Remember the Oil carnage last year?
Oil is up 35% from late December lows. As we wrote last year, the panic was very much driven by positioning in our view. Oil is trading at first big resistance levels. If this is to continue higher, we would need a break up asap, otherwise this risk becoming a wedge with falling momentum.
One of our main themes during the autumn was that practically every crowded trade got washed out. Latest stats regarding oil is showing slightly worrying trend. The crowd has been increasing “speculative longs” (histogram).
Equity “people” tend to focus on one theme only. Part of the autumn collapse was accompanied with a strong focus on oil. These days not many talk about oil, but the recent relative under performance of oil versus the SPX should be on the radar screen.
Source, charts by Bloomberg
