By EconMatters
We delve into the EIA Oil Report, which was an inline report overall, the only thing that stood out like a sore thumb, was an unusually large import number that came out of nowhere, and doesn`t match historical patterns.
This sure seems like a blatant attempt to negatively influence the EIA Report as opposed to merely a scheduling error. Refiners operating during the maintenance season with an 85% capacity utilization rate don`t schedule Summer Driving Season level of Oil Imports for this time of year.
Given the price action in Oil leading up to this number, it seems suspicious like someone knew the number well in advance with 100% certainty, that they were getting an outsized number. Especially given that the rest of the EIA Report was solid, nothing abnormal for this time of year, the only way someone could have this level of confidence is if they were making the number happen.
This smells like an example of someone utilizing their physical storage bandwidth capacity to make a guaranteed EIA Result happen through logistics management/manipulation of the physical which they profited from immensely in the paper, electronic market.
It is pretty easy to investigate just pull the trading records for the last 10 days, and see if there are matches to import shipments/Oil Tanker Offload manifests for the pertinent EIA Reporting week.
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