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Saturday, October 6, 2012

Oil may drop another $15 from here

About 2-3 weeks ago I predicted that oil would decline substantially when it was high $90s. It did and it is trading below $90 now. An over 10% drop within a few weeks is quite substantial. So do I think it has bottomed now? I don't think so. There are 2 major forces pushing oil down the slope. The main reason is the fundamental one that oil should not be this high. You see, the global economy is deteriorating quickly and is slowing down everywhere. The three major economic bodies, US, EU and China, are all suffering from significant recessions. Without an economic growth, the oil consumption cannot be supported. Making the situation even worse is that the oil production in the US has increased dramatically in recent years, thanks to the new technology such as frackings and horizontal drilling. It is an economics 101 that high supply with low demand will only lead to a low price of any product. Oil is no exception. So why oil could still be that high till now? It is largely due to the geopolitical tension in the Middle East, especially the Iran's nuclear program. People are worried that if Iran's is attached by Israel or US, the oil production and transportation in that area will be impacted substantially and will cause shortage of crude oil. This leads to the 2nd main reason why oil price has dropped so much in the past few days and will continue to push it down. Iran has been under a very severe economic sanction led by the US. This has led to its significant currency depreciation. Iran's currency, RIAL, has declined its value by 75% in the past few years, and it dropped 30% just in the past few days. Such kind of dramatic currency depreciation associated with hyperinflation has caused its social turmoils and riots in the street. Now there is speculation that the Iranian government may not survive the sanction and the regime may be changed. If that's the case, the risk of a war has been greatly reduced and the sanction may be lifted if the new government yields to the Western pressure to stop the nuclear program. If so, its oil production will increase substantially. With this kind of logical thinking, how can the crude oil price still remain at this level, when it is not supported by the economic fundamentals? Some experts even predict that the oil price may drop another $15 from the current level. I won't be surprised if it indeed happens. Of course, it won't be a straight line dropping down. It may even come back a bit but that will be a great time and opportunity to short it. ERY is the 3 times leverage ETF to short crude oil but obviously this is very speculative with a high risk.

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