What to say about fucking crude at this point?
It was just yesterday when some folks were suggesting that, in light of OPEC’s push to cap Libyan and Nigerian supply and on the heels of (super) bullish API data, “the bears [need] to start questioning their religion.”
Amusingly, that assessment came just hours after Goldman mused that prices could very well fall below $40.
Here’s how we put it:
This market has become so manic that bulls and bears alike are forced to “question their religion” at least twice a week.
We also noted that if last week’s action was any indication, you shouldn’t get too excited about the API print because first of all, it needed confirmation from the EIA data and on top of that, “one of the defining features of last week’s oil trade was crude’s inability to sustain a rally on ostensibly bullish inventory data.”
Well cue the EIA, which reported the following numbers a few minutes ago:
- Crude -7,564k Bbl, Median Est. -2,450k Bbl
- Cushing crude -1,948k
- PADD 3 crude -6,074k
- Gasoline -1,647k vs est. -534k
- PADD 1B gasoline -1,296k
- Distillates +3,131k vs est. +900k
- PADD 1 Distillates +2,329k
- Refinery utilization +0.9 ppt vs est. +0.4 ppt
- Refinery crude inputs +103k b/d
- Crude imports -132k b/d
- Crude production +59k b/d
So obviously production is still an issue, but give me a fucking break – that should be bullish. Alas….
Algos, crisis of confidence, incessant data parsing for something negative, or folks “questioning their religion”?
You decide.
