Andy Hall has been called the God of Oil. As chief of Astenbeck Capital, he has proven at times that even gods can be mortal. In the “rising dollar” period, for example, after making money on the way down Mr. Hall went bullish. That was March 2015: We suspect their projection of current prices into the future will again be frustrated by the market. For that reason we have closed out all of our bearish bets (at a...
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Summary: Steep falls in gasoline and oil prices. Large build in gasoline inventories and record refinery work shifted some surplus from oil to the products. OPEC is expected to roll over its output cuts, but non-OPEC may find it difficult and US output continues to rise. This Great Graphic, made on Bloomberg, shows the past six months of oil and gas prices. The white line is the June gasoline futures and the...
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The last time oil inventory grew at anywhere close to this pace was during each of the last two selloffs, the first in late 2014/early 2015 and the second following about a year after. Those events were relatively easy to explain in terms of both price and fundamentals, though the mainstream managed to screw it up anyway (“supply glut”). By and large, the massive contango of the futures curve that showed up as a result...
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Retail sales comparisons were for February 2017 skewed by the extra day in February 2016. With the leap year February 29th a part of the base effect, the estimated growth rates (NSA) for this February are to some degree better than they appear. Seasonally-adjusted retail sales were in the latest estimates essentially flat when compared to the prior month (January). That leaves too much guesswork to draw any hard...
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