Crude oil prices are crashing after Israel attacked Iran but avoided their oil infrastructure. Yet as we do in most war scenarios, we sell the fact, the reality is that we never really bought the rumor in the first place. Ok, maybe call options were elevated and we did fluctuate with some bullish headlines, but really the selloff in the aftermath of the attack should be a buying situation, at least to go fill the weekend gap down. Cheap last week and were great to be short or protect long positions. The lower Bollinger 6694 and may be an area of support.
Israel is declaring victory and has said it has ended its airstrikes against Iran. Israel’s Defense Minister Gallant declared that:
“Hezbollah and Hamas are no longer effective proxies of Iran.” Yet while Israel and Iran are signaling that it is all over, will Isreal let this opportunity go to bury its arch-enemy Iran? Or are they going to wait until after the US Presidential election to finish the job? Iran downplayed the extent of the damage, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying the attack “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”.
The crack spread went crackers; surging then dropping. Perhaps now that we have clarity surrounding Israel arrack on Iran we can focus on supply and demand fundamentals that are not as bad as some would have you believe. Global oil demand is at all-time high while product inventory in most cases is below the 10-year seasonal average. Beware if we get a cold winter because we could see a supply squeeze.
The latest electric car news. Oil price Irina Slav reported that South Korean battery major LG Energy Solution has reported a 40% drop in third-quarter profits, resulting from slowing demand for battery cars. The figure that the company reported, at about $323 million, was higher than analysts had forecast, but it was 40% lower than the profit figure for the third quarter of 2023.
In Europe natural gas price has been surging with some cold weather news. In the US, Henry Hub prices rose by 13% last week. We saw some LNG maintenance this week and while some people were turning on the air conditioners others were turning on heaters. The technicals have held up pretty good and the market is really focused on whether this rally in natural gas can be maintained. There’s a lot of skepticism because production is still high but if we do get a blast of cold weather like that could keep this rally alive.