Member Info for Boyobach

Blimey JL - the 'Affair at Styles' - I had to look that up, the earliest of Christie's mysteries and one which I'd certainly forgotten about, assuming I must have come across it. No mystery about H: It was Boyo did it with the lead pipe in the library.

'Had its day' was a good title for your post. I think Covid-19 may well have started the last chapter for Oil and that 'Peak Oil' may just have happened. All G's windows of opportunity seem to have been destined to shut before it ever achieved any of the visions of Tony, Nat and the other fella.

Unfortunately Hasiba got very very upset when I suggested (genuinely without intending to cause offence) that he was partly a day trader and he hasn't posted since.
Being a day trader and a ramper (which he happily declared) are not crimes.
I assume everyone here trades - even those who are predominantly 'long' in G.

Regarding a quote attributed to John Kilduff , hedge fund manager, in Ocelot's post: “Some of this downward pressure particularly in the June contract is an increasing lack of liquidity,” This is surely only the case if lack of liquidity describes poor demand for a product that the US is over-producing. US refiners - the people who ultimately buy oil - have a choice of cheap oil from full-to-the-brim Cushing and a host of tankers moored off the coast . Why would they pay much more than the current spot price of $8 for a futures contract when there's plenty available promptly and a risk that they may have to store any contracted excess at relatively high cost? Do hedge funds buy and store physical oil? I somehow doubt it.

Oil prices have increasingly been influenced by CFD trading where the majority of participants probably never have any intention of accepting delivery or of selling onward the underlying commodity. When did we last have a crash associated with derivatives?

Correction:
Where is WTI really headed? Well it looks like $10 OR LESS to me at the moment.

So WTI (June) was supposed to recover towards $20 after last week’s debacle? Yeah right!

Since last Friday’s close, this is how the usual runners and riders have fared:
https://invst.ly/qlar9 (LCO replaced with ‘Spot’ due to the monthly issue with Investing.com switching to the next month ahead of schedule). G remains fairly flat, like the majors RDS and Chevron. GKP and DNO, meanwhile, appear to be more influenced by OP still.
But if you add WTI (June Futures and spot) to the picture then you get a vision of the hell that is ongoing:
https://invst.ly/qlauv
Where is WTI really headed? Well it looks like $10 to me at the moment, which would put Brent at around $17 - but WTFDIK as Hawkey would say.
https://invst.ly/qlb38

ICE LCO (June) has now been below $20 for a couple of hours, around $19.5 and $7 above WTI for June.

As I've mentioned a couple of times, Ocelot - WTI (June) must eventually converge with the spot price. This pretty obviously means downwards - the opposite of where the market apparently thought it would go after last week's implosion. This domino effect must then rattle through to other months on the 'super contango' curve. The US market has been fooling itself for weeks and its 'denial of reality' must eventually infect Brent pricing. Chart shows WTI Future v Spot: https://invst.ly/ql92f

The monthly roll-over to the next expiring month can cause the Front Month price (LCO for Brent) to move significantly. This week will see Brent LCO move over to the July contract as June’s expiry is the 30th April. So Brent switches some weeks ahead of WTI, which goes over to July in around three weeks time. Fortunately Brent’s pricing for adjacent months usually converges reasonably well towards the expiry date but it’s always worth keeping an eye on the upcoming contracts:

https://www.theice.com/products/219/Brent-Crude-Futures/data?marketId=222475

An unfortunate anomaly for those that use Investing.com is that they always switch their intra-day ‘LCO’ price data to the next month on the Sunday before expiry - so, as of today, they are using July’s price for Brent, which is currently about $3 higher than actual ICE LCO.

LiveCharts.co.uk price for Brent uses OANDA, a NY CFD, which seems to be more consistent with ICE LCO intra-day than Investing.com during this period.

Yes, Ocelot. I’m surprised to see that the WTI front month futures price (now for June delivery) apparently continues at more than double Friday's Spot price:
https://invst.ly/qktlj
I would have expected them to have converged by now. The market presumably thinks the low spot price in the US is a temporary anomaly and that last week's events will not repeat themselves. Yet with US production as high as your article suggests that confidence seems to be misplaced.

Thanks Ocelot- I watched a third party version which may not have been complete as I don't have an account.
It's a warning to not invest in things where you don't understand the risks. G is about as risky as I'll go. The fact that CME only recently changed their systems to allow negative pricing is 'interesting'.
This article exposes this a bit (link below to full piece):
At a time when prescience and anticipatory action are lacking pretty much everywhere, you’ve got to hand it to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in terms of timing.
CME had just changed its computer systems earlier this month to allow negative pricing in WTI, anticipating such a scenario, and many traders had discussed it as a possibility.… “It’s not a price that makes you feel good, but the reality is there is oversupply, there is under-demand that’s virus-driven, and there is nowhere to put the stuff.”
That is, you’ve got to hand it to them unless you are an oil company or widely-traded oil exchange-traded fund, in which case the move to allow oil futures to go sub-zero just like any other commodity contract looks less like foresight and more like foul play.
In a Tuesday letter signed by oil tycoon Harold Hamm, executive chairman of Continental Resources Inc., the company asked CME’s regulator, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to investigate whether “possible market manipulation, failed systems or computer programming failures” caused the drop into subzero prices.
https://dealbreaker.com/2020/04/cme-oil-below-zero

Do they have a choice? It makes no sense whatsoever to produce something that cannot be sold or stored. Flooding the market is one thing, but giving yourself the problem of mass storage is another.
A good indication that US storage is brim-full and exports from there have virtually stopped is illustrated by the way ‘export’ pipe lines between Cushing and the Coast are being reversed to allow oil to move the opposite way into storage and for some lines to be used purely for storage:
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Energy-Transfer-Asks-For-Permission-To-Turn-Pipelines-To-Oil-Storage.html
Meanwhile, if G's oil continues to flow through the pipeline to Ceyhan it implies it is still flowing to paying customers. If that pipeline stops flowing then the KRG won’t have any choice but to stop production.

G has been a trader’s delight over the last two days, just be aware that the closing price of 110 (UT - as Bunks pointed out) is the last tiny mark on the chart (arrowed). https://invst.ly/qkcxd
So is G now trading between 109 -117 or will it soon see100 again ? That probably depends on the fate of WTI.

Although Brent is the one that relates directly to G, it is WTI that attracts our attention these days. The landlocked supply of Shale oil to places like the vast storage in Oklahoma is currently the epicentre of global saturation - for what the US doesn’t import inevitably spills into global supply - not dissimilar to a blocked drain. So, with no demand to soak up supply, whatever happens to WTI must surely knock on to Brent.

This 15 minute chart from last Friday’s close purports to show, amongst all the others, WTI ‘spot’ - supposedly around $8 today?
https://invst.ly/qkco0
- I’m reliant on investing.com for that being the case - it’s difficult data to get hold of as most sources refer to the futures price or some derivative, so treat with caution.

So for Jack (Salad) I’ve dusted down the old G v 3xBrent chart:
https://invst.ly/qjwd2
Today the ratio is more like 5.2x and has been for three solid days. It almost seems like G was today responding to WTI Futures (June) rather than Brent, which is bizarre on a number of levels.
As stated earlier, I sold a few (28% in fact) around 117 and - from the chart - you might be able to hazard a guess as to where my next sell point is and where - if opportunity presents itself and I'm in the mood - I might buy back.

Could be Ocelot - I hope you are right, I confess to having many doubts.
ATB

Yup! So why are WTI futures sky high compared to today's spot price?
https://invst.ly/qjvwy
I'm assuming there are either lots of idiots or lots of people trying to extricate themselves from a market that has them by the short and curlies.....
We all know (don't we?) that demand for oil in June is unlikely to match the increase in inventories that is currently underway.
G should be on furlough unless/until the KRG have buyers at a price that does more than just cover costs.

I'd take that article with a big pinch of salt.
He says: For a while this week, sellers had to pay people forty bucks to take a barrel of crude.
Really? No - people had to roll contracts over in order to avoid taking delivery of something they never intended owning in the first place. If you order a car in advance and it turns up on your driveway and you decline the sale and pay to have it taken away does that change the value of the car? No - you pay the price for buying something stupidly.
The Saudis are attacking the global market with oil in tankers. Unlike WTI contained in big landlocked tanks in Cushing Oklahoma, the Saudi oil can be WTI or Brent or just about any other benchmark you care to name. But who owns it? The Saudis do unless they've got some mug to buy it on a futures contract. If oil does change hands for less than $0 then it'll be because some idiot bought it speculatively - ie without having a buyer lined up.

Yes - it's regrettable. And about nothing really - Hasiba seemed to think that GKP's performance yesterday made G seem dismal. I disagreed because GKP was effectively just catching up. So I then assumed he was talking from a trading perspective - but seems I was wrong about that. We both obviously have different views and we both think we are right - that's often how discussions go, especially if they are of any interest.
The market is in a crazy place right now. Today's rise in G and others is somewhat bizarre - yes, OP has seen a slight revival but G's sp had already absorbed a lot of downward movement by OP - so you don't ordinarily expect to see it lift until that drop has been nulled. Also, if you look at WTI Spot - there's still a big disconnect with WTI Futures, so Friday's drama will happen all over again unless the two narrow together before the next roll-over. Oil production is still not reigned-in nearly enough for my liking.

Well I sold a few earlier - it would seem rude not to given the craziness of the market.
There are four flavours of OP on this 15 minute chart of WTI lunacy from Friday’s close. At least Brent Futures and Spot are reasonably tight in relationship but WTI is another story altogether if this data is anything to go by:
https://invst.ly/qjsah

Some market headlines today talk of a surge in OP. I happen to think all the upbeat stuff is premature and bonkers given the real situation. To that extent I’m in the same camp as recent G poster Marfthew. There appears to be a disconnect with reality. Rather like the viral infection, I think OP and stocks could experience a couple of waves.

It's not a problem Ocelot. Crossed wires.
I happen to disagree with Hasiba's view that G's performance today was 'dismal' and, until he explained, I had difficulty understanding how he'd arrived at it.

Of course Hasiba - I'm a long-term holder as I always make clear, it seems you are day trader but you often write as if you are long-term. My posts are not generally intended for day traders and very rarely express a day-trader perspective. When G holds firm despite OP volatility I regard that as good. GKP was performing catch up today because it was **** yesterday - you may view that as good but I wouldn't.

I don't think you are reading the chart correctly. Here are G, DNO and GKP since Friday's close with all the other stuff cleared out of the way: https://invst.ly/qjc-h
GKP is the worst performer but not dismal, G happens to be best of the three.