“Energy needs lower prices to maintain financial stress to finish the rebalancing process; otherwise, an oil price rally will prove self-defeating as it did last spring,” Goldman’s Jeffrey Currie recently wrote, on the outlook for crude going forward.

The rally off the lows has largely stemmed from the market’s hopes for an output freeze from Russia, the Saudis, and everyone else who isn’t Iran. Producers will meet in Doha next month to try and hammer out an agreement, but as we’ve documented exhaustively, the whole effort is farcical at best.

Moscow and Riyadh (among others) are already pumping at record levels, and it’s not at all clear why “freezing” output at all time highs is bullish. Indeed, as we noted last week, Russian crude exports are set to rise going forward. “The discussion is only about freezing production. And not exports,” Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters earlier this month.

Throw in the fact that a recalcitrant Iran is in no mood to freeze anything now that international sanctions have finally been lifted and you have a decidedly bearish fundamental backdrop for crude, and that, in turn, should be expected to pressure the rest of the commodities complex which has for years struggled to deal with slumping Chinese demand and a global deflationary supply glut.

For their part, Barclays thinks the bullish sentiment around commodities could shift abruptly in the not so distant future, leading the “herd” straight off a cliff.

“Investors have been attracted to commodities as one of the best performing assets so far in 2016,” analyst Kevin Norrish begins. “However, in the absence of any concerted fundamental improvements, those returns are unlikely to be repeated in Q2, making commodities vulnerable to a wave of investor liquidation that we estimate could, in a worst case scenario, knock as much as 20- 25% from current price levels.” Here’s more:

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