Whats with oil?What we have witnessed over the last few days is what happens when one or more large hedge funds get caught on the wrong side of the fence.
This time last week, the US Fed had signalled that it may increase its interest rate by 50 basis points next week, and would increase a few times over the year - ie would not be cutting this year.
When interest rates go up, bond prices go down.
The most popular US treasury used to track the fed, is the 2 year.
ie, that prompted the 2 year treasury to be sold off, so that its yield increased in line with the expected fed action.
Some hedge funds have made large amounts of money since the fed started raising rates, by shorting the 2 year US treasury bond (and others).
For them it was business as usual.
Hedge funds like to have an offsetting trade (the Hedging part), which in this case was apparently Oil futures. ie, inflation goes up, oil goes up.
So the standard hedge fund trade was short 2 year treasuries and go long oil futures.
In the backgound something interesting was occuring. As those treasury yields increased over the last 12 months, they did so by their market value declining. Not a problem if you hold to maturity, but a book loss in the interm.
Lots of banks hold bonds - particularly gov't bonds, like treasuries. Those banks were getting themselves deeper and deeper into the hole with thier book losses. If they had one year treasuries, not so much of a problem, because they would be maturing presently, or soon. But a big problem if their protfolio had a longer duration.
One or more of the better short experts, were aware of the problem these banks were in, and apparently devised their own "Big Short" The next "Big Short" was discussed openly last Wed if I remember correctly (on zerohedge). This is code for, they'd built their short position, and were now making their observations public for others to join in.
It didn't take long, the very next day one of the most exposed banks (Silicon Valley) started to tank. By Friday afternoon, trading was suspended. Those who shorted Silicon Valley bank made a killing, and likely made almost as much from the others they shorted.
This caused a bank run, and rush to safety, with huge amounts of money moving into 2 year treasuries (and others) - ie people took their money out of banks and bought governent guaranteed treasuries. That buying caused their price to increase. This caused a short squeeze for the Hedge funds short 2 year treasuries, causing them to buy back their shorts - pushing the price even higher. That was a black swan event for them.
With those kinds of margin calls they also had to liquidate their long oil futures.
That is why oil went down.
Those Hedge funds got wrongfooted on both sides - losses on their shorts and losses on their longs. A very bad place to be.
So here we are a week later. These Hedge Fund positions are likely all reversed now (if any hedge funds went under as a result, we will hear about it soon - otherwise, it will be an internal bad week for them).
As the smoke clears, and people start to realize what happenned, they'll buy back based on fundamentals. Oil will return to where it was before (ie staging area waiting for demand to increase, and a break out upwards), and stocks like OBE will go with back too.
As for banks - not an issue. The big ones like Credit Suisse are too big to fail - they get bailed out - period. The small US ones now can borrow from the gov't using the full face value of their treasuries - ie their funding problem has disappeared, and depositors no longer have to worry about losing their money in bank accounts.
ie, its back to business as usual. With a few bonus parts. As a result of all this, that 50 basis point fed increase, is very very unlikely. The Fed may increase 25 basis points, or they may even pause.
If they do a 25 basis point increase, they may follow the ECB's lead and suggest this is it for now.
Either of those last two options are very positive for the "fear of recession" narative that has held oil back since the fed started raising its rates.