The price of crude oil has seen downward pressure amidst supply inflows and despite several smale-scale escalations in the Middle East, between Pakistan/India, and the war in Ukraine. There would need to be a real supply/demand development to push the price back up over $3.60 in the US, and I would personally price such an extreme escalation to be relatively low but not impossible.
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Why do you think you're right?
Why might you be wrong?
It is not impossible that a sudden supply shock occurs to send the price over $3.60. there are plenty of known and unknown catalysts that could stir the macroeconomic pot.
Why do you think you're right?
YoY CPI has come in lower than expected (10 bps) each of the previous 3 months, despite a downward trend in forecasting over this time period. We have seen periods where YoY CPI has been sub-2%, but the most recent occurrence of this was surrounding the pandemic.
I think there is a good chance (especially considering the implementation of tariffs) that we experience another sticky period of inflation, similar to what was seen in 2023 through mid-2024. One especially interesting point for me is how online retailers have shifted price levels to try and mitigate profitability swings from tariffs. I think there is a current underpricing in the expected YoY CPI uptick, albeit small.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/29/amazon-tariff-costs-prices/83342867007/
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm
Why do you think you're right?
supply/demand imbalance, lot of countries looking for excuse to produce more oil (price going up would be their sign to open the spigots). i think relatively unlikely we have a price catalyst on demand side; not totally unlikely for us to see a supply shock between now and the end of July but definitely muted relative to previous time periods (e.g. war in Ukraine escalations last year).
Why might you be wrong?
Fatter call tails in implied volatility surfaces for both WTI (crude, very rough proxy w/o seasonality risk) and gasoline derivatives.
Potential political risks related to a SPR refill, or a crack-spread blowout as a result of hurricane season (lots of crude oil, gasoline supply depleted and not enough parties involved in conversion)