of the world to maintain adequate supply as we exit the pandemic.”

After crude is released by policymakers, it takes about 13 days to reach the markets. Again Capital analyst John Kilduff commented “This is a well-timed move to try and lower oil prices. This added supply should help to bridge the production shortfall ahead of winter, especially if we get confirmation of meaningful supply, as well, from several of the major Asian consuming nations.” 📈 🛢️

Over the summer, Biden asked OPEC and its allies to raise oil output amidst soaring energy prices. As fuel demand rises post-pandemic, policymakers are supporting supply to keep prices low, especially amidst obvious inflationary pressures.

Dollar Tree is straight drippin’. 🥶 💎 $DLTR surged 9.17% into all-time highs after beating on the top and bottom lines in its Q3 earnings report. 

$DLTR | EPS: $0.96 (vs. $0.95 expected) | Revenue: $6.42 billion (vs. $6.41 billion expected) | Link to Report

Abercrombie & Fitch flopped 12.6% despite beating Wall Street’s expectations. 🤷 Revenue grew 10% YoY.

$ANF | EPS: $0.86 (vs. $0.68 expected) | Revenue: $905 million (vs. $894 million expected) | Link to Report

Gap, Inc gave up 1.8% today after lowering earnings and sales guidance due to supply chain troubles. $GPS is still up 18.6% YTD.

$GPS | EPS: $0.27 (vs. $0.49 expected) | Revenue: $3.9 billion (vs. $4.5 billion expected) | Link to Report

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s love for Dogecoin is no secret. Today, the Dogefather became protective over his favorite cryptocurrency and confronted Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, Binance’s CEO, with some tough questions. 

Musk got into a Twitter fight with CZ regarding issues about Dogecoin withdrawals on Binance. In a tweet, Musk asked Binance’s CEO “What’s going on with your Doge customers? Sounds shady.” 🤔

After a few minutes, Binance’s official Twitter issued a response: “The root cause is a technical issue during the recent upgrade process that caused old transactions to be resent to 1,674 users.” In other words, Binance claims nothing shady is going on. 

But Binance’s response didn’t satisfy Tesla’s CEO as Musk kept typing “Doge holders using Binance should be protected from errors that are not their mistake.” Musk cited a thread on Dogecoin Developers which explains that the issue started a year ago.

Binance’s CEO lost patience. He fired back at Musk, referring to Tesla’s October software glitch. Zhao tweeted: “Elon, we are pretty certain it is an issue with the latest #doge wallet. We are in communications with the devs. Apologies for any inconvenience that may have caused you.” Before ending his tweet, he took a dig at Musk, adding “What happened here?” alongside a link to Tesla’s software glitch that caused nearly 12,000 Tesla cars to be recalled over safety concerns. Shots fired.

This isn’t Musk and Zhao’s first spat. Zhao said earlier this year that he was surprised Elon was even an advocate of Dogecoin. 😅

The last two weeks have boasted a record for art sales — over $2.6 billion of artwork/collectibles was sold at major auction houses. Experts are citing fears over inflation and the ‘collectibles craze’ (think NFTs) as reasons for soaring sales.

Over the last two weeks, art sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Philips have raked in over $2.65 billion. According to Pi-eX, a data analytics firm specializing in art, this year’s art craze has even topped 2014’s record $2.59 billion worth of artwork sold. Bank of America’s head of specialty segments, Evan Beard, shared:

“Art market sentiment is sky high at the moment, driven by low interest rates, stock market wealth effect, inflationary monetary policy and new crypto wealth that needs to be parked somewhere.”

Crypto whales also made their presence in the art world known. 🤑 Justin Sun, a notable “whale,” bought the $78.4 million “Le Nez” sculpture from artist Alberto Giacometti; the crypto investor group ConstitutionDAO lost a bidding war to Citadel CEO Ken Griffin over an original copy of the U.S. Constitution. NFTs were all the rage, too — an “NFT-powered” sculpture by Beeple sold for $29 million. 💰