OPEC+ Again Faces Thorny Issue Of How Much It Can Pump

Commodity

Summary:

OPEC+ nations gathering this weekend are once again grappling with the thorny question of how much oil they're physically able to pump.

In May, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies launched a new assessment of members' "maximum sustainable capacity" to help set production quotas in 2027. With output levels for the months ahead already set, delegates say this longer-term review will likely be one area of focus at Sunday's meeting.

The process looks increasingly necessary, as the struggle by some OPEC+ members to increase supplies as much as agreed this year indicates they may be nearing output limits. Clarifying their full capacity would help align quotas more closely with reality — and make any future cutbacks more credible.

OPEC's readiness to make new curbs could be tested in 2026 amid signs of a swelling global oil surplus and downward pressure on crude prices, which have slumped to near $60 a barrel in London. In a report on Monday, JPMorgan Chase & Co. indicated that the alliance may need to slash output next year to avert a plunge into the $40s.

But the capacity assessment also poses an area of friction for the organization, as some countries push for a higher estimate of their abilities and others refuse to admit they can't produce as much as claimed. In 2023, discord over the process led to the exit of long-term OPEC member Angola.

While group leader Saudi Arabia is capable of boosting output significantly, the outlook for other nations is less clear-cut. The United Arab Emirates and Iraq have been eager to expand capacity, but some members like Russia are challenged by international sanctions.

The review will be conducted with the assistance of several energy consulting firms, which in the past have included Wood Mackenzie and IHS, which is now a unit of S&P Global. Some groundwork was laid at a technical meeting in September.

One delegate said it remains unclear what OPEC+ will discuss during its set of online meetings on Sunday, beyond reviewing oil market conditions. The gatherings will also give key members the chance to review their production policy for early 2026, although some delegates said they don't expect any changes.

Eight of the group's members decided this month to pause further production increases during the first quarter — after ramping up supplies with surprising speed earlier this year — amid signs that a long-awaited glut is finally arriving.

RBC Capital Markets LLC believes they're unlikely to adjust policy until there's more visibility on geopolitical risks to the group's oil supplies: US sanctions on Russia and increasing belligerence toward Venezuela.

"We continue to contend that OPEC will stick with a watch-and-wait approach until there is more clarity," said Helima Croft, RBC's head of commodity markets strategy.

Source: Rigzone

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Adam

Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is struggling to gain momentum as it heads toward its worst month since June 2022.

As prices hover above $88,000 per token, or roughly 30% off their October all-time highs of more than $126,000, the cryptocurrency's problems don't appear to be easing.

And three key challenges for bitcoin have emerged as investors and strategists dig through the rubble of this month's decline.

First, outflows of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for November have reached $3.5 billion, their largest since February. "That indicates that institutional investors have stopped allocating into bitcoin," 10X Research founder and CEO Markus Thielen said. "These ETFs have turned into sellers, and as long as they keep selling, I think the markets will struggle to stay up, or rebound," he said.

Another issue: Thielen pointed to a slowdown in stablecoin minting activity, a warning that could suggest less capital is entering the crypto ecosystem. According to the firm's data, roughly $800 million flowed out of crypto and back into fiat currencies last week. While not a massive figure, it reinforces the trend that money is not staying within the market.

A stablecoin is a crypto asset that, unlike bitcoin, isn't supposed to fluctuate. Instead, its price is pegged to other assets, most commonly the US dollar. Because they provide a haven during volatile crypto market swings, their market capitalizations can often increase during periods of market volatility. That happened in the days after crypto's historic wipeout last month.

However, the trend has reversed: Through Nov. 1, the total market capitalization for stablecoins has dropped by $4.6 billion, according to DeFiLlama data.

"Money is not just failing to come in, it's actually leaving the crypto market," Thielen said. "That's why bitcoin dominance is failing to pick up."

Recent dovish comments hinting at a Federal Reserve rate cut in December helped lift bitcoin and other assets on Monday. But 10X's Thielen expects the bounce to fade in the coming days or into the FOMC meeting on Dec. 9.

Even if the Fed cuts in December, it is likely to be a hawkish cut, meaning this rally should be viewed as a short-term, oversold reaction amid extreme fear rather than the start of a sustainable V-shaped recovery. Bitcoin has struggled to recover since the leveraged liquidation event on Oct. 10 wiped out $19 billion in a single day.

The third challenge facing bitcoin: Long-term holders had already been selling into the downturn, possibly in anticipation of the token's historical four-year cycle. Bitcoin's past performance from peak to trough has largely followed an every-four-year supply cut known as "the halving." Many investors now deny that the same trajectory will repeat.

"There has been OG people selling every single cycle," said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst for blockchain analytics firm Nansen. "I think they just reach that point where they decide, okay, maybe I've gotten old enough, and I want to use this money now for something else."

The sell-off has rippled across nearly every corner of the digital asset space, with total crypto market capitalization falling more than 30%, from $4.28 trillion on Oct. 6 to $2.99 trillion as of Monday.

Ethereum (ETH-USD) has also tumbled 38% since early October, while Solana (SOL-USD) dropped more than 40% during the same period.

Along with the odds that the Federal Reserve lowers its policy rate next month, the best chance for a reversal in the crypto markets, according to Søndergaard, will come from ETFs or more companies buying in.

Strategy (MSTR) and the wave of public companies that have imitated its playbook of adding bitcoin and other digital assets to their corporate balance sheets has significantly cooled. Notably, the company did not make any announcement of weekly token purchases on Monday, following six consecutive weeks of buys.

While Strategy is still in the green, many of these other so-called digital asset treasuries (DATs) are now underwater on their crypto positions.

Meanwhile, bitcoin miners like IREN (IREN), Riot (RIOT), and Mara Holdings (MARA) have retraced more than 30% to the downside, despite their pivots toward servicing the AI sector.

Source: finance.yahoo

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Adam

Economic

On its face, 2025 has been a good year for the stock market. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) was dragged out of its tariff-induced springtime slump by a small subset of AI-forward power players whose spectacular gains defied an otherwise softening economy. Even now, despite a rocky November, the benchmark index is up more than 12 percent since the start of the year.

A group of trillion-dollar brands known as the “Magnificent Seven” - Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta (META), Microsoft (^GSPC), Nvidia (NVDA), and Tesla (TSLA) - has been at the forefront of those gains, thanks in large part to corporate spending and intense interest in artificial intelligence. But economists and investors are raising concerns about the companies that aren’t part of the AI investment boom - in other words, most businesses in the United States.

An index that leaves out the seven high-flying tech firms - call it the S&P 493 - reveals a far weaker picture, as smaller and lower-tech companies report lackluster sales and declining investment.

“You have the headwind of de-globalization and tariffs, and the tailwind of AI … those forces are battling to a draw, and in that crosswind you get winners and losers,” said Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. “Anything that is not connected to AI is throttled lower.”

When OpenAI unveiled its chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022, it sparked a surge in AI investment, and a handful of tech companies that provide infrastructure and support around the new algorithms - the picks and shovels for an AI gold rush - caught the wave. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)

AI spending supercharged the valuations of the Magnificent Seven ever since. Shares of Nvidia, a longtime manufacturer of video game graphics cards that became the AI chipmaker of choice, have soared more than 1,000 percent since January 2023 as of Friday’s close. The pace of growth cooled this year - Nvidia is up 29 percent in 2025 - and it’s leveled off at Amazon, Meta and Tesla. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

The data company Palantir has carved out a niche helping large organizations apply AI to their operations, doubling its market value since the start of the year. Micron rose more than 130 percent on the strength of its memory chips, and Ohio-based Vertiv rose 35 percent for its data-center cooling systems. The chipmaker Intel rose 70 percent even as it laid off thousands of employees.

Some experts are worried that the S&P 500, an index of large-company stocks that underpins the fortunes of millions of Americans with 401(k) and other retirement accounts, has become too reliant on the Magnificent Seven; they collectively account for about a third of its value, leaving the broader stock market heavily dependent on the continued success of “the AI trade,” says Torsten Slok, chief economist at the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

“There is no diversification in the S&P 500 anymore in my view … it is all the AI story now,” Slok said.

S&P Dow Jones Indices spokeswoman Alyssa Augustyn said the objective of the S&P 500 index is to track the performance of large companies. She added that the index is “consistent with the sector diversification for the broader market,” referring to 11 industry sectors including health care, financials and information technology.

Publicly traded small and midsize companies have taken a beating by comparison. The Russell 2000, an index made up of the smallest 2,000 companies on the public markets, lost 4.5 percent in the one-month period leading up to Friday, compared with a loss of around 2 percent for the S&P 500.

Smaller companies have posted lackluster financial results recently, said Wells Fargo senior market strategist Scott Wren, who notes that a little more than a third of the companies in the Russell 2000 index either don’t make money or are losing money. Smaller companies are being hit harder by a slowing economy, he said, as they have less of a cushion to absorb import price increases resulting from tariffs, and less flexibility to avoid the new duties by shifting their supply chains.

One analysis from JPMorgan and Moody’s shows capital expenditures - a measure of how much businesses are spending on physical assets like buildings, machinery or patents - is close to flat for companies not connected to AI, which economists see as a worrying sign that low-tech businesses aren’t growing.

Smaller companies are also more likely to rely on debt to fund their operations, Wren said, something that makes them more sensitive to changes in interest rates. Investors in recent weeks have become more skeptical that the Federal Reserve will cut rates again in December, driving small-company stocks lower, Wren said.

In a sign of its sensitivity to interest rates, the Russell rallied 2.8 percent Friday after a Fed official hinted in a speech that “further adjustment in the near term” for interest rates could be needed, spurring a broader stock market rally.

“If the concern also is that the employment picture is not very good, and inflation remains sticky, that could be extra bad for small caps,” said CFRA chief investment strategist Sam Stovall, referring to companies that have smaller market capitalizations.

Broader uncertainty in the markets has also taken a toll on stocks in recent weeks, analysts said, as some investors have rushed to the relative safety that larger companies can provide. Risky assets such as cryptocurrency have suffered in recent weeks, with bitcoin recently sinking below $90,000 for the first time since April. Gold has surged in value this year while the dollar sank, reflecting a lack of investor confidence in traditional safe havens.

“Given the greater sensitivity of small companies to domestic economic trends, investors have been reducing exposure to small caps in favor of large cap companies who continue to benefit from global growth related to AI-based technologies,” said Wayne Wicker, president of Opal Capital.

The market’s concentration in Big Tech has also given rise to concerns about what would be left if an AI bubble were to burst.

Those fears have been amplified in recent weeks as Big Tech names suffered a modest sell-off, with some analysts raising concerns that the AI industry has overspent on infrastructure at a time when the technology’s actual profit-generating potential is still nascent.

Advanced Micro Devices, which manufactures a wide range of data-center electronics, lost 16 percent in a rough week of trading, trimming a rally that brought it up nearly 70 percent for the year.

Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager who grew to prominence by betting against the housing market before its 2008 collapse, has accused leading AI companies of overstating the long-term value of certain assets. Burry and others have argued that an inordinate amount of AI spending seems to come in the form of different corporate entities spending on one another, while the timing for a return on those investments is unclear.

Tech stocks have endured a series of rocky sell-offs since late October, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index falling around 7 percent from its Oct. 29 peak. Markets rebounded Friday, with the index trimming some of its losses from earlier in the week.

Slok, the Apollo economist, says he is particularly worried about the recent AI losses because so much of the recent economic growth has been shored up by free-spending wealthy households. A deep correction in AI stocks, if it ever arrived, could threaten the “wealth effect” that is doing so much to prop up the economy, Slok warned.

“Consumers and corporates alike have become vulnerable to whether the AI story continues or not,” Slok said.

Source: finance.yahoo

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Daniel Carter

Economic

U.S. consumer confidence sagged in November as households worried about jobs and their financial situation, likely in part because of the recently ended government shutdown.

The Conference Board said on Tuesday its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 this month from an upwardly revised 95.5 in October. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index edging down to 93.4 from the previously reported 94.6 in October.

"Consumers' write-in responses pertaining to factors affecting the economy continued to be led by references to prices and inflation, tariffs and trade, and politics, with increased mentions of the federal government shutdown," said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board.

"Mentions of the labor market eased somewhat but still stood out among all other frequent themes not already cited. The overall tone from November write-ins was slightly more negative than in October."

Source: Reuters

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Adam

Cryptocurrency

Even by crypto standards, it’s been a rough few weeks.

Investors in digital assets are accustomed to extreme volatility, but a $1 trillion wipeout over the past six weeks has tested even crypto’s diehard believers and alienated many of its newest converts.

Bitcoin, the industry bellwether, has fallen dramatically since early October, when it hit a record high of $126,000. The world’s most popular cryptocurrency dipped below $81,000 on Friday before recovering slightly over the weekend. On Monday, as the broader stock market rallied, bitcoin topped $88,000, rising nearly 2% over a 24-hour period. (Crypto markets are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.)

It is shaping up to be one of crypto’s worst months on record, and it’s not clear the market has bottomed out.

“Whether Bitcoin stabilizes after this correction remains uncertain,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote Monday. “Unlike prior crashes, driven primarily by retail speculation, this year’s downturn has occurred amid substantial institutional participation, policy developments, and global macro trends.”

While crypto’s fate has broadly mirrored the stock market’s in recent years, its current angst runs deeper. That’s largely thanks to an influx of mainstream money that behaves very differently from the funds controlled by a typical crypto investor.

Bitcoin is in a bear market, having dropped 30% from its most recent high, while the S&P 500 is down just 3% from its most recent peak. It is on track for its worst month since the 2022 crypto “winter” that culminated in the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.

Anxiety is coursing through stocks and crypto for two key reasons: Investors are fretting over the Federal Reserve’s next rate cut, and they’re worrying about whether AI is a bubble that’ll blow up in their faces.

All of that weighs on crypto traders because digital assets, like tech stocks, are especially sensitive to changes in the Fed’s benchmark rate, which affects the cost of borrowing money and can quickly sap investor appetite for risk.

But crypto investors have an additional hangover to deal with following an October 10 flash crash. When President Donald Trump reignited his trade war with China that day, it prompted a wave of panic-selling that triggered automatic liquidations across the highly leveraged crypto market. In a single day, the flash crashed wiped out $19 billion worth of crypto. For a lot of folks, the stomach-churning crash was all the motivation they needed to exit crypto completely, and that’s left bitcoin and other tokens more susceptible to volatility.

The flash crash forced many investors sell their holdings to meet margin calls. That tends to have a snowball effect: The more bitcoin falls, the more calls investors face from their brokerages, the more they have to sell their bitcoin (and other holdings) to cover their positions.

What makes this crypto crash different is the presence of billions of dollars that have entered the crypto market through spot bitcoin funds that US regulators approved last year.

Mainstream investors got into crypto to enjoy the ride up, but they don’t have the same level of devotion to the ideology as early adopters who are bolstered by intense online communities encouraging one another to buy the dip and keep the faith.

“The bottom line is, bitcoin is for normies now,” Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told me. “As a result, the normies are going to view it as another speculative holding in their portfolio … it’s going to be treated like a volatile mainstream investment.”

Source: cnn

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Samantha Luan

Political

A rare judicial misconduct complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice that accused a judge of bias in her handling of a challenge to President Donald Trump's ban on transgender troops has been dismissed.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan in aSeptember 29 decisionmade public on Monday said judicial misconduct proceedings were the wrong venue to address the Justice Department's concerns about U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, noting that it could have sought to have her recused instead.

"A misconduct proceeding is not meant to function in that way — i.e., as an alternate means by which a party in a pending case could bring about the judge's recusal," Srinivasan wrote.

His decision did not identify the judge by name, but it quoted from a complaint the Justice Department had previously made public that it filed against Reyes, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden.

The Justice Department and Reyes did not respond to requests for comment.

The judicial misconduct complaint is one of two the department has filed against judges as conflicts escalated between the Republican president and a judicial branch that has frequently stymied Trump's agenda.

A top Justice Department official, Todd Blanche, at an event this month described the situation as a "war" as he complained about "rogue activist judges" who have blocked Trump's initiatives.

Reyes in March blocked the administration from implementing an executive order Trump signed barring transgender people from military service. A federal appeals court has put that ruling on hold while it considers the administration's appeal.

The Justice Department filed the complaint against Reyes in February, before she had ruled, saying that during hearings in the case, Reyes had taken issue with the administration's positions and "engaged in hostile and egregious misconduct."

During those hearings, she said "WTF" - a coarse expression of incredulity, questioned a lawyer about religion and used him as a prop in a "rhetorical exercise," according to the complaint filed by Attorney General Pam Bondi's now-former chief of staff, Chad Mizelle.

He argued that her behavior "compromised the dignity of the proceedings and demonstrated potential bias, raising serious concerns about her ability to preside impartially in this matter."

Source: TradingView

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Adam

Commodity

Economic

India is entering a new phase in its Russian oil trade as banks develop stricter checks to navigate Washington’s latest sanctions.

Lenders, which only weeks ago were reluctant to clear any payment linked to Russian crude, are now prepared to consider transactions if cargoes come from non-blacklisted sellers and follow every sanctions rule, reported Bloomberg.

The shift reflects India’s need to secure steady fuel supplies while managing heightened global scrutiny, especially as the new US measures took effect on Friday.

Banks tighten checks

Indian banks have created a more structured compliance process to assess payment requests from refiners.

This includes handling settlements in currencies such as UAE dirhams and Chinese yuan.

The new approach emerged after earlier hesitation, when lenders struggled to confirm supply chain details for Russian barrels.

The expanded system now focuses on verifying production sites, cross-checking the origin of the oil, and reviewing the vessels used to transport each shipment.

Vessel histories are being examined more closely, including whether any tanker was involved in ship-to-ship transfers tied to blacklisted entities.

These checks aim to prevent frozen transactions, processing delays, or exposure to secondary sanctions.

Banks and refiners have increased coordination to ensure every link in the chain meets compliance standards before a payment is processed.

Refiners reassess choices

The stronger verification rules follow a period when most Indian refiners avoided placing December orders for Russian crude.

Bloomberg notes that the pause came after the newest US sanctions targeted key producers Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJSC, adding to restrictions already affecting Gazprom Neft PJSC and Surgutneftegas PJSC.

These measures disrupted a trade that grew rapidly after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when discounted barrels helped India secure affordable supplies.

With sanctions expanding, refiners are reviewing which suppliers remain safe to engage with.

Even with the updated banking procedures, companies remain cautious because any linkage to a sanctioned firm could freeze payments and create expensive disputes.

This has pushed refiners to spend more time verifying documentation before deciding on shipments.

Flows shift with sanctions

Sanctions have shifted global price dynamics, and Russia’s Urals grade is now trading at a discount of about seven dollars to the Dated Brent benchmark.

Before the newest restrictions, the discount was about three dollars.

The widening gap is creating fresh incentive for Indian refiners to explore compliant Russian options.

For companies operating in a competitive domestic fuel market, price differences of this scale can influence purchasing decisions even when compliance requirements are more complex.

While the updated checks may slow bookings, they also allow some Russian flows to continue instead of collapsing entirely.

The industry expects delays to remain common, but the trade is unlikely to end as long as banks have frameworks to process compliant deals.

Price gap shapes interest

The future of India’s Russian oil trade now depends on how refiners balance risk, pricing, and verification demands.

The deeper Urals discount has made cargoes more attractive, although firms still fear potential payment freezes if a shipment is later linked to a sanctioned entity.

This mix of risk and opportunity is pushing companies to examine every detail of each cargo before committing.