On Thursday, February 18, the bad weather in North America continues to be of central importance to the financial markets. Texas is still experiencing power outages and the state’s oil refineries remain offline due to the cold and the snow. Reportedly, the lone star state is responsible for close to 40% of all oil production in the United States.
Despite the squeeze on oil that the current situation is causing, today the price of the black gold is retreating from the maximums it reached yesterday. The Brent crude dropped to $64.66, while the WTI is trading near $61.45 as of the composition of this article.
Another interesting development today is a hearing at the US House of Representatives, where the Financial Services Committee will meet with several parties involved in the recent short squeeze affair surrounding GameStop, AMC, and a few other companies. The committee will question hedge fund managers, the Robinhood broker, and even Reddit over the events that gripped the market a few weeks ago. There are suspicions of market manipulation involved.
As for the US stock markets, today indices will be taking a breather from a recent rally. We expect all major stock indices to be moderately lower today due to a pause in the massive risk-on reflation traders that have dominated the week so far.
Facebook will be one tech giant today whose stock is worth keeping an eye on. A new law in Australia regarding paying royalties to the owners of content shared online led to a quick action by Facebook, which decided to ban the sharing of news down under rather than start paying the original news sources.
Typical for this time of the week, we have jobless claims data coming out of the United States today, as well as building permits and housing starts. In addition, the ECB will be publishing the details from its most recent policy meeting today.
