Oil Is Crashing After Hedge Fund Bulls Pile In At Fastest Pace Since 2010

Amid denied rumors of production cuts (and Goldman’s dismissal), crude oil prices have jumped “August 2015 Andy Hall squeeze style” to 3-week highs. This ‘change’ in trend has hedge funds calling the bottom once again adding to bullish oil bets at the fastest pace since 2010 in the last week. However, most ironically, it appears the weak longs are being squeezed today as WTI crashes 6%.

Still, it seems many are looking for a short-squeeze initiated bottom here… (as Bloomberg reports)

“A lot of the shorts got scared out,” said Tom Finlon, Jupiter, Florida-based director of Energy Analytics Group LLC. “We could be forming a bottom here.”

“There’s still a good amount of short-covering taking place after we fell to our lows,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy.

Speculators’ net-long position in WTI increased 35 percent in the week ended Jan. 26 to 110,432 contracts of futures and options, the biggest percentage gain since October 2010, data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission show. Longs, or wagers on rising prices, increased by 23,031 to 289,181 and short positions dropped by 5,444 contracts to 178,749.

Short positions in WTI fell 11 percent from a record in the two weeks ended Jan. 26.

The last time aggregate net speculative bets rose this much was the end of April and marked a stable plateau before re-plunging for new lows…

“There’s hope that Russia will enter into an agreement with OPEC to cut production,” said James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics, an energy-research firm in London, Arkansas. “But the probability is very low.”

A production cut of 1 million barrels a day would put the oil market “in a rough balance in the first half and probably in deficit in the second half,” said Bart Melek, head of commodity strategy at TD Securities in Toronto. “But it can’t possibly just be Russia.”