Following futures positions of non-commercials are as of January 24, 2017.
Crude oil: Except for U.S. crude imports, which dropped 568,000 barrels per day to 7.8 million b/d, other major metrics in the weekly EIA report all leaned negative.
For the week of January 20, crude stocks rose 2.8 million barrels to 488.3 million barrels – a nine-week high. Gasoline stocks jumped 6.8 million barrels to 253.2 million barrels – the highest since February last year. And, distillate stocks were up 76,000 barrels to 169.1 million barrels.
Refinery utilization fell 2.4 percentage points to 88.3. Two weeks ago (93.6) was a four-month high.
Crude production inched up 17,000 b/d to 8.96 million barrels. This was the highest since April last year.
Wednesday, the day the EIA report came out, spot West Texas Intermediate crude fell, as did Monday. On Sunday news out that OPEC and non-OPEC producers had taken 1.5 million barrels per day out of the market. They had earlier agreed to output cut of 1.8 mb/d in the first half this year. Ideally, oil should have rallied on this.
From the February (2016) lows, spot WTI more than doubled, and looks fatigued. This week produced another doji – seventh in the last eight weeks.
In the meantime, non-commercials’ net longs rose to the highest since June 2014. Oil began a nasty drop in that month.
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