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Good morning. Everywhere you want to be. And it was right where we wanted it to be yesterday posting earnings that crushed estimates. I’m talking about Visa which climbed 10.2% yesterday on its earnings announcement and then adding icing to the cake stating it was buying $5 billion of its stock back. The stock, which is one of the Dow’s 30 stocks, pushed the benchmark index up a big 221 points, 1.3%, and again over 17,000 to 17,195. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were pulled along but the increases were not of the magnitude of the Dow’s with the former gaining 12 points, 0.6%, to 1,995 and the latter up 17, 0.4%, to 4,445. Note the S&P is real close to once again breaking through the 2,000 barrier.

Helping U.S. equities were some economic reports the first of which was that GDP grew in the 3rd quarter 3.5% which was well about expectations of 2.9% to 3.1%. Yesterday being Thursday was also the day the Labor Department releases its weekly new jobless claims stating there were 287,000 claims last week which although up a tad from last week is still a very good number. Let’s remember that back in the Spring of ’09 when the recession was ending jobless claims were regularly above 600,000 and briefly touched 625,000. Since then the trend have been from the upper left hand corner of the graph to the bottom right hand corner. As Martha Stewart says, “This is a good thing.”

Happy Halloween! And it surely is with the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund (JGPI) giving out the best candy on the block. While you and I were sleeping the two entities unload both rounds of their double barrel Beretta on the market making a direct hit. The BOJ, in a close and I’m sure very spirited 5-4 vote, stated they were going to expand the Bank’s balance sheet from 50 trillion yen annually to 80 trillion yen with most of that buying direct purchases of Treasury securities. Folks, by now you should recognize this action. That’s not other than QE! That alone would be good news for equities but they the JGPI, which as the name suggests is the fund for paying pensions and the second largest pool of retirement savings in the world and the largest in Asia, announced it would increase its exposure to equities from 12% of its portfolio to 25%. The JGPI action will have a “multiplier effect” because the it sets the benchmark for private equity funds across Japan and other pension funds will follow suit. So what did these announcements do to the market. Well that sent the Nikkei 225 skyrocketing 4.83%! Folks, this equates to gain on the Dow of 830 points!!!

The good news for equities in Asia moved with the sun around the world to Europe where all the major indexes are higher with France’s CAC 40 leading the way being up 2.17%. Closer to home Dow futures are up a big 175 points. I think it’s gonna be a good day amigos!

Oil’s been struggling to keep its head above water and with the Fed’s post-meeting communique comments regarding the economy improving and no more QE and that interest rates may rise sooner than the market may think (of course solely being “data driven”), the U.S. dollar strengthened which puts downward pressure on commodities priced in U.S. dollars, including WTI which fell $1.08 yesterday to $81.12. Brent got pulled down with WTI closing down 88¢ at $86.24. For the record, the U.S. dollar hit a 4 year high as measured against a basket of major currencies.

This morning the psychologically important WTI $80/barrel and Brent $85/barrel are on the radar screen with WTI trading down $1.43, below $80. The averaged front month year spread (Dec ’14 vs. Dec ’15) has moved to a material contango and is the widest such contango so far this year. Widening contango is indicative of ample current supply with oil bidding for storage.

Courtesy MDA Information Systems LLC

After hitting an intraday and 11 month low on Tuesday and then posting a “reversal” natural gas has continued to climb higher closing up for the 3rd consecutive day gaining 3.9¢ yesterday settling at $3.827. No doubt the cold blast the east is experiencing this week is increasing heating load and “goosing” the cash market which is pulling futures prices higher. This morning the weather forecast has moved in the bulls favor shifting colder in the 6-15 day period and futures are responding accordingly being up 7.7¢.

As many of you are aware, earlier this week a 140 ft. long unmanned NASA rocket exploded 15 seconds after launch in Virginia. The blasé incinerated its cargo of 2.5 tons of space station bound food, clothes equipment and science experiments. The rocket was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation. The investigation as to why it exploded is underway but evidence is pointing to the first stage engines. Now as the beloved Paul Harvey would say “And this is the rest of the story” the engines were built by Russia. Have a good weekend.