Dow gave back 48, advancers over decliners about 2-1 & NAZ went up 50 to another record. The MLP index rose 2+ to the 178s & the REIT index soared 5+ to the 479s (another record). Junk bond funds were little changed & Treasuries inched higher. Oil was even in the 68s after OPEC+ did not change quota guidelines & gold was off 2 to 1815 (more on both below).
AMJ (Alerian MLP Index tracking fund)
![Live 24 hours gold chart [Kitco Inc.]](https://www.kitco.com/images/live/gold.gif?0.2180338269244485)
Summer travel season is fading, driving down airfares & raising questions about demand in the coming weeks when business travel would normally pick up. The Transportation Security Administration screened nearly 1.35M people yesterday, the fewest since May 11. Travel demand usually drops in late summer as children return to school, but airline execs at major airlines last month warned they would miss revenue or profit forecasts because of weaker bookings, a trend they blamed on rising cases of the delta variant of Covid-19. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s director, Dr Rochelle Walensky,advised unvaccinated people against traveling during Labor Day weekend. Domestic airfares fell in the week ended Aug 27 from the previous week for most US airlines. Fares vary widely depending on airline service & network. For fares purchased 21 days in advance, average one-way domestic fares were down as much as 30.6% on the week to $51 & $183.
TSA airport screenings drop to lowest since May as travel, fares fall
People who previously were infected with Covid-19 should eventually get vaccinated against the disease because their immunity protection will likely wane over time, Dr Scott Gottlieb said. “The immunity conferred by natural infection seems to be robust and seems to be durable. We know it lasts at least six months, probably longer,” he added. “My hunch is it’s not going to last in perpetuity. At some point, those individuals are going to need to get vaccinated,” continued Gottlieb. A key question remaining about natural immunity is whether having a more severe case of Covid, compared with someone who remained asymptomatic, for example, leads to higher-quality protection. “With SARS and MERS, we saw people who got more sick ended up having more durable immunity. We don’t know if that’s the case with this SARS-CoV-2 virus, but it might be,” Gottlieb said, referring to 2 other types of coronaviruses — severe acute respiratory syndrome & Middle East respiratory syndrome — that caused outbreaks in multiple countries. SARS was first detected in 2003, while MERS was initially reported in 2912, according to the World Health Organization. The SARS & MERS outbreaks were not nearly as widespread as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, with very few US cases. They caused a limited number of deaths when compared with Covid. However, they were both far more deadly. Gottlieb's comments follow recent studies that have examined immunity from prior Covid infections versus those who received a vaccine for the disease.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb says people who had Covid should still get vaccinated
OPEC & its allies will likely stick to their existing policy of gradual oil output increases, sources said, even though the group revised up its 2022 demand outlook & still faces US pressure to raise production more quickly. OPEC & allies led by Russia (OPEC+) holds a full ministerial meeting online today. The group agreed in Jul to phase out record output cuts by adding 400K barrels per day (bpd) a month to the market. ″OPEC+ will most likely keep the agreement as it was agreed,” one source said ahead of today's talks. A meeting of key OPEC+ ministers from the monitoring committee, which usually precedes the main meeting, ended today in just under 30 minutes & made no proposals to adjust existing policies, an OPEC+ source said. Yesterday, OPEC+ experts revised the 2022 oil demand growth forecast to 4.2M bpd, up from a previous 3.3M bpd, potentially building the case for higher output in the future. The outlook for 2022 looks optimistic based on data for 2021. OPEC+ expects demand to grow by 5.95M bpd this year after a record drop of about 9Mbpd in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but demand only grew by about 3M bpd in H1-2021.
OPEC+ seen sticking to policy despite higher oil demand
The World Health Organization (WHO) asked world leaders again to hold off on administering Covid-19 boosters for at least another month to give poorer nations the chance to inoculate more of their populations with first doses. More than 5B Covid vaccine shots have been administered globally, with 75% of them administered in just 10 countries, according to the WHO. “That’s why I have called for a moratorium on boosters, at least until the end of this month to allow those countries that are furthest behind to catch up,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. The director of the global health agency said that some high-income countries have adult vaccination rates of 50%, while low-income countries, including many in Africa, still have adult vaccination rates of less than 2%. The US has fully vaccinated more than 52% of its population, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). Additional doses may be required for those with compromised immune systems or waning immunity, “but for now, we do not want to see widespread use of boosters for healthy people who are fully vaccinated,” Tedros added. Nearly 1M Covid-19 vaccine booster shots have already been administered in the US since health officials authorized administering extra shots of Pfizer's (PFE) or Moderna's (MRNA) vaccines to people with weakened immune systems on Aug 12, according to the CDC. Pres Biden said the US plans to widely distribute Covid booster shots beginning the week of Sep 20, pending clearance from Food & Drug Administration & CDC scientists.
WHO presses world leaders to hold off on Covid vaccine booster shots through September
Gold futures ended lower, with a weaker-than-expected US private-sector jobs data only providing a temporary boost to prices for the haven metal, as investors expected the jobs report due on Fri to provide more definitive direction guidance for gold. Investors are attuned to the labor market data because it could help determine the pace and timing of the Federal Reserve's tapering of purchases of $80B in Treasuries & $40B in mortgage-backed securities, which have helped to support financial markets in the US during the worst of the COVID pandemic. However, the recovery from the pandemic, amid the spread of the coronavirus delta variant, has raised questions about the need for ongoing easy money policy. Dec gold lost $2 to settle at $1816 an ounce, following a 0.3% gain yesterday. The precious metal put in a monthly advance of less than $1. Prices for the metal continued to trade lower after the IHS Markit reading of manufacturing activity for Aug showed a climb to 59.9% from 59.5% in the prior month. The forecast called for a reading of 58.6%.
Gold prices end lower as investors await U.S. jobs data for directional cues
US oil futures finished with a slight gain, but global prices posted a modest loss, after major oil producers made no changes to their plan to gradually increase crude production. Oil also reacted to data from the gov, which revealed a weekly drop in domestic crude inventories, along with an unexpected increase in gasoline supplies. OPEC & its allies (OPEC+) announced that it would stick to the plan it reached in Jul to increase oil production by 400K barrels a day each month from Aug. West Texas Intermediate crude for Oct added 9¢ to settle at $68.59 a barrel, after the contract for US benchmark oil fell 1% yesterday. In Aug, prices for the front-month contract ended 7.4% lower, the first monthly loss since Mar. Meanwhile, global benchmark Nov Brent crude inched down by 4¢ at $71.59 a barrel, following a 0.6% decline in the session before, which contributed to its monthly loss of 4.4%. Prices for oil had turned sharply lower today, with traders attributing that move to reports that OPEC+ raised their global oil demand forecast for this year, while Russia suggested that it's ready to increase production above its set quotas. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that US crude inventories fell by 7.2M barrels last week following 3 weeks of declines in a row. That was larger than the decline of 4.4M barrels expected. The American Petroleum Institute reported a 4M-barrel decline. The EIA data also showed crude stocks at the Cushing, Okla, storage hub edged up by 800K barrels for the week. Market participants also continued to deal with the effects of Hurricane Ida which hit the Gulf Coast last Sunday, temporarily disabling swaths of production & oil refineries in the region. An estimated that 80% of current oil production in the region remained shut in, along with 83% of natural-gas production, according to the Bureau of Safety & Environmental Enforcement.
U.S. oil prices finish with a slight gain as OPEC+ keeps plan to boost output in place
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