Good Morning and a Happy Columbus Day! Western Oppression began on this day 514 years ago. I for one will be celebrating with lots of Italian food!!!

Okay lets begin this morning as any healthy person would...charts of crude and crude verses the 10 year.




Note that crude and rates are moving in opposite directions...rates bottomed in July...Crude topped in July. The message here is that the bond market is focusing on the lower inflationary implications of falling oil. The question is has crude or is crude bottoming here and are rates bottoming...at least short term? Food for thought. Opec is going to cut production or at least they claim they will be cutting production. Will this stablize prices? And do mlps trade along in their own way? North Korea tests a nuke and tensions tightnen in the far east. Lots to ponder this morning.

Meanwhile no corporate developements and no upgrades or downgrades either. So in this semi-holiday enviorment we have lots going on. Stocks will open lower in the overall market. We will of course see where that takes us.

I usually will post charts of leaders. I thought this morning i'd look at 2 laggards, Atlas Pipeline Partners (APL) and Valero LP (VLI).





Both have been in very tight ranges over the past year. I'm not sure what the problem is with Atlas Pipeline (APL) other than falling nat gas prices. The stock is well hedged here. So if nat gas stablizes or rises it could be a positive. Valero on the other hand has only done one distribution increase in the last 5 quarters. They need to start growing the payout again to get the stock price moving. The have been optimistic about this for the second half of the year. This quarter should resolve this one way or the other.