The big news of the week: on Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a rate increase of +0.75% (75 bp) to 1.75%. This was hinted at on Monday, and as per the Fed press conference at 14:30 Eastern on Wednesday, the rate increase was blamed on last week’s surprisingly hot CPI print (0.97% m/m, 11.64% annualized). It turns out, this week’s producer price index (PPIACO) looked 3 times worse (+3.03% m/m, which is 36.36% annualized). Powell told us in the press conference that another large rate increase might occur if the CPI came in with another hot reading next month.
Immediate effects: 30-year mortgage rates jumped by 50 basis points (bp) to 5.78%. We haven’t seen mortgage rates this high since 2008. I’m guessing the housing market will take a bit of a tumble in the next few months.
Crude fell 3 days out of 5, losing -9.72 [-8.20%], with most of the losses happening on Friday. You can see the crude OI (blue line) is at a multi-year low, which tells me that the banksters don’t want to take any large positions in crude.The banksters used to be ok with the “shorting the rallies” game (OI tops matched with price tops), but that trading game stopped in February.
The weekly candle print was a swing high/bearish reversal (64%), which is fairly bearish. Crude appears to be headed lower.
Natural gas was hit very hard, plunging an astonishing -1.78 [-20.32%], dropping to a 2-month low. Natgas also printed a weekly bearish reversal pattern (70%). Most of the week’s losses came on Tuesday; a fire in an LNG facility took out 2% of US natgas demand. (Note: LNG = natgas-for-export, so, a fire in a US LNG facility = more natgas for U.S. Plebes, and less for EU Plebes). The LNG facility fire actually happened last week, but the company reported on Tuesday that the plant restart would take until “late 2022.” Note: the instrument “NG” = futures for U.S. natgas. This week’s plunge is good news for US natgas buyers, and if it persists, should help U.S.
by cmartenson 
