Investors turned more bearish on oil last week than ever

Unfavorable sentiment prompted quick positions on Brent crude to overhaul lengthy positions for the primary time.
| Photograph Credit score: REUTERS

Buyers had been extra bearish than ever on crude oil final week, deepening a months-long selloff that pressured costs to multi-year lows amid rising issues of weak demand in prime consuming nations.

Unfavorable sentiment swept oil markets so strongly that quick positions on Brent crude overtook lengthy positions for the primary time, information from the Intercontinental Change confirmed on Friday. Brief positions—bets on decrease costs—totaled 164,223 contracts, whereas lengthy positions, or bets on increased costs, amounted to 151,543 contracts, the information confirmed.

“This historic speculative promoting stress prompted a greater than $10/bbl collapse in crude costs between late-August and this previous Tuesday,” Commodity Context analyst Rory Johnston wrote.

Buyers’ oil outlook has soured as demand development for the commodity has failed to fulfill the lofty ranges of current years, pressured by turmoil in prime importer China’s economic system. Provides have additionally overwhelmed markets this 12 months, with U.S. oil producers pumping report quantities of oil.

Brent crude futures closed at $72.75 a barrel on Tuesday, down greater than 20% since this 12 months’s peak of greater than $90 a barrel.
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