The Department of Energy gave some critical data in its weekly oil inventories. Frankly, you can make a bullish case here and a bearish case as well. The drop in crude oil came to -978,000 barrels over last week. Dow Jones had a figure of a build at +1.7 million barrels, but we had been told to expect far less of a build than that. That would be very bullish on the surface, until you parse the other data. We are watching the Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH), the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL) on the news.
Gasoline stocks posted a huge build of more than 2.9 million barrels. Dow Jones listed an expectation of only 600,000 barrels and we were looking for a smaller build than that. Distillates came in at +679,000 barrels, and Dow Jones listed an expectation of about +200,000 barrels.
The capacity of refineries in the U.S. ran at 85%, up from 84.6% last week and above an expectation of 84.3% from Dow Jones. This 85% compares to 84.5% to 85% that we were looking for from our own figures.
Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH) is up 1.5% at $118.75, the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF is down 0.1% at $36.50 and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL) is down 0.15% at $24.01 on the news. NYMEX WTI Crude is currently trading up $0.06 or $0.07 at $70.95. Again, this sounded very bullish on the crude headline, but it looks like it was entirely made up for in higher gasoline inventories.
JON C. OGG
October 7, 2009
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks