Kai Risdahl

The financial markets are essentially saying over a period of time, the expectation is peace is going to break out and that prices will come down.

My view is they don't reflect the tightness of the current physical market.

The straight before news is not opening.

Our inventories continue to draw down literally every single day.

Small solace though it may be, Brent futures did calm down as the day went on, about $114 a barrel at the close.

Equities, a perhaps useful reminder here that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is what's known as a price-weighted index.

That is, the more expensive a Dow component is, the more a change in that company's share price affects the overall average, which gets me to the second most expensive company in the Dow 30, Caterpillar.

Shares today up almost 10%.

That drove the Dow overall up a percent and a half.

The S&P and the NASDAQ followed suit.

We will have the details when we do the numbers.

Economic data was promised.

Economic data there shall be.

First of all, inflation.

PCE came out today, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index.

I was about to say, as I usually do, that it's the Federal Reserve's preferred measure.

But honestly, I'm not sure how incoming Chair Kevin Warsh feels about it.

So I'm not going to say that.

Anyway, inflation, it turns out, is still a thing, up three-tenths percent month on month.

That is the core rate, minus food and energy, because they bounce around a lot, up 3.2 percent year on year.