Oil Seasonality

With gas prices steadily rising in recent weeks, drivers are nervously watching movements in crude oil and hoping that last week's sell-off is the beginning of a trend rather than a just a quick pullback.  Unfortunately, if crude oil's seasonal pattern over the last 25 years is any indication, we shouldn't expect any relief until September.  The chart below shows the average YTD percent change in the price of crude oil over various time periods.  For each period, we also show the date the high was reached.  As shown, over the last twenty-five (9/30), ten (9/19), and five (9/22) years, the price of crude oil has typically peaked in mid to late September.

 

Comments

[Pipo Stein]

The Oil Trader from the Oil Trader`s Blog (www.oiltradersblog.blogspot.com) is shorting oil now. And he was been right in every single move.

By the way, Great site you have here. Good analysis and straight forward. Keep it up.

[CavemanForecaster]

Good analysis. Interestingly, I just put up a post yesterday looking at seasonality in Gasoline price and found a very similar result. They both say the same thing, increasing price through early summer then hold the high range and then decreasing price in last three months of the year.
http://www.cavemanforecaster.com/2009/05/do-gasoline-prices-really-increase-in.html

[Pipo Stein]

I did not know you could post your link. So the Oil Trader`s blog I mentioned above is here,

http://www.oiltradersblog.blogspot.com/

Cheers

[anna c]

Moves by the CFTC to try and regulate the oil trading market and prevent the kind of speculation which has seen crude oil prices rise from $30 per barrel back towards $70+ this year took an interesting twist yesterday when it was announced that the weekly COT data would now include new details on the aggregate holdings of the big Wall Street dealers, hedge funds and other financial participants. COT data is a useful market sentiment tool but as many of the market participants both hedge and speculate it has become increasingly difficult to analyse. According to the CFTC the new format will be making its debut next Friday.