Contango

Update: *WTI CRUDE TRADES AT LOWEST INTRADAY PRICE SINCE MARCH 2009 - $43.57

Despite 'trouble' in Saudi Arabia, and chatter of SPR buying, it appears the re-opening of all Houston shipping channels, comments from Greenspan, yet another refinery shut (Exxon's Joliet lost power), and the rapidly filling storage capacity has awakened the realization that the month-long dead-cat-bounce is over in crude. Brent broke below $53.50 and WTI back to a $43 handle (close to the lowest levels in 6 years) at the open. One can only imagine the pressure on USO (Oil ETF) holders as the contango continues to gap wider. EURUSD is teasing the crucial 1.05 level again...

Having recently explained why the stock market is extremely overvalued (in his own words by Fed-driven multiple expansion alone), Alan Greenspan - seemingly brimming over with the need to remedy his years of lies/mistruths with some uncomfortable truthiness - is now taking on the US Dollar ("it is not from a strong US economy but a weak rest of the world") and oil prices (America has a massive surplus of oil and there may soon be nowhere to store all of it, "we'll be lucky if we can get $40 for it.")

There is a possibility of a nuclear deal being agreed between the P5 + 1 nations and Iran next Friday, 20th March. This may be the precursor for energy stocks to recouple to downside and for spending cuts to spread from capex to dividends for majors.

"We believe that the key force pushing commodity markets higher has been retail investor inflows into oil ETFs [and] apart from the obvious disconnect between recent price trends and physical fundamentals, the rationale of going long oil on an expected normalization or 'mean reversion' also suffers from an incomplete view of how commodity returns are generated," Goldman says on the way to predicting further weakness for crude.

Front-month crude oil futures just plunged to new 6-week lows and a $46 handle. The April-May (J-K) spread has soared... no immediate catalyst for this move so we suspect it is Oil ETF and futures-roll-driven flow.

On Friday we warned that massive retail inflows into the largest crude oil ETF were about to collide head-on with the widest contango in four years leading, in all likelihood, to “carnage.” Here's what happened.

Oil storage capacity in the US is now at 60% and is set to be completely exhausted in just three months. With storage at a premium, the contango breakeven trade will become increasingly more unprofitable and come June, each incremental barrel will have to be dumped on the market forcing prices lower.

As noted earlier, starting early with the overnight session there was already some serious fireworks in Asia, when first the USDJPY soared then tumbled, pushing the Nikkei lower some 0.7% with it, driven entirely by the surge in Dollar which rose to a fresh 12 year high overnight after gaining as much as 0.59%, in an extension of Friday’s post-NFP gains. Additionally, the EUR/USD slipped below 1.0800 to touch its lowest level since Sept’03 while USD/JPY rose above 122.00 for the first time since Jul’07, after breaching long-term resistance at 121.85. However, in recent trade the pair has seen a straight line sell-off which in turn has sent US equity futures sliding, and the ES down about 14 points as of this moment. Meanwhile, the frontrunning of the ECB continues, with German 10 Year yields sliding -3bps to 0.281%, the lowest in series history. Also touching fresh record lows were Austrian, Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, Irish, Italian, Spanish 10 Year rates.

The consequence will not be eternal virtual prosperity, but rather a wrecked accounting system for the operations of civilized human life. We’ve stepped across the event horizon of that consequence, but we just don’t know it yet. Our bet is that we start feeling the effects sooner rather than later; and when it is finally felt, all the Kardashian videos in this universe and a trillion universes like it will not avail to distract us...

As we noted over the weekend when we showed a simple contango math calculation by SocGen according to which storage costs imply another 20% drop in Brent prices, now none other than Goldman - which has been oddly bearish on oil over the past few weeks - says that its Brent forecast remains at $40/bbl for two simple reasons: i) the global inventory glut is set to resume and ii) it's the weather's fault there has been a slowdown in the crude build-up.

The availability and cost of floating storage, and the magnitude of the crude oil contango will be critical in helping form the price path of oil," Soc Gen says. If that's the case, we could see crude go far lower over the coming months.

Shares outstanding in the U.S. Oil Fund are nearing record levels even as the premium between the second- and first- month contract has ballooned to a four-year high.

With production and inventories at record levels despite the total collapse in rig counts, all eyes remain on Bake rHughes data for any signal the algos can use to mount a run. The total rig count fell for the 12th week, down 43 to 1267. This 3.3% decline is the slowest drop in 6 weeks and oil prices are sliding on this news. The key level to watch for WTI is $48.24 which moves it into the red for the 8th month in a row. WTI Contango and Brent-WTI spreads continue to surge.

Yesterday we exposed the deja vu-ness of the API vs DOE inventory price moves in WTI. Today we begin to get some confirmation as a growing divergence between excess supply (and weak demand) for WTI and rising demand for Brent push the spread over $11 and the contango above $2...