Those were some great numbers we got this afternoon. Manufacturing contraction seems to be the accepted normal now, whereas just a month ago it was an unthinkable possibility.
Up until the very end of last week, crude oil was way ahead of these realities. It foretold all of this, through the massive inventory builds we were getting week after week after week. In fact, the truth is probably much worse, because off balance sheet storage means that the contraction could have been occurring well before those signs leaked into the mainstream.
Appropriately, then, crude oil has been greatly underperforming oil byproducts. It was assumed that all was well in the broad economy, despite crude’s slackening (actually, I would say people were beginning to price in outperformance by select manufacturing because of lower crude prices…until today that is).
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the comparison of UCO, SCO, ERY, and ERX. Compare UCO to ERX, or SCO to ERY, and you will see a consistent picture; these two pairs have actually been performing almost perfectly correlated over the last few months.
But if we are experiencing economic/manufacturing led contraction, then that should not be the case.
The distinction between oil and gas should come directly from their fundamental qualities – oil can be stored indefinitely while gasoline is only good for a short time before its molecules break down into simpler, non-combustible forms.
Gasoline, depending on whether or not it’s treated, can last from anywhere between one year at max, to as short as 30 days.
This is the sole reason I have been resisting calls by pundits that gasoline prices may not reverse along with oil – the brunt of their argument seems to rest on gasoline stocks being at historical lows not seen in almost two decades.
However, when you look at gasoline demand, that tightening supply makes perfect sense. If you don’t use the gasoline, you lose the gasoline. Thus, the lowering stockpiles are probably a perfectly rationale response to slowing demand. And yes, if we are slowing, gasoline prices will be contracting sharply ALONG WITH SUPPLY.
Ergo, in an environment of demand destruction, I would expect products like ERY and ERX, which are more correlated to the price of fuel, to see generalized MULTIPLES of whatever UCO or SCO are doing. ERY should be going up twice as fast as SCO, etcetera.
Case in point, that is exactly what happened last year when we rushed lower.
Today, I’m starting to see more of that – while SCO is (or was, earlier) up, ERY is absolutely running.
That was one of the reasons I sold SCO, rather than ERY. Even though I missed out on another 7-8% last Friday from SCO, I really should be seeing significantly more gains from the energy short.
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Slackening? Lol. Nice writeup, though
SCO Is a 2x inverse instrument. ERY is a 3x. Perhaps that is why ERY “outperforms” SCO.
Since this correction began, SCO is up 43%. ERY is up 55%.
One more thing, ERY is based on the Russell 1000 Energy Index. It’s got all sorts of beat down shit in there like natural gas, coal, solar, etc. That along with the whole 3x thing is why it is going up more than SCO. It’s got nothing to do with shelf life on gasoline.
Po, ERY is not going up that much more than SCO.
So what the fuck was all this about:
ERY should be going up twice as fast as SCO, etcetera.
Case in point, that is exactly what happened last year when we rushed lower.
Today, I’m starting to see more of that – while SCO is (or was, earlier) up, ERY is absolutely running.
That was one of the reasons I sold SCO, rather than ERY.
ERY should be up a lot more.
Now I get it. I was a bit confused about what was being referred to in the original post.
I guess the decay factor is a bigger influence? That or ERY is just a typical poorly managed inverse ETF. Well, both are but ERY is apparently worse.
(laughter) there’s always that.
I’m inclined to think that the gasoline portions of the ETF are keeping it elevated, because gasoline is only down about 12-15%, while oil is down significantly more.
What I was alluding to was that people are probably mispricing gasoline, thinking that lower stockpiles equate to higher prices in the classical economics frame of reference.
But if we’re experiencing true global demand destruction, this is probably a misconception.