Oil has been squeezed sideways into an ever tighter trading range held up by record hedge fund speculative buying and held down by record inventories...There's only one problem, speculator volume has collapsed...
Trump: You're the man...the best liar around hands down. Best Twinkie ever...
https://www.investing.com/economic-calendar/cftc-crude-oil-speculative-positions-1653
Record net speculative longs and record crude oil inventories. Two things that go great together...
Although Energy stocks don't seem to think so. We see where inventories (black) were the last two times Energy stocks peaked:
Here we see WTI in the upper pane with relative strength hugging the midline, just like mid-2015.
Since the New Year, ETF volume middle pane has collapsed as has realized volatility...
"It was a bad time for gasoline demand to implode"
Gasoline demand (red) 24 month moving average, with U.S. deficit aka. Hegemonic "GDP":
The world's largest and most profitable oil stock, has left the party following its historically colossal 19.3% reserves writedown last week.
In other words at these low prices, Peak oil is becoming a reality, as over-invested capital goes the way of the Hegemonic jobless consumer:
In addition, for the second straight year, Exxon failed to replace all the reserves it pumped—in 2016, it replaced just 65% of its produced reserves. In 2015, it replaced just 67%. Prior to these years, Exxon had replaced at least 100% of its production every year since 1993.
Thanks to Trump and all of the liars in the oil industry, hedge fund morons have zero chance of seeing it coming...
Oil VIX
This will be a deep burial as record oil market gambler capital gets sequestered amid limit down margin calls...
