The Brent oil price rallied last night on not much, up 2% or so to $48.58. News was limited but as John Kemp shows this is likely to be more shorts being squeezed out, from Reuters:
Hedge funds continued to pare short positions in U.S. crude oil last week even as the previous short-covering rally ran out of steam.
The unusual concentration of hedge fund short positions built up between June and August has been partially unwound, reducing some of the persistent selling pressure evident in the market during the third quarter.
Speculators are not yet ready to bet heavily on a rebound in prices but the bearishness that dominated the market over the summer is dissipating.
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
Hedge funds continued to pare short positions in U.S. crude oil last week even as the previous short-covering rally ran out of steam.
