Energy Market Updates

Another wild week!

Today saw a swift and decisive reversal of last week's out-of-nowhere rally on Crude, Commodities, and Stocks. Not too surprising, given there were really no changes in fundamentals that justified a rally of the magnitude we saw, outside of the ever present fear of supply disruptions whenever the East Coast faces major snowfall, and the market being technically oversold. 

Overnight and early trading on Crude was up - bolstered by the performance of the Chinese Markets (they went up instead of crashing hard enough to trigger the circuit breaker this time). US Stocks, bonds and equities all climbed along, and it looked like today was poised for a rally, or at least the proverbial "dead cat bounce"

Yesterday we saw a somewhat unexpected rebound on oil prices and the stock market - but it all came crashing down today. Crude has officially closed out under $30 per barrel - settling at $29.42, the lowest it's been in 12 years. RBOB closed off almost 5 to settle at $1.0212 - dangerously close to the $1 threshold, and ULSD continued its slide down another .0465 to $0.9343.

Yesterday, Crude briefly dipped below $30 per barrel for the first time in 12 years, before closing slightly over at $30.34. Crude was up on the overnights, as a result of the API forecast projecting draws of close to 4mmb.

The last day of trading in 2014 saw Crude close out at $53.27/bbl, which was down 45% from the prior year. 2015 continued the trend with WTI dropping another 30% over the year - with December 31, 2015 settling out at $37.04.

This past week has been a wild one.

And down we go again - today WTI closed down almost 3%  (the final close was 40.74), which is around an 8% loss on the week. Brent came within 2 dollars of a low not seen in over 6 years, and also ended the week at around an 8% loss, according to Reuters.

Today's EIA Inventory Report indicated that Crude Inventories were up 2.8 million barrels for the week ending October 30th, and the market reacted accordingly. API had forecast a build as well, so prior to the EIA release we were trending down about 1%, which accelerated to over 3% once the official numbers came out. 

Yesterday we saw the beginning of a reversal of last week's rally on more bad economic news from China that came out over the weekend. Specifically, manufacturing dropped again, remaining under the level that is seen as official contraction. Once again, this impacts the oil markets because we're counting on their demand remaining high, or even increasing. That doesn't happen when your manufacturing slows down. Monday settled down marginally with the exception of gasoline. (Crude at 46.14, ULSD down -.0098 to 1.5069 and Gas up 37 points to 1.3753).

Today however, was an entirely different story. At the close, ULSD settled at 1.5660 (+.0591), Gas was up (+.0702) to 1.4455, and Crude was up almost 4% to 47.90, with Brent settling up 3.5% to $50.51.