June 8 New York

The DJIA added by 8.84 points to 21182.53 while the SP500 gained by 0.65 points to 2433.79.  The Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 24.384 points to 6321.764 (Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley).  Yield on 10 year treasury rose a bit to 2.189% as treasuries were sold a bit.  The rate of the U.S. dollar to the yen closed at 110.02 while WTI futures fell a bit to $45.64 per barrel.  Oil’s 5 percent tumble Wednesday, the biggest slide since March, followed government data that showed U.S. crude and fuel stockpiles unexpectedly soaring at a time of year when they normally decline.  Total U.S. inventories of crude oil and products such as gasoline and disel fuel surged the most since 2008 last week, according to the Energy Information Administration.  The 15.5 million-barrel jump took inventories by surprise, sending the market off a cliff.  What caused the increase?  Higher imports of crude, as well as a sharp decline in exports.  Add in a 505,000 barrel a day drop in gasoline demand and you end up with growing stockpiles.  What’s behind the import shift that helped cause the 3.3 million barrel build in nationalwide crude supplies?  The spread between the global crude benchmark Brent and its U.S. counterpart tightened during the second half of May, shrinking to a premium of $1.99 last week, the smallest since February.  A narrower gap encourages imports and makes U.S. exports more expensive relative to oil from elsewhere.  Imports rose by 356000 barrels a day last week, while crude exports fell by 746000 barrels a day, the biggest drop ever.  Where did the flood of imports mostly come from?  Imports from Iraq surged to 1.14 million barrels a day, the most since 2012, according to preliminary EIA data.  That more than outweighed a drop in imports from Saudi Arabia, which sank 55 percent to the lowest level since January 2015.