Crude oil\u2019s rally is starting to sweep away the pessimists. After starting 2019 on a cautious tone, hedge funds last week slashed bets on falling Brent crude prices to the low- est level since mid-November, as they looked to get out the way of a recovery that pushed oil back into a bull market. Wagers on increasing prices climbed the most in a month, reversing course from last week. The global benchmark surged last week, as the US and China made progress in trade talks and Opec members reaffirmed its commitment to head off a supply glut. Money managers have turned alternately bullish and bearish on the rally in recent weeks, but the evidence for a sustained move higher is getting- ting harder to ignore, said Mark Waggoner, president of Oregon brokerage Excel Futures Inc. \u201cJust having another positive week is going to be huge for a lot of people\u2019s psyches, after we got so beat up last year,\u201d Waggoner said by telephone. \u201cI think you\u2019re going to see more of them coming on board this week.\u201d Brent has gained more than 20% since hitting an 18-month low in late December. Nonetheless, it\u2019s still down by almost a third since October and faces continuing pressure from the boom in US shale drilling and an uncertain economy. Prices fell for the first time in two weeks on Friday, retreating 2% to $60.48 a barrel. US crude prices finished the week up 7.6%, their best showing in six months. Data on hedge fund wagers for West Texas Intermediate crude weren\u2019t available due to the US government shutdown. Brent net-long positions \u2013 the difference between bullish and bearish wagers \u2013 climbed 3.8% to 158,146 options and futures contracts in the week ending January 8, the ICE Futures Europe exchange said on Friday. Most of the shift came from a 3.6% decline on contracts predicting a Brent drop. Bets on rising prices edged up 0.8%. They\u2019ve traded gains and losses for the past six weeks. Late December\u2019s more bearish stance \u201cwas more about hedge funds squaring their books after they\u2019d had a very bad year,\u201d said Frances Hudson, a global thematic strategist at Aberdeen Standard Investments in Edinburgh. Sentiment has improved markedly, she said in a telephone interview. \u201cThings seemed to have settled down a little bit in terms of production,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crude oil\u2019s rally is starting to sweep away the pessimists. After starting 2019 on a cautious tone, hedge funds last week slashed bets on falling Brent crude prices to the low- est…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,57,90,96,107,137,139,160,174,184,201,202,209,232,233,244,246,249,256,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}