Oil prices made the third sustained run above $50 that we have seen over the last 9 months. Although the week-to-week price changes have been quite volatile, it appears that long-run factors, particularly strong oil demand from China and other developing counries, is the major story here.
No sign yet of recession
The probability that the U.S. economy is experiencing a new economic recession remains below 5%, according to the latest value of the quarterly real-time GDP-based recession probability index.