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The U.S. stockpiles and U.S. crude oil production's return to its record 12.3 million barrels per day.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported crude-oil inventories dropped by around 300,000 barrels last week, to 476.49 million barrels.
As a result, the crude prices have gone under pressure from a much smaller-than-expected decline, Brent crude has dropped to $63.09, and is currently pairing those loses to the current $63.72 level, while WTI is attempting to bounce back at $55.41 levels.
The other driving forces of crude prices are:
Trump’s administration has pulled off a shocker by choosing not to renew any waiver on Iranian oil sanctions, while most of the market analysts expected quite a few other sanctioned countries to receive an upliftment of waivers.
Iran exported 1.3m bpd in March – the onus is now on the likes of Saudi Arabia and Russia to pick up the slack.
Contemplating the recent development, the odds of OPEC + continuing its supply curtailing program into 2H’2019 looks very slim.
Updates on crude oil derivatives trades: In crude oil segment, we initiated a risk reversal strategy by going long in Brent Dec’19 10D call versus short Dec’19 10D put. They also went tactically short Brent-Dubai Q3’19 swap spread due to mounting risks from Iran sanctions.
Currently, at spot reference of WTI: $55.25 levels, as the market tone is troublesome, we note that the continued decline in crude oil with WTI testing fresh lows in the minor trend and threatening below $55/bbl that makes the commodity-driven currencies also vulnerable.
Hence, we wish to activate WTI crude directional hedge, by adding shorts CME WTI futures for June delivery for arresting downside risks in short-run, simultaneously, go long in CME WTI futures of August’2019 month deliveries. Courtesy: JPM
Currency strength index: FxWirePro's hourly EUR spot index is inching towards 23 levels (which is mildly bullish), while hourly USD spot index was at 70 (bullish) while articulating (at 10:29 GMT).
For more details on the index, please refer below weblink: http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex
