It is being reported that China’s state refiners are honouring existing Russian oil contracts but are staying away from new ones despite steep discounts being offered.Asia’s largest refiner, Sinopec, along with CNOOC, PetroChina and Sinochem are said to be staying on the sidelines in trading fresh cargoes from Russia for loadings in May. The sources say that none of the Chinese state refiners want to be „singled out as a buyer of Russian oil“.For some context, China is the top buyer of Russian crude at around 1.6 million barrels per day, half of which is supplied via pipelines under contracts between both governments.Well, the way I’m seeing it is that a lot of this looks to be reputational risks and just avoiding any unwanted scrutiny as the spotlight continues to shine brightly on Russia. But given time, I’d expect normal dealings to continue. I’m pretty sure it’s not an economic risk that China is willing to take by having to look to diversify its crude imports at a time like this.

Prior -6.8%Market index 398.5 vs 425.1 priorPurchase index 258.1 vs 267.1 priorRefinancing index 1,166.3 vs 1,295.1 prior30-year mortgage rate 4.90% vs 4.80% priorMortgage applications continue to drop as home borrowing costs continue to surge higher, leading to a significant fall in both purchases and refinancing activity over the past few months. Since the start of the year, mortgage rates have risen by nearly 1.6% and that is the quickest run-up in costs since 1994.

Process not going as fast, energetically as Moscow would likeWell, that’s another day without any meaningful progress. As mentioned before, markets have become apathetic to the headlines now and it would take a serious development to really draw attention. Otherwise, carry on as you will.

Support and
resistance is THE most popular and used technical analysis concept. It’s based
on the fact that price tends to react to certain levels and those same levels
can be traded as the price gets rejected.

So, if traders expect a level to hold,
they will trade

This relates to the likely imminent announcement from earlier here.The matter is still being discussed as the details are yet to be sorted out but it will be the first foray by the EU into sanctioning Russian energy, although it doesn’t touch on oil and gas just yet – which are the more important on

Does not reject possibility of Putin-Zelensky meetingBut only possible once there has been an agreementRussia not in a rush to switch all payments in rubles for exportsWell, negotiations continue to drag on and it remains to be seen if an agreement can be struck between the two sides. For now, marke

The CAC 40 index is down 1.3% on the day now with French government bonds also slipping further on the day. 10-year French bond yields are up 9 bps to 1.10% currently as it appears that investors are waking up to looming election risks.One of the latest opinion polls shows that far-right candidate,

To ban all coal imports from RussiaTo ban export to Russia of semiconductors, high-tech machinery, LNG extraction tech, other equipmentExport ban represents value of €10 billion per yearTo ban import from Russia of wood, cement, rubber, chemicals; estimated €5 billion per yearTo add dozens of other

An update on the COVID-19 situation in Shanghai. Be aware that lockdown measures in areas affected have been extended for another 10 days on Friday.

That’s quite the boost and makes Twitter one of the big movers before the open later today. For some context, the stake makes Elon the single largest shareholder in Twitter. Here’s a list of the other names (h/t @ itsTarH):

Just last week, Musk asked about creating a new social media platform b