Reasons to be Cheerful
It’s a little over two months since we issued the “Happy Oilly Christmas” note and the price of oil has duly complied with our wishes to keep rallying and now trades a full 10$ higher. Below is the daily chart of WTI Crude.
This rally has lasted 76 days thus far, typically you get a low to high to low within a 120 day range, so it might need to “take its foot off the gas” in the not too distant future before going higher.
Macro backdrops
Oil products account for roughly 43% of world energy output and the below diagram shows the scale of effort required by the world to move the renewable needle to impact conventional energy sources.
While the climate change agenda will go into overdrive in the next few years, oil will remain a significant component of energy output for a long time yet.
Below is the US 10-year bond yield chart. Here too, this market appears to be pausing before yields break higher. As discussed in a number of reports now, Central Banks have engineered a process whereby they will be behind the real interest rate curve for what looks like some considerable time to come.
The bond yield climb thus far has been protracted, there is a good possibility that the next move will be more dynamic. You can stretch the elastic band so far before it starts to lose that resistance to the breaking point! It has not been a big issue so far, but investors will focus more once it breaks. That in turn is likely to lead to portfolio rebalancing, reducing Bond exposure for other markets. Equities may see turbulence around this time, especially as many of the high growth FAANG stocks and the like are viewed as Bond proxies.
As always, capital goes to where its most secure and with Governments the world over under the cosh with the Coronavirus crisis, investors are increasingly likely to invest in tangible and liquid assets to de-risk their positions. As oil is by far the largest commodity in the world, it’s a great place to park large sums of capital and can be seen as a proxy for global growth and any potential inflationary instances that might occur.
Technicals
The above chart is monthly Crude, and we can clearly see that it has been in a declining wedge pattern over the past thirteen years. Current resistance on this chart is around 63$, so still some headroom.
The above chart is WTI daily. The current pause in the rally has been the longest in time since this rally started back in November and has only fallen back 23% of the rally from December 22nd to January 14th suggesting more strength ahead. While the daily oscillators look to be finding a low, the rally has kept the weekly oscillators at raised levels for now. That won’t prevent the oil price from moving higher in the near term.
Back in November we looked at BP shown above. The green line is a long-term resistance line that comes in around the £3.25 level which looks to have been robust for now, so that might be the breather level, we talked about earlier. BP’s Q4 results announced yesterday have disappointed the market. To put it another way, the market probably anticipated that BP would bounce back quicker than it has. With Oil breaking out from its one month pause, no doubt investors will be looking for stocks which have underperformed in this space.
©Simon Abel
simonabel@gatecapitalgroup.com
The views expressed are those of the author alone.
Any financial promotion or investment advice contained herein has been issued and approved by Gate Capital Group Ltd ("Gate Capital"); a firm authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA"). It is for informational purposes and is not an Official confirmation of terms. It is not guaranteed as to accuracy, nor is it a complete statement of the financial products or markets referred to. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to the opinions or recommendations of Gate Capital. Unless stated specifically otherwise, this is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell and any prices or quotations contained herein are indicative only.