OPEC technical panel heard a concerning bearish outlook for the oil market

An OPEC technical panel (Economic Commission Board (ECB)) was given a presentation by an invited financial market group. The Onyx Capital Group owns trading arm, Onyx Commodities, which, so it says, is the world’s biggest market maker by volume across oil swaps.

Reuters reports that the presentation painted a bearish outlook for the oil market:

• “Market sentiment had been fragmented for much of this year, but the evidence is that there has been a recent shift in collective sentiment to bearish as we head towards the end of the calendar year,” one of the presentation slides by Onyx Capital Group showed.

Onyx says it owns a dataset that analyses market positions to predict how the market behaves. On the sell-off in November:

• moved the oil market to a collective neutral-to-bearish sentiment
• commercial participants like oil producers and airlines joining financial speculators in seeing a weak outlook
• “aggressive moves were correlated with a weakening forward outlook for underlying crude and refined products market,”
• added that the oil market forward curve signalled the market expects supply of heavy crude, which several OPEC members produce, will likely come back next year, and inventories will start to rebuild

The ECB also heard presentations from JPMorgan and BNP Paribas, three sources told Reuters. It met for a second day on Wednesday.

And, ICYMI:

Given this Reuters report the probability of further output cuts looks to have risen, yeah?

–

The Economic Commission Board (ECB), which OPEC describes as its “think-tank”, meets twice a year ahead of the ordinary ministerial OPEC conference to review market conditions and economic developments.

• it has no decision-making capacity
• the research it produces is for ministers who will then decide on production/output policy