XOM shares (ExxonMobil)

I’d give your post a gold star, spot on with my thoughts (minus nat gas I don’t follow too much)

In terms of just the stock price, I’d like to add some conflicting statements, some good some bad:

1) the VLCC tankers that Saudi Arabia sent over during the OPEC crap make a huge difference. 50 million barrels were sent over as a final ‘suck it’ to US shale. If you read the EIA report, the last month or so has seen an increase from 500k bpd to averaging 1.5M bpd (I recommend anyone going through them, you can see exactly when the Saudi tankers started unloading). In fact, it accounts for the entire surplus we had this week and the past weeks would’ve seen a huge difference. I believe there are more tankers on the way but am not sure and haven’t seen info on how much is left

2) oil companies seem disconnected from WTI price. There was barely a budge when it went negative (albeit this was just a low volume front month thing). All of them boomed today despite a 10% shave in WTI over the past two days

3) the dollar has been oversold and will probably get stronger, which is not good for crude oil prices

4) refineries are trading in step with everything else oil related. It seems the sector just trades directionally together. MPC/VLO just match what everyone else does

5) consumption is still poop and crack spreads are still poop. Refineries aren’t running anywhere near capacity

In terms of a recovery, theoretically refineries would recover first - there’s a buttload in storage already, and once shale players and OPEC come online the consumption will return fast with downward pressures on WTI prices

But this market is so wonky and nothing makes sense. I truly believe everything ‘oil’ related will recover the same even if there are major differences in who does what within the sector. Seeing Chesapeake come back from the grave made my head spin

/r/investing Thread Parent