Oil Inventories… Nobody Knows
Some of the best, brightest, and highest-paid analysts in the world were calling for oil inventories to be depleted by now. Many had circled September, and to their credit, many are now coming out and disclosing that they were “flat wrong”.
The problem with their analysis (and our own) is that the world is dynamic and not static. In a static world, surely, we might have already run out of strategic petroleum reserves across the world’s largest economies. But the global market adjusts to stress.
I think I can say now that we don’t know when we will hit the theoretical Operational Floor Level.
Maybe the industry is just really good at masking it, and we are already there?
Meritage Bankruptcy a Warning Sign?
We typically have a policy against singling out a company unless it’s especially important to the broader economy or shows a trend everyone should know about. Meritage Hospitality Group filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and it owns Wendy’s operations in more than 15 states.
What we’re trying to figure out is whether this is a single-entity problem, a broader issue across this category of fast food, or, more worryingly, a canary in the coal mine signaling that the lower end of the K is starting to fall apart.
Are we hitting a tipping point?
Read more about how this, along with financial developments and other global issues, could affect your supply chain.
