Good morning. Once again the Dow and S&P 500 set record highs but by the barest of margins. The Dow added a mere 8 points to 17,818 and the S&P gained 6 to 2,069. The bellwether S&P has risen 7 of the last 8 days and has gained 12% this year. Remember, this is after a gain of 30% last year. This is kind of like the famous children’s book Goodnight Moon. Thank you Fed. Thank you Bank of Japan. Thank you Peoples Bank of China. Thank you ECB. Yesterday’s gains were completely on the momentum of Friday’s announcements by Mario Draghi and the PBOC. In fact, the economic data released yesterday here in the U.S. was actually somewhat disappointing. The Chicago Fed released its National Index coming in at .14 from a downwardly revised .29 with the consensus around .50. Also Market’s Flash PMI for services yesterday was 56.3 down from 57.8 and also well below consensus of 57.5. The good news regarding the latter is that it’s still well above 50 indicating expansion. The only good news, and it was marginal, was the Dallas Fed’s business index came in at 10.5, unchanged from the previous month and a bit above consensus of 9.5. All I can say is this, with global inflation virtually non-existent giving central banks around the world the green light to print money without a doubt you need to be long of equities. Definitely not short.

This morning Asian markets closed mixed but all the major European bourses are up nicely following a report German GDP rose .01% in Q3 harrowingly avoiding a recession for Q2 saw a contraction of 0.2% which was revised slightly better to 0.1%. That being said, I guarantee you Mr. Draghi’s comments on Friday are still supporting Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 indexes. Here in the States it appears the holiday has started with the markets doing nothing with the Dow down 17, the S&P flat and the Nasdaq up 10. This morning the Commerce Department revised Q3 GDP growth to a very strong 3.9% from a previously 3.5% reported last month. This is on top of Q2 GDP growth of 4.6% meaning our economy has now experienced the two strongest back-to-back quarters of growth since 2003. Q3 GDP was the 4th quarter out of the past 5 the economy has expanded above 3.5%. Now you see why the Fed stop buying assets. Of note, the report showed corporate profits after tax grew at 3.2% in Q3 slowing from Q2’s robust 8.6%.

After gaining 66¢ on Friday from the QE boost oil gave it all back yesterday with WTI losing 73¢ settling at $75.78 and Brent closing down 68¢ at $79.68. As I’ve mentioned several times, while you and I are sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner (or watching the Texas A&M/LSU football game!) OPEC ministers will be talking turkey about oil production. Oil prices have fallen 27% over the past 6 months and there have been loud gobbles from the OPEC hawks to cut production. Even if Iran’s proposal of cutting 1 million bpd is adopted it will take much bigger action to keep oil prices from falling for it is estimated that the global over-supply is in the order of 2 million bpd. What we have here folks is a game of chicken between Saudi Arabia and North America. We’ve become much less dependent on Saudi Arabia and their searching for the cutoff point where it becomes uneconomical to explore for shale oil, and I can tell you that number is definitely below $75.

This morning oil traders as also starting the holiday early with WTI down 49¢. Chatter.

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Natural gas got seriously whacked yesterday with the December contract, which expires today, falling 11.5¢ settling at $4.121. The weather forecast is little changed from yesterday once again showing very, very mild conditions for most of the U.S. and most importantly, well above normal temperatures for most of the major gas consuming regions of the country. The 6-10 day time frame is showing some downright warm temperatures with Memphis, TN with the city experiencing temps 12 degrees above normal. Next Wednesday Cincinnati is forecasted to be 15 degrees above normal! With it being expiration and the holiday just about upon us, traders are hitting the egg nog early with natty being up 3¢. Complete chatter.

On a logistical note, this will be the last Morning Energy Blog until Monday. The author will be taking tomorrow off. Have a very, very enjoyable Thanksgiving Holiday and when your with your loved ones take a long second to pause, look at them and appreciate who you are with for one day you won’t be. I thought of the following last night. It’s ironic. We spend our entire lives trying to accumulate and grow assets and the most valuable one, time, we lose some of every day. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.