Trader’s Narrative

Last summer I showed the inflation adjusted price of crude oil - below is the updated chart:

Source: Chart of the Day

It really puts last year’s crude oil bubble into proper perspective. Not only was it about 30% more intense than the 1970’s oil shock, it towers over the other price spikes we’ve seen.

What is even more peculiar is that this bubble was entirely artificial. It was not due to any geopolitical rationale, nor was it because of a supply/demand imbalance. It was entirely concocted out of thin air by large traders.

The world economy was fragile because of excess credit and speculation. Oil was the first domino to topple and knock the others down by slowing down the economy to reveal the rot under the surface. If it wasn’t the main cause of the worldwide economic slowdown, it was definitely one of the leading reasons for its severity. Although the connection needs no explanation, you can clearly see that every single recession was either preceded by or coincided with a large increase in the price of oil.

The crazy part of all this is that no sooner had the dance ended that the same players started dancing all over again. Hedge funds and large players are once again stampeding back into crude oil and commodities. After bottoming in February 2009, crude oil has doubled in price! That’s a little over 3 months ago!

And once again, there is absolutely no rationale for such a move. What? Have we suddenly lost our previous reserves of oil? is production somehow curtailed by war? or geopolitical unrest? or perhaps the market believes that the world will suddenly consume much more oil than it did before the recession?

As a trader, we don’t really care whether there is a legitimate move or manipulated by deep pockets. But at the same time, if you’re going long and letting the trend take you for a ride, just remember the difference between turkeys that get caught up in a tornado and eagles. One comes down to earth with a thud. The other soars majestically, landing at a time and place of its choosing.

A few weeks before crude oil topped out at $147.90 in July 2008, I kept pointing out that something was just not right with that market. In “What is Really Going on With the Price of Crude Oil?” I pointed out the role of large institutional funds and a few days later I showed a graph of the inflation adjusted price of crude oil which should have put the question to rest.

Follow the above link to see the chart because I truly marvel at how anyone could have looked at that and not realized that what we were seeing was not “peak oil” but the same imbalance that any run of the mill bubble produces. The 2008 run-up dwarfed both the late 1970’s oil shock and the 1991 Persian Gulf war spike.

Since then, we’ve seen the great unwinding of that frenzy take oil down to $35 - less than a quarter of its high in 2008. But now hedge funds and large institutional traders are, once again, returning to commodities in a big way. Below is a chart of the large speculators’ net long positions according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission:

Source: Bloomberg

Of course this shows all 20 major commodities monitored by the CFTC. Oil is in there somewhere having recovered its 200 day moving average, and risen 85% from its low in late 2008. But the money is flowing to agricultural products, metals and softs as well.

All that it will take is for the large speculators to pile on as they did before and the commodity bull will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. While that may nip the ‘green shoots’ it may also cancel out any remaining deflationary pressures.

In June when crude oil closed above $138, I featured the chart below, showing that adjusted for inflation crude oil was not only exhibiting classic bubble behavior, but that it dwarfed previous oil spikes:

The next day as Texas tea ramped up the most dollars in its trading history, I mentioned that even if we looked at crude oil priced in gold, it was expensive:

…which would imply that if this ratio has any significance, a top in oil is close at hand.

It took a few weeks until the top was put in oil at ~$148 in mid July. But as of now it is down approximately 27%

A quick glance at the chart shows previous resistance, now support, at the round number $100. When or if, oil continues to fall, it will provide relief for the economy. As for whether the spike up was manipulation, normal market dynamics, a bubble, etc. I’ll leave you to explore that for yourself.

You can find a lot of links about oil and the price of oil here.

What can possibly explain the behavior of the price of oil? The Senate committee has heard testimony from a variety of sources and a variety of viewpoints ranging from accusing the regulators to be tacit participants in market manipulation to “Peak Oil”.

This same sort of back and forth happens whenever we have bubbles forming. There are always those who argue that it is simply a speculative mania, and then there are the true “believers” who bring arguments and evidence why things have changed.

To show you how difficult it is to make any sense of this, consider that two very smart and very wealthy investors find themselves on opposite sides of the argument: George Soros believes there is a bubble, while his ex-partner, Jim Rogers, feels the opposite is true.

But it isn’t difficult to see why many believe that the price of oil no longer represents a true picture of the value of this commodity; after all, it has more than doubled within the span of less than two years:

Note that the chart above is using a logarithmic axis for price and even then you can see that the slope of the rise from 2007 to present is much steeper than that between 2002 - 2006. Here’s an even more long term chart of crude, this time adjusted for inflation:

Source: St. Louis Fed (FRED database)

Oil Shock
This chart clearly shows that the world economy is undergoing a severe “oil shock”. One that pales in comparison to ones which we’ve seen so far in either the Gulf War or the 1979 Iranian Revolution (or the 1973-4 oil embargo - not shown on chart). Which goes a long way in explaining why consumer sentiment is at multi-decade lows.

One of the defining characteristics of a mania is a parabolic chart: increasingly steep price curve within a shorter and shorter time frame. And clearly, that is what we are seeing. While there may be disagreements whether this is really a bubble, what most can not deny is that the rise we have seen so far is just unsustainable if projected into the future.

Perfect Storm
My gut feeling is that we are seeing a confluence of forces, among them, long only commodity funds, a weak dollar, negative real interest rates (which always increase commodity prices) and demand from an increasingly voracious industrial complex in China and India.

But the fact that the increase in price has come in such a short time and it has been so incredibly sharp tells me that it can not be simply explained by the usual market forces of demand and supply. Something else must be at work to drive the price of crude as high as it has done within such a short time span. But only time will reveal what exactly what that “something else” is.

If you doubt that bubbles can not form in “real assets” then you’ve probably overlooked a lot of examples from history: the Japanese real estate bubble, gold, silver, etc. And if you believe that market manipulation is impossible or the overworked imagination of conspiracy theorists, then I would remind you of the California electricity crisis in 2000.

Silver Lining
If the price of oil here truly represents real demand and supply the potential silver lining on such a cloud is that it will not only change people’s consumption habits, it will spur on the development of better alternative energy sources. This is what I don’t understand, if you are a dyed in the wool “peak oil” believer, why invest in a dying industry? why not invest in those companies which will rise up out of the ashes and propel us forward? or do the “peak oilers” believe we are going to regress technologically?

Or consider it another way, if you were to go back in time, would you try to corner the whale oil market? or invest in Texas oil fields?