The US inflation outlook was already steadily improving in recent months, but last week, right in the middle of the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting, the dam finally broke.

Monthly reports on consumer and producer prices published on the mornings of Dec. 12 and Dec. 13 indicated inflation over the last six months — as measured by the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — has likely returned to the central bank’s 2% target on an annualized basis.

(Continue Reading - Bloomberg)

British retailers reported a downturn in already weak sales this month as consumers feel the squeeze from high borrowing costs and inflation, and they are gloomier about the start of 2024, a Confederation of British Industry survey showed on Thursday.

The CBI's monthly retail sales balance, a gauge of sales over the year to December, dropped to -32 from -11 in November.

Expected sales for the next month also fell sharply to -41 - the weakest since a record low of -62 in March 2021 - from -6.

(Continue Reading - LSE)

The three most dangerous words in the oil market are “OPEC is dead.” The oil cartel’s obituary has been written many, many times — and always prematurely. The almost non-stop departure of member countries during the past decade – Indonesia in 2016, Qatar in 2019, Ecuador in 2020 — have provided ample opportunity to prepare eulogies, all of them a waste of words.1

So is the exit of Angola, announced on Thursday, anything but another blip for OPEC? At first glance, it’s irrelevant. But it has deeper implications for the bloc that go beyond what it means for global crude supplies. (Continue Reading - Bloomberg)