Melvin Backman

Oil prices are rising! Both international benchmark Brent and West Texas Intermediate have not only risen above the $30 level, but $31.

As a general rule, the Russian ruble goes as oil goes. And with Brent prices crashing below $29 a barrel for the first time since 2003, the ruble has repeatedly hit new record lows this year. One unit of Russian currency buys about 1.2 US pennies, or $0.012.

This post has been corrected.

The International Monetary Fund just cut its expectations for global output by 0.2 percentage points for both 2016 (now 3.4%) and 2017 (now 3.6%). It’s the third time the IMF has cut its forecast in less than a year.

After a brief respite yesterday (Jan. 14), global stocks have gone right back into a nosedive. The S&P 500 is off about 2.3% in early trading, and another poor performance would cap what has been a rotten week around the globe. “Sell everything,” indeed.

It was a blue Christmas at Best Buy. The $11 billion in revenue that the electronics chain brought in during the nine weeks ended Jan. 2 was down 3.6% from the previous year’s holiday shopping season.

AB InBev, owner of a massive portfolio of beer brands including Budweiser and Becks, is expected to sell $46 billion worth of bonds to finance its purchase of fellow beer giant SAB Miller, per the Financial Times (paywall). According to Dealogic data, that would be the second-biggest offering ever, behind Verizon’s $49 billion deal in 2013 that landed it the other half of Verizon Wireless.

After months and months and years and years of lobbying, America’s oil industry finally got Congress to lift a ban on oil exports in December. The Wall Street Journal notes (paywall) that the first such sanctioned shipment got loaded up on New Year’s Eve in Texas and that plenty more are on the way.

South Africa’s currency is heading south—fast. Per Bloomberg, the rand hit a record low on Monday (Jan.11), falling below $0.06. It has lost more than 60% of its strength against the US dollar since its most recent peak in May 2011.

Falling oil prices have taken their toll on many things, including inflation, junk bonds, petrocurrencies, and the budgets of entire nations. Another victim? Train traffic. As the Financial Times notes (paywall), oil shipments by rail have been decreasing as the commodity’s glut keeps building.

Here we are again.

The Federal Reserve’s December decision to hike its target interest rate above zero was a big deal. Huge deal. We even made a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion. Now that the dust has settled, investors, economists, and layman central bank watchers alike are going to be watching to see what’s going to happen next.

Prices for Brent crude oil, the commodity’s international benchmark, just hit a new 11-year low and is trading below $35 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, is still above its financial crisis-era low, but it’s also below $35 a barrel. This is the first time both contracts have been under $35 at the same time since 2004.

Another gun control measure, another rally for gun stocks.

Brazil logged a $7 billion trade surplus in December, which the Financial Times noted is a record (paywall). In normal times that’d be a cause for celebration, as it would show robust international demand for a country’s products and send investor cash pouring in to chase it.

Angola’s economy is in a rough spot, and its currency just hit a record low against the US dollar following its latest devaluation, Bloomberg reports.

Rough Chinese economic data pointing to a further slowdown in manufacturing shook up Chinese markets, triggering a recently installed circuit breaker that cut off the SSE Composite’s losses at just under 7% before things could get much worse. It was the index’s worst single-day performance since the market crash back in August.

The champagne industry has a lot to celebrate this New Year’s Eve: it might have just had its best-selling year ever.

Warren Buffett had his first bad year in a while.

Between the height of America’s financial bubble in 2007 and 2013, black representation in Chicago’s finance industry fell by more than 20%.

As oil continues to test new decade-lows, it continues to take a lot of stuff down with it. Yesterday, it was Saudi Arabia’s government finances, and today it’s the Russian ruble. The currency is now worth less than less than $0.014, a record low.

Saudi Arabia’s finance ministry projected a record 2015 budget deficit (pdf) of SAR367 billion ($98 billion) this morning (Dec. 28), and it said next year’s might be as big as SAR326 billion.