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Trapped With Upside Capped For US Markets

This podcast is originally published by BFM: The Business Station for their Market Watch show. Here’s the link to the original content: https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/snp500-us-job-market-economy-consumer-target-costco-oil-price

Can the Federal Reserve engineer a soft landing for the US economy? Are the odds stacked against them especially if consumer spending stops suddenly. Tony Nash, CEO, Complete Intelligence gives us his views.

Transcript

BFM: The business station BFM 89 Nine is seven. 6th Thursday, the 1 September, and we are in the final quarter of the year. But nonetheless, we don’t need to look so far ahead because in the next half an hour, I’ll be speaking to Hannah Pearson of the travel consultancy Pet Anderson on Asian tourism recovery.

But in the meantime, let’s recap how global markets closed yesterday. So the Dow was down 0.9%, S&P 500 down 0.8%, while the Nasdaq was down 0.6%. Meanwhile, in Asia, Nikkei was down 0.4%, Hang Seng was up very marginally by 0.3%, Shanghai was down 0.8%, Singapore Street Times was up 0.6%, and our very own FBM KLCI was of course close due to the medical holiday.

But for more in terms of where global markets are heading, we have on the line with us Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Good morning, Tony. Now, the S&P 500, in fact, the US markets continue to slide, but the S&P 500 we know, is down by 4.2% on a monthly basis, even though US jobs and consumer numbers released this week were largely positive. So why is this bearish sentiment in the equity markets persisting?

TN: It’s pretty easy. Equity investors weren’t prepared for Powell to have the conviction to fighting inflation that he showed in last week’s speech. So everyone else, bond vestors, commodity investors and so on, understood Powell’s conviction.

But equity investors had expected the Fed to pivot. And by pivot, maybe coming close to loosening and maybe coming close to ending rate rises. But the Fed was never going to pivot. If anything, the pace of rate rises may slow, but the Fed’s ultimate destination is 4%. And they’ve said that for months.

So there really shouldn’t have been any surprise with that. But equity investors just didn’t want to believe it. And so they’re in price discovery, continuing lower now. So once they hit the valuation that will reflect getting to 4%, I think we’ll be back in decent territory. But until then, we’re in a downward price discovery mode.

BFM: Okay, Tony, the other thing that’s going to happen in next few weeks is of course, the Fed going to reduce their $9 trillion balance sheet. What kind of impact do you think this will have on markets?

TN: Well, it’s tighter. So it’s going to be more difficult. So in September, the Fed will double quantitative tightening. So they’ve been tightening at about 47.5 billion dollars per month. They’re going to more than double that to 95 billion in September. So it will definitely add upward pressure on interest rates.

And when there is upward pressure on interest rates, that means the cost of money is higher and the cost of buying a house is higher, and so on and so forth. And with respect to buying a house, the Fed is about $50 billion behind on shrinking their mortgage-backed securities portfolio. So they do have some catching up to do, but they’ve got time on their side. They can do it at whatever pace they want.

BFM: Okay. In the meantime, right, let’s look at the US consumer. Super important in the US. Economy, but at least 60% of GDP. Do you have a sense of what’s happening there? Are they still very confident? Are they still buying, especially discretionary spending? Has it been robust?

TN: I don’t necessarily think. You have a separation. You have luxury buyers who are very confident. But I think your average buyer, I don’t necessarily think there’s a lot of confidence behind their buying. I think they’re just trying to maintain their pace of spending.

So spending continues to grow, but consumer credit has also expanded. Visa, I think, two days ago said that their payments volume grew by 11%. So that’s not the value. I mean, you could say with inflation, of course, the value is going to go up, but they saw their payments volume go up by 11%. Part of that is due to things like back to school here in the US. The school year starts in late August, early September.

But until consumers stop growing their spending, the Fed will keep raising because the Fed, part of what they’ve been trying to do is what’s called demand destruction. And until consumers and businesses stop raising the pace of their spending, the Fed will continue raising interest rates in tightening conditions.

BFM: But doesn’t this then just mean that the US is officially in a recession? Because you’re basically sending out signals to the market that the economy needs to slow down. And if we continue to do so, we’ve already seen two-quarters of it, right, which means it’s a technical recession. How bad will this recession really be? I mean, it will be official at some point.

TN: Yeah, I really honestly don’t care if we’re in a recession or not. If two quarters is the rule of thumb, then we’re in a recession. And we’ve been in a recession since Q1. So it’s really just a matter of labeling.

I think the difficulty is, as you say, what’s the impact on, say, business growth, job growth, spending growth? And we’re seeing that the job market has remained pretty strong, spending growth has remained pretty strong. And the concern is, will that stop? When will that stop? And I think we have seen things slow down, at least in terms of economic growth, but a lot of that has been around government spending as well.

So things will likely become dramatically slower in 2023 if the Republicans take over the US. House of Representatives, which controls the budget. So if Republicans take over the House, they will put a stop on a lot of the spending bills that the Biden administration continues to want to pass, and they’ll be more budget conscious. So government spending may not necessarily decline, but the pace of the rise will stop. And so government spending has been what’s been keeping, say, GDP and other things moving, but that will likely stop if Republicans take over Congress.

BFM: Okay, but what about the Fed, the actions of the Fed? Because so far it seems like markets are looking to them for engineering a soft landing in the US. Do you think they’ll succeed, though, or are we going to look at the politicians for doing so?

TN: It all depends. Well, not all. A lot of it depends on the Fed’s actions this month, in September. So if the Fed slows the pace of rate rises, let’s say to 50 basis points instead of 75, they’re signaling that they’re willing to slow down a bit with the destination remaining 4%.

So if the Fed were to come and say, a 25 basis point rise, then that would be a real signal that, yes, they’re definitely committed to getting to four, but they’re willing to slow down to get us to four by, say, Q1, maybe late Q1 of ’23. And I think that would be a signal to equity investors that the Fed understands and they’re okay if some of these valuations continue to be stretched.

If we see a 25 basis point rise, which I don’t think anybody is really calling for in September, then that would be a real kind of green light from the Fed. I think we’re likely to see 50. 75 is also likely, but I think 50 is slightly more likely. So we’ll likely see 50 and then a few 25s. And that’ll get us to four in, I think, December or January. And at that point, the Fed is just going to reassess and figure out kind of which strategy to pick after that.

BFM: So is it too optimistic to say that maybe we might have a year-end rally for US. Markets? What do you think?

TN: It’s possible. I wouldn’t necessarily count on it. Again, I think the upside is capped for a period because of the uncertainty of the Fed, at least until we have clarity on the September signaling. So if they do raise 75 in September, then that likely means we have a couple of 25 rises in October, November, something like that. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to stop. All it means is that they’re going to reassess and the beatings will continue effectively.

BFM: What about oil, though? It’s now $89 a barrel for WTI. Why have prices come under pressure so much?

TN: Well, the Saudis came out with a statement last week around the gap between the paper value of oil and the physical market. And they have been talking about cutting their output because of the difference, the broad difference between the physical market and the paper market. And so I think when we see falls like this, it just convicts the Saudis more. Unless there’s political pressure put on them, it just convicts them more to cut their output.

The Saudis, the Emiratis and others have come together and said we’re likely going to slower output. Part of this is also putting pressure on the Iran deal, assuming that there’s more capacity from Iran. So if exports from Iran are normalized, then that could put downside pressure on the price. So the Saudis are just trying to keep the price up.

Within that context, we also have to look at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases in the US. So that will end in October unless they slow down the pace of the SPR release, but that effectively cuts off supply to the market. And so when the SPR release ends and if the Saudis cut their output, we could have a spike in crude prices, say in Q4.

That’s kind of what we’re expecting is for crude prices to rise into the end of the year. The US midterm elections will be passed as Saudis will likely cut their output. Other OPEC countries will likely cut their output. And the US SPR release will be done. Unless the Russia-Ukraine war ends, which would put crude in the open market, we do expect to see crude price rises towards the end of the year.

BFM: All right, thank you for your time. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, telling us that we can expect Brent crude prices to actually perhaps go up for the last quarter of the year as there are more output cuts despite some of the demand destruction we are seeing because of the global economic slowdown.

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QuickHit Visual (Videos)

QuickHit: Oil companies will either shut-in or cut back, layoffs not done yet

We continue discussing oil companies this week with Tracy Shuchart, who is a portfolio manager and considered as one of the leading experts on crude trading. Tony Nash asked who is trading oil these days, why the oil went negative, and when can we see a bit of recovery for the industry? Most importantly, will layoffs continue, and at what pace?

 

The views and opinions expressed in this QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.

 

Show Notes

 

TN: Hi everyone. This is Tony with Complete Intelligence. We’re here doing a QuickHit, which is one of our quick discussions. Today, we are talking with Tracy Shuchart, who is a portfolio manager with a private equity fund and she is one of the foremost experts on crude trading. We’ve had a number of conversations with her already, and we’re really lucky to get a little bit of her time today.

 

Tracy, just a few days ago, I was talking with Vandana Hari, who was formerly a Research Scholar at Platts and knows everything about energy. She was telling me that there are three to four months of crude oil supply, and that’s the imbalance that we have in markets right now. That’s why we see WTI at less than 20 and these really difficult price hurdles for people to get over. Can you tell us who’s trading crude oil right now? Is it mom and pops? Is it professionals? What does that look like? And also, what will have to happen for those prices to rise, generally?

 

 

TS: Right. Right now, the USO had to get on the prep-month contracts.  

 

TN: Sorry, just to clarify for people who aren’t trading ETF’s. USO is a broadly traded energy ETF, and they’ve had a lot of problems with the structure of the futures that they trade. So they’ve had to push back the futures that they trade from the front month, which is the nearest month that’s traded to further back in a channel in hopes that the value of crude oil in the further of months trades higher than the current one. So they’ve done a lot of reconfiguration over the last few weeks. So sorry. I just wanted to explain that.

 

 

TS: That’s okay. They’re out of the front month. Bank of China just had a big problem when oil prices went negative. They had a lot of money in the front months. They’re out.

 

Most retail brokers are not allowing regular retail to be traded in the front couple months actually. All that you have trading front months are the big funds, anybody who’s been hedging and then maybe a bank or two. But it’s definitely not retail that’s in there, and there are a lot of big players now that are not in there.

 

When we get towards expiration, the problem is that most of the funds are pretty short and most of the hedgers are pretty short, and the banks are on the opposite side of that trade. But when we come to expiration, what I’m worried

about again is we’re going to have a no-bid scenario. We’re going to have that vacuum once again. You’re not going to have any natural buyers there.

 

 

TN: Okay. So the WTI traded in the US goes negative, but the WTI traded in London on the ICE doesn’t go negative.

 

 

TS: They just decided not to let that contract go negative. The difference between the contracts is the CME Group contract is physically deliverable, right? And ICE contract is a cash-settled contract. So they’re not going negative, but CME allowed this contract to go negative.

 

And they actually put out a notice about five days before that they were going to start letting some contracts go negative. This wasn’t a total surprise, as soon as I saw that, I thought it was going to go negative.

 

 

TN: Both you and I have told stories about how we had friends who wanted to trade. Like I had a couple of friends who wanted to triple long Crude ETF a week and a half before it went negative, and I said, “please, please don’t do that.” So grateful that neither of them did that because it could have been terrible.

 

So how do we clear this? We’ve got three-four months of oil just sitting around?

 

 

TS: If you talk to most of the big trading houses in Switzerland like Vitol, Trafigura, etc., basically their base case scenario, and they’re physical traders, their BEST scenario is it’ll be September before we get some sort of hints of a balance left.

 

So what is going to happen? There are either two things. We’re going to fill up storage, and then producers literally won’t have to shut it. There’s nowhere to put it, so they literally have to do what I call forced shut-ins. If you don’t want to shut-in, the market is going to force you to do that. That scenario is going to happen. Or we’re going to get a scenario where people decide to voluntarily cut back. Just look at the backend like CLR, Continental Resources just did that. They shut in about 30 percent of their production on the back end, and I think there’s about thirty-five to forty percent now that’s shut-in. And there are some other basins where that’s happening as well, in the Permian, etc.

 

 

TN: So that’s mostly people in the field they’ll probably let go. Will we see people at headquarters? Those CEOs or only those workers in the field?

 

 

TS: I think you’re going to see a broad range of layoffs. It’s already happening. You’ve already seen companies lay off a bunch of people… Halliburton’s laid off. Everybody’s laying off people. And they’re not just laying off field workers as they’re shutting rigs down, they’re cutting back on their office help, too.

 

And with the shutdown, it’s even more worrisome because maybe they figure out that, “we definitely don’t need this many people,” and all these people working remotely.

 

I don’t think that the layoffs are done yet. We’ve only had a couple of months of low oil prices. If this continues for another 3-4 months, we’re definitely in trouble.

 

 

TN: So is this time different? I mean if we were to stop today, and let’s say things come back to 30 bucks tomorrow, which they won’t. But if it stopped today, would the oil and gas industry look at this go, “Thank God we dodged that bullet, again?” Do they just go back to normal like nothing happened? Or if it were to stop today, would they say “Gosh, we really need to kind of reform who we are. Focus on productivity and become a modern business?” How long does it take for them to really make those realizations?

 

 

TS: I think what’s going to have to happen, which may not happen, is the money runs out, right?

 

So first, you had to ride the shale boom. All these banks throwing money on it. After 2016, things were easing up. So private equity guys got in there, and they threw a bunch of money at it. Basically, these guys are going to keep doing what they’re doing as long as they have a source of equity and a source of capital thrown at them all the time. As soon as that dries up, then they’ll be forced to delete and go out of business. We’re already seeing that happen. We’ve had over 200 bankruptcies just in the last four years alone, and this year we’re starting high. So they’re either going to go out of business — Chapter 7s, not 11s. And the thing is that with the big guys, like Chevron and Exxon that just entered into the Permian, they’re just waiting to chomp on some stranded assets.

 

So again, what it’s going to take is the money’s got to dry up or they go out of business. That’s the only way I really see them changing.

 

 

TN: Yeah and we’re just at the beginning, which is really hard to take because it’s tough. So Tracy I’d love to talk for a long, long time, you know that. But we’ve got to keep these short, so thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate your insights. We’ll come back to you again in another couple of weeks just to see where things are. I’m hoping things change. But I’m not certain that they will. So, we’ll be back in a couple of weeks and just see how things are.

 

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News Articles

Oil prices could plunge below $20 a barrel this quarter as demand craters: CNBC survey

The oil prices article below is originally published by CNBC, where our CEO and founder Tony Nash was quoted. 

 

The oil price bust may not be over.

 

A historic demand shock sparked by the coronavirus pandemic is set to worsen in the current quarter, undermining any coordinated effort by heavyweight producers Saudi ArabiaRussia and the United States to cut supply aggressively and rebalance the market, according to a CNBC survey of 30 strategists, analysts and traders.

 

Episodic spikes of $20 a barrel or more in benchmark crude oil futures of the type seen last week cannot be ruled out as rivals Saudi Arabia and Russia attempt to reverse a damaging battle for market share and engineer a global supply deal which could cut up to 15 million barrels a day, the equivalent of about 10% of global supply.

 

But such price rallies are unlikely to last, according to the findings of the CNBC survey conducted over the past two weeks.

 

Brent crude futures, the barometer for 70% of globally trade oil, are likely to average $20 a barrel in the current quarter, according to the median forecast of 30 strategists, analysts and traders who responded to a CNBC survey, or 12 out of 30 respondents.

 

However, nearly a third, or nine of those surveyed, said prices may drop below $20 a barrel this quarter.

 

Amongst the more pessimistic projections, ANZ’s Daniel Hynes saw the risk of prices in the ‘mid-teens’ while JBC Energy’s Johannes Benigni warned that both Brent and US crude futures could ‘temporarily’ fall to around $10 a barrel.

 

 

New normal

 

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the supplier of a third of the world’s oil, and its rivals outside the group are “of pretty limited relevance in this context, as they are neither likely to be willing nor able to stem the current demand shock,” Benigni said.

 

Bearish forecasters said two forces would keep oil prices depressed in the second quarter — skepticism that Saudi Arabia and Russia would relent in their price war and commit to the deepest cuts in the producer group’s history (with or without participation from U.S. shale producers) and a glut in the current quarter caused by a monumental collapse in global demand as the full economic severity of the global coronavirus pandemic unfolds.

 

“A demand drop of 10% is the New Normal with oil,” said John Driscoll, director of JTD Energy Services in Singapore and a former oil trader whose career spans nearly 40 years.

 

Global commodities trader Trafigura’s chief economist Saad Rahim offered a starker prediction. Oil demand could fall by more than 30 million barrels a day in April, or around a third of the world’s daily oil consumption, Reuters reported on March 31, citing his forecasts.

 

And even if Saudi Arabia, its OPEC allies and major producers outside the group such as Russia and the U.S. did agree on aggressive supply restraint, it’s unlikely to materially drain global inventories that are closing in on what the oil industry calls ‘tank tops’, or storage capacity limits.

 

 

Too little, too late

 

“The long and short of it is that the current rally will likely be short lived,” Citigroup’s oil strategists led by Ed Morse said in an April 2 report.

 

“The big three oil producers may have found a way to work together to balance markets, but it looks like it is too little too late. That means prices would have to fall to the single digits to facilitate inventory fill and shut in production.”

 

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency said oil inventories would still rise by 15 million barrels a day in the second quarter even with output cuts of 10 million barrels a day, Reuters reported on April 3.

 

Citi expects Brent to average $17 a barrel in the current quarter and warned Moscow, Riyadh and Washington “cannot in the end stop prices from possibly falling below $10 before the end of April.”

 

Plus, travel restrictions, border closures, lockdowns and economic disruption caused by ‘social distancing’ and other measures taken by governments globally to slow the spread of the virus will exact a heavy toll on oil demand and could even linger when the virus clears, clouding the prospects of a recovery.

 

“As for the second quarter or even the third, I don’t see a V-shaped recovery for prices,” said Anthony Grisanti, founder and president of GRZ Energy, who has over 30 years of experience in the futures industry.

 

“The longer people are shut in the more likely behaviour will change…I have a hard time seeing oil above $30-35 a barrel over the next 6 months.”

 

 

Negative pricing

 

Standard Chartered oil analysts Paul Horsnell and Emily Ashford said they expect “an element of persistent demand loss that will continue after the virus has passed, driven by permanent changes in air travel behavior and the demand implications of businesses unable to recover from the initial shock.”

 

With demand at near-paralysis, oil and fuel tanks from Singapore to the Caribbean are close to brimming – stark evidence of the global glut.

 

Global oil storage is “rapidly filling – exceeding 70% and approaching operating max,” said Steve Puckett, executive chairman of TRI-ZEN International, an energy consultancy.

 

Citi’s oil analysis team and JBC Energy’s Johannes Benigni even warned of the risk of oil prices turning negative if benchmarks drop below zero, effectively meaning producers pay buyers to take the oil off their hands because they’ve run out of storage space.

 

“Theoretically, the unprecedented stock-build might mean negative oil prices in places, should the world or some regions run out of storage and if higher-cost production is stickier than thought,” Citi analysts said.

 

Despite the bearish consensus, nine survey respondents held a more constructive view. Within that group, six forecasters expected Brent crude prices to stabilize around the mid-to-late twenties in the second quarter while one called for $30 a barrel.

 

Tony Nash, founder and chief economist at analytics firm Complete Intelligence, and independent energy economist Anas Alhajji topped the range at $42- and $44 a barrel, respectively.

 

U.S. shale producers, who need $50 to $55 a barrel crude oil to just break-even, are struggling to maintain operations in a depressed price environment. That’s led to cutbacks in production and capital spending, job losses and bankruptcies across the U.S. shale industry and globally.

 

The oil market is underestimating such a shake out and its future impact on rebalancing the global oversupply, Alhajji said.

 

“Shut-ins are already taking place. Companies made major spending cuts and many will cut again.”

 

Markets are also downplaying the extent of the post-virus rebound on oil demand, Alhajji and Nash claimed, though determining the endpoint to the pandemic is near-impossible.

 

“We expect initial excitement over demand in May as the West comes back online, then it falls slightly as expectations are moderated going into June,” Complete Intelligence’s Nash said.

 

This article originally appeared in CNBC at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/06/oil-prices-could-plunge-below-20-a-barrel-in-q2-as-demand-craters-cnbc-survey.html