It’s hard to say what really came as more of a surprise.
The fact that we have a President-Elect Trump or the fact that OPEC actually came to something of an agreement this past week.
When it has come to the latter, we’d seen any number of stock market run-ups in anticipation of an OPEC agreement to limit production of crude oil in an effort to force the supply-demand curve to their nefarious favor.
Had you read the previous paragraph during any other phase of your lifetime, you would have basically found it non-sensical.
But in the past 18 months or so, we’ve been in an environment where the stock market looked favorably on a supply driven increase in the price of oil.
So when it seemed as if OPEC was going to come to an agreement to reduce production earlier in the year, stocks soared and then soured when the agreement fell apart.
Unable to learn from the past, the very next time there was rumor of an OPEC agreement stocks soared and then again soured when the predictable happened.
This week, however, everything was different.
Maybe better, too.
Or maybe, not.
What was not better was that OPEC actually came to an agreement, although you can’t be blamed if you withhold judgment in the belief that someone will cheat or that U.S. producers might be enticed to increase production as prices rise.
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