De-risking in Preparation for Escalation | S6 E19

Looking at the past week, the oil market was too long and had to de-risk.

Brent Futures saw a week of stagnation and mean reversion, $90/bbl oil was very short lived and sell-off was driven by speculative positioning cycles as market participants took off length amid a waning geopolitical premium.

Looking to the refinery margin change, Dated Brent was weaker than last week and is now seeing a little bit of support, whilst gasoil continued to weaken. Martha notes the difference between the straight run and more complex products including some interesting moves in VGO prices.

The ones to watch this week are gold and tech stocks. Gold broke higher out of the $2080 resistance level the same week S&P and Nasdaq topped. However tech stock giant, Nvidia was down 21.8% from all-time highs on the week.

The big stories to follow in our "Googling Oil" segment this week are; US reimposing oil sanctions on Venezuela after broken election promises and Louisiana State University allowing Shell to influence studies after a $25m donation.

The Trade Idea for this week is to go long May Gasoline E/W.

Don't forget to check out Macro Mondays with James Brodie here: Macro Mondays with James Brodie

If you would like to connect with any of our hosts on LinkedIn, please click on the hyperlinks below:

Greg Newman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/oilderivatives/

James Brodie:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesbrodiecmt/

Martha Dowding:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/martha-dowding-ab84801a6/

Vincent Wu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-wu-099816125/

Chapters for this episode are: 
0:00 Welcome 
1:08 Brent Futures
6:25 Refinery margins
11:43 This week in trading 
17:13 Macro market news 
26:29 "Googling oil:" world oil news 
34:36 Trade idea of the week 
39:17 Poll results, gold prices, and outro