RSS feedDemand destruction
’The problems with fuel consumption data
John Kemp has an excellent column out Wednesday on the latest auto sales data, emphasising that buyers of US cars are increasingly shifting towards compact, fuel-efficient vehicles, and pointing to recent analyses arguing that $4 gas won’t reduce demand the way it did in 2008,
Underestimate the force of a supply shock, do not
David Bloom’s currency strategy team at HSBC looks at the issue of oil and foreign exchange rates on Monday, arriving at a clear-cut conclusion.
Determining which currency in which to park one’s money when oil prices are on the rise is dependent on one thing and one thing only — whether said price rises are the result of demand forces or of a supply shock.
Elasticity *alert* — or, at what point demand destruction?
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is out with a whopper of an oil note on Monday.
Amongst other things, it makes a number of bold predictions, least of all this:
Libya could well be the 8th largest supply shock since 1950
Which brings the team at BoAML,
Oil stat shock
The following story from the Guardian has caused quite a stir in the oil market on Tuesday morning:
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower
Pumping down the gas
It appears there’s nothing like a a financial crisis to change a nation’s attitude towards driving and gasoline expenditure.
Note, for example, the following chart from Harry Tchilinguirian at BNP Paribas on Monday:
RIP US driving season
The FT focuses on a very noteworthy trend highlighted in Wednesday’s IEA report — the disappearance of US driving season for a second year.
As the IEA explained in its August oil market report (emphasis FT Alphaville’s):