I have been ranting about this for awhile but indulge me again today.
The bottom fell out of crude oil around this time yesterday in a market that was otherwise stable -- FX, bonds and stocks weren't volatile. In addition, there was no published news on oil that could reasonably explain why it quickly fell to $73.87 from $76.00.
What happened? The private oil data from API leaked. It's been an issue for awhile and one I've written about before. It's a consistent pattern of selling oil on large builds around 6 hours before the API data, then covering when the news hits. That's why we had a pop today bringing crude right back to $76 before at 50-cent dip in the past few minutes. It's up $1.50 on the day.
Whoever is getting these numbers has surely made an absolute killing in the past few months because this pattern has played out over and over.
Up next is the EIA weekly data with the consensus at 2083K along with a 1126K draw in distillates and +106K in gasoline.
Here were the API numbers:
- Crude +9895K
- Gasoline +894K
- Distillates +1374K
In any case, there's reason to believe the official numbers will be more-bullish than API because there was a gigantic 16m barrel build last week in the official data due to a large adjustment factor. Something close to consensus would re-align them, but you never know with oil data as there have been some screwy things going on.
In the big picture, the $70-85 range persists and it's all noise until it breaks.
