Tag: Yahoo Finance

OPEC+ Agrees to Extend Output Cuts as Cheats Offer Penance

(Bloomberg) -- OPEC+ agreed to a one-month extension of its record output cuts and adopted more stringent methods to ensure members don’t break their production pledges.The deal is a victory for Saudi Arabia and Russia, who spent a week cajoling Iraq, Nigeria and other laggards to fulfill their obligations. It’s a particular vindication for the kingdom’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who has consistently pushed fellow members to stop cheating on their quotas since his appointment last year.With the cartel’s video conference now under way, delegates said all nations have agreed to the new deal. The group will maintain its production cut of 9.7 million barrels a day to the end of July, instead of easing it to 7.7 million after this month as planned.In addition, the meeting’s draft communique states that any member that doesn’t implement 100% of its production cuts in May and June will make extra reductions...

El-Erian: Here's a 'nightmare scenario' for the U.S. economy

The big risk with the latest jobs report is if it turns out to be a “head fake” says Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz. “That’s the nightmare scenario,” El-Erian told Yahoo Finance after the US unexpectedly added 2.5 million jobs last month states started re-opening their economies and easing COVID-19 shelter in place measures. “The big risk is...that this is a head fake, a major head fake that we are picking up the impact of both data distortions and policy distortions,” said El-Erian....

OPEC+ Tries Novel Strategy to Turn Oil Price Curve Upside Down

(Bloomberg) -- On the surface, it’s the old OPEC strategy of production cuts. When the cartel and its allies meet on Saturday, they are set to extend their output curbs for an extra month into July in an effort to consolidate the price recovery.But a closer look shows subtle changes that point to Saudi Arabia, Russia and their OPEC+ allies adopting a more sophisticated approach: trying to flip the shape of the oil price curve upside down. In many respects, the cartel is borrowing from the playbooks of the world’s top central banks, where policy makers often focus on the interplay between long- and short-term interest rates.The alliance, which includes 23 of the world’s oil-rich nations, has traditionally targeted a reduction in inventories. But now it’s also actively focusing not just on stockpiles but also on the shape of the oil curve, designing policy to influence short-term prices relative to those...