Crude

It is no secret that Zero Hedge follows every utterance by Goldman Sachs (Morgan Stanley, not so much - it is sad just how irrelevant MS has become when it comes to swaying any opinion at all) as pertains to the firm's outlook on various commodities, simply because by the very nature of the firm's trading operations, whereby its prop desk (yes, Goldman's prop desk is alive and well) controls a substantial amount of the actual commodity outstanding (in either paper or physical form) and then advises clients to do the opposite of what the firm itself is doing. In essence: using its economy of scale (or monopoly, however one wishes to define it), Goldman can sway the market this way and that with one simple "client" note. The recent fiasco whereby Goldman downgraded Brent in April only to upgrade it in May using the very same assumptions, is nothing more than just the latest example of what we have claimed over and over is outright market manipulation. Today, we find we are not alone after Oppenheimer's Fadel Gheit accused the firm of precisely the same thing on Bloomberg TV: "Whether or not they are influencing the market and manipulation could be
a stronger word, but they are influencing the market. They are doing
things that could be beneficial to them but harmful to the rest of us.
That is where government comes in and says stop, enough. You have a
Ferrari or a Maserati and can go 120 mph, but guess what? Those of us
who can only go 60 miles per hour will be pulverized. That is where the
government has to come in and say there is a speed limit here, but that
is not happening." Of course, if Oppenheimer was large enough and influential enough to do what Goldman does, we are 105% confident Fadel would be singing a totally different tune.

Anyone remember that rapid succession of brent downgrades by Goldman last month which did nothing until the CME and the administration launched an all out war on speculators a relentless barage of crude margin hikes? Well, uber momo Goldman sure doesn't. Just out from David Greely: "While near-term downside risk remains as the oil market negotiates the slowdown in the pace of world economic growth, we believe that the market will continue to tighten to critical levels by 2012, pushing oil prices substantially higher to restrain demand. Events in the Middle East and North Africa are having a persistent impact, which leads us to increase our oil price targets We expect that the ongoing loss of Libyan production and disappointing non-OPEC production will continue to tighten the oil market to critically tight levels in early 2012, with rising industry cost pressures likely to be felt this year. We are now embedding in our forecasts that Libyan production losses will lead to the effective exhaustion of OPEC spare capacity by early 2012. Consequently, we are raising our Brent crude oil price forecast to $115/bbl, $120/bbl, and $130/bbl on a 3, 6, and 12 month horizon." Welcome back volatility. CME petroleum product margin reduction in 5...4...3...

Contrary to conventional wisdom, America does not import the bulk of its crude from the volatile middle east region, but from its sleepy and unremarkable northern neighbor (by a factor of two compared to the second largest source of crude). Which is why the recent eruption of pervasive wildfires in Alberta, which have substantially disrupted production, probably should have far more of an impact on crude risk perception than what happens to 2 million of daily crude output out of Libya, most of which does not even reach the US. From Reuters: "Canadian heavy crude prices have changed little despite wildfires raging in northern Alberta and forcing production cuts, showing there is plenty of supply in storage, market sources said on Wednesday. Western Canada Select heavy blend for June delivery fetched around $17.30 a barrel under benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude, close to levels of a week ago. Dozens of forest fires that have spread in recent days have led to the shutdown of more than 100,000 barrels a day of output in the north-central Alberta region, most of it due to the outage of the 187,000 barrel a day Rainbow pipeline. The southern leg of the line, operated by Plains All American Pipeline LP, was shut due to the blazes. The northern leg has been out of service since a rupture and oil spill in late April." Perhaps the reason why none of this is perceived as a risk is that for about a decade now neither supply nor demand have actually been factors in determining equilibrium prices, which in turn is defined almost exclusively by the amount of free liquidity in the system, and correspondingly, speculator, and margin, scapegoating.

Following various outright margin hikes in commodities such as precious metals and crude, the CME is now moving on to swaps and other interproduct and intraproduct contract pairs. As of a few minutes ago, the CME just hiked the CL intraproduct spreads Tier 1 through 6 for both New and Initial Margins by about 33.3%, and assorted other CL pairings by a lower amount. It also did the same for a variety of RBOB contract intraproduct spreads by a comparable amount. Curiously, intercommodity spreads actually declined between gold, silver and copper pairings by anywhere from 10% and 20%. For now the market appears not to be reacting to this latest margin move by the CME.

With the record retreat in crude oil prices, many consumers are expecting big retail price drops by Memorial Day weekend. But this time around, the decoupling of gasoline and crude oil would mean gasoline prices may be harder to drop.

Once again someone forgot to tell gas station operators that the CME is doing all it can to generate a feedback loop which kills commodity prices and general price stability (price plunges, vol surges, leading to margin hikes, leading to more plunges, leading to even more vol and even more margin hikes, etc). After gas prices rose by about a cent yesterday, the rise according to AAA continues, with average gas prices on the verge of a post 2008 high, even as crude prices have taken a nearly $20 hit in the past two weeks. Yesterday the average regular price was $3.984, up from $3.962 yesterday, and unchanged from a week ago.

Today is shaping up to be an identical replica of the action from last Thursday as seen on the chart below. That's two flash crashes in less than a week. Whether this is driven by another margin hike known only to the CME and its closest, or due to news from Reuters that 17 senators have written to the CFTC to immediately crack down on excessive speculation in crude oil, is unclear, and largely irrelevant. The outright campaign to stomp out any non-stock trading is in full force. The message is clear: the only place where investors can henceforth put their money in is in stocks.

When we presented the first casualties emerging from last week's crude crash we predicted that in addition to Clive and Astenbeck, many more would soon crawl out of the woodwork. Sure enough, the WSJ discloses that London-based, $2.4 billion BlueGold commodities hedge fund is so far the winner in the loser category, dropping a whopping 20% so far in May, and once again confirming that in a market that only goes up, hedging is for wimps. This is the firm's worst downturn ever. But even the shellacking experienced has done nothing to dent the firm's conviction that fundamentals, once margin hikes and other "risk mitigation" features come and go, are as strong as ever. From the WSJ: "Despite the upheaval, the firm, led by Pierre Andurand, is exiting few positions, according to someone close to the matter. He remains bullish on oil prices, predicting that oil could hit a record $180 a barrel over the next few years, according to this person." This is all fine, but we keep banging our heads over this simple question: Just how will Joe Lavorgna be able to spin $180 oil as bullish for the economy?

And crude jumps to pre-margin hike levels. But please don't be too hard on the CME Herr President (in keeping with the whole "Weimar" theme). After all, it took them 5 consecutive tries to kill silver. We expect at least the same number before we get crude back to a price where China can wave it all in for pennies on the dollar.

Some brilliant Chicago-based exchange apparatchik just ask himself this simple question: "If it worked so well with silver, why not do it with crude?" The answer is here: the CME, as we predicted last week, just hiked initial and maintenance margins on Crude and Brent by 25%, as well as FX, and other petrochemicals. And, oh yes, this is prudent risk management, because while the CME kept margins flat when WTI was at $115, the massive spike from $97 to $102 is unbearably destabilizing. At this point one can only stand back and watch as the CME proceeds with hike after hike, in an absolute vacuum from the administration, which certainly had nothing to do with this decision. And really who cares: free capital markets died on March 18, 2009.

A tremendous report by Reuters' Matthew Goldstein, Svea Herbst, Jennifer Ablan, Emma Farge, David Sheppard, Claire Milhench, Zaida Espana, Robert Campbell and Josh Schneyer, identifies that while the shaky macroeconomic conditions and an overbought market were among the key reasons for last week's history crude rout, the match that caused an unseen before plunge in commodities was, you guessed it, "computers." Naturally, this is not unexpected to Zero Hedge readers who have been warned about the massive instability of a market comprised almost entirely of unsupervised algos, since the spring of 2009 (a phenomenon which the CFTC and SEC will not "comprehend" and/or change, until it is too late). Additionally, in addition to the previously identified losses at Clive Capital and Andrew Hall's latest plaything, Reuters also identifies BlueGold, Winton Capital and FTC. Basically, throw out a name that has energy exposure (let's not forget Touradji or Centaurus) and you likely have a winner. Must read.

And another huge hit to future oil supply. After Goldman released a report on Friday, backtracking on its April recommendation that clients sell crude, instead warning that "critically tight supply-demand fundamentals" will likely cause oil prices to "return to or
surpass the recent highs by next year", "should Libyan oil supplies remain off the market", which it now appears they will considering Gadaffi is winning the Libyan civil war against the West-backed rebellion, here comes a stunner out of Iraq which has just slashed its 2017 oil production estimate from 12 million barrels to just 6.5-7 million bbpd. Oddly enough, Iraq is being rational: "Baghdad believes it would not be in its interests to try to achieve the
12 million target by 2017 because boosting global supply would depress
prices." Who would have though a cartel would think of itself first... Surely, this is great news for Saudi Arabia which will promise to hike oil production and replace the missing output only for it to be discovered a few months later that not only did it not to do that (as we just discovered now following the whole Libya fiasco), but that it just does not have the excess capacity. And, of course, "speculators" will be blamed once they take WTI from $97 to $140 daring to discount the future price of oil in a (inflationary) world in which demand increases by 50% over a decade, even as supply continues to trickle down with each passing year. In other words, the CME margin hike crew is actively studying how many margin hikes it will take to break the back of the recently record number of non-commercial net specs... for at least a week or two, especially once the Chairman goes to town with the printer Turbo button. And elsewhere, the upcoming scarcity of lubricating petroleum byproducts is about to be felt through the entire supply (and demand) chain.

And so the margin hike rumor mill shifts from silver to crude. Pretty soon nobody will dare to invest any capital in commodities (or FX) for fear of an imminent 100% margin spike by the exchanges, causing the S&P to trade at 100x P/E, and letting China buy up every commodity at a 50% off. Another brilliant ploy to preserve the wealth effect while not accounting for any possible side effects of Printocchio's actions.

Has the time, when the end of QE is ultimately priced in, finally arrived? Following another steep sell off in silver, matched only by the decimation in Chinese stocks, it appears margin calls have finally come to crude, which just plunged by $2 in seconds. And if the answer is yes, is this the expected rotation from the inflationary to deflationary mood which is so very critical for Bernanke to launch his third and final QEasing episode? Expect a major spike in real vol (not VIX) here if we have finally come to the inflection point.

And so once again rumors of silver's demise appear largely exaggerated: after plunging 15% last night, getting all the top callers to once again proclaim victory after having been wrong for the good part of about one decade, silver has since retraced a key Fib level and has now recovered over two thirds of the drop. At this rate, at least a few more margin hikes will be desperately needed today to throw all available speed bumps in the path of the unstoppable metal. In the meantime as expected last night's forced plunge was a gift for anyone who bought at $42 and has made over 10% already. Elsewhere, crude is approaching $115, after hitting $110 overnight. So much for the bin Laden inverse rally in commodities.