📊 Cautious Investor Market Weekly #22
The $8 Trillion Cash Mountain and the Rising Cost of Risk
🏦 US & European sovereign debt stress
💵 $8T in cash — No rate cuts, no cash cuts
⚡ Oil, Ukraine & the inflation shock
🤖 AI's growing financing burden
🌏 The evolving global carry trade
13 @KnovaWave charts covering bonds, FX, energy, gold & semiconductors.
Markets don't lack money. They face increasingly expensive competition for it.
https://t.co/rwPXsIL2jq #Markets #Bonds #Macro #Oil #AI
JUST IN: Apple deactivates iPhones stolen during the riots in France, displaying warnings that the devices are being tracked & authorities will be alerted.
Government websites go dark as software flaw sparks security scramble
Dutch and Finnish government agencies take websites offline amid reports of hackers exploiting weaknesses
European, Australian, British and Dutch cyber agencies urge users to update or take sites down
Dutch cyber agency itself says it has gone offline as a precaution https://t.co/o1N0vb7ZNj
French President Emmanuel Macron said recent riots are being used abroad for political purposes, accusing foreign leaders of disliking France https://t.co/AQGpN7D2Eo
Of course, it has helped that the US Gulf of Mexico hasn't been hit by major hurricanes, reducing down time too. El Nino weather phenomenon is helping a lot to keep refining runs much higher than in a normal hurricane season (Jun to Nov).
CHART OF THE DAY: The US refining industry is running the hardest **for this time of the year** in at least 25 years (ever?). October is when typically many plants go into seasonal maintenance, but that has been delayed due to eye-watering margins and the pressure from Trump.
More importantly, physical shipments to other destinations are already occurring.
Russian diesel loadings, Oct. 11–20 1.56m bbl
2026 average exports 345,000 b/d
Year-on-year change −41%
Reuters/Kpler data, October 20. Cargoes have resumed toward Turkey, Brazil and Morocco.
- Critical constraint remains refinery output. Analysts estimate 400–850kb/d of additional diesel would be needed to materially relieve the shortage, considerably more than the initial Russian commitments provide.
Direct Russian diesel to U.S. shipments now scheduled
#Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Novak announced today a tanker carrying 40,000 metric tons of diesel is scheduled to depart for the United States on Thursday, October 22.
The shipment is planned, not yet verified as loaded or delivered.
U.S. envoy Witkoff also met Putin in St Petersburg, with both sides publicly discussing energy cooperation via
Reuters #OOTT
State-controlled Saudi Aramco facilities at Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast, and at the 1mn b/d Shaybah oil field in the southeast are undamaged, a source said, after the Yemen-based Houthi militant group said they were hit by missile and drone strikes on Monday.
The Houthis said on Monday its attacks on Yanbu and Shaybah caused fires at both sites, a claim that moved the price of front-month Ice Brent crude futures above $110/bl for the first time since mid-May. The source said the claim was untrue, and that the facilities are intact.
#oott https://t.co/ujTTxBQF9G
Crude Imports — the geographic composition is changing
A few figures stand out.
Origin Imports Weekly change
#Canada 3.902 mbpd+151 kbpd
#Venezuela 0.571 mbpd+116 kbpd
#SaudiArabia 0.176 mbpd−92 kbpd
Guyana 0.080 mbpd−234 kbpd
Iraq 0 Unchanged
Canada remains the dominant supplier, while Venezuelan imports have increased noticeably.
Saudi deliveries remain very low, although individual weekly shipment timing is volatile. #OOTT