One of the stories of the past few months in markets has been the weather. In Europe and North American, it's been a remarkably mild winter but just how warm has it been?
JPMorgan is out with a population-weighted measure of heating degree days for the northern hemisphere and it shows it's the second-warmest in the past 50 years.
I certainly don't remember 2020 being that warm but there was a lot going on that winter.
What may also be notable is that this includes the entire northern hemisphere and it's been decently-cold in China and Russia this year, so if you weight it towards western Europe and North America, it's probably more stark.
We've all see what this has meant for natural gas but what's uncertain is what it's done for broader consumer sentiment and spending. Those have been good but is that weather or something else in the economy?