As noted previously, shipping rates continue to climb. Oddly, anchored ships remain about 8% of the fleet with four more being added to the bay I monitor, which helps to raise spot prices and thereby generating beneficial economics to shippers who choose to anchor these bad boys on the water for weeks if not months at a time because fools like CNBC enjoy looking at onshore inventories and asking "is it priced in?" which in this case, yes, it's pricing in but that is no surprise given the fraud and manipulation that takes place in the oil market. By the way, did you really believe OPEC and Non-OPEC would work out a fully fledged production freeze?
This morning JP Morgan raised their 2017 Brent Crude oil PT to $58.25 and the WTI PT to $56.25.
December 2017 NYMEX Light Sweet contract is currently at $55.97 as Bloomberg previously reported Hedge Fund have been increasing their NYMEX exposure, to wit:
Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased their net-long position for Nymex WTI sweet crude futures and options combined by 32,661 in the week ended Dec. 13 to 303,146 lots, according to CFTC data.
The spread on Dec 17 contracts for NYMEX and Brent is approaching $2 again but has hovered just shy to that $2 spread for the past couple months:
