crude oil Brent Feb futures prices slipped 76 cents to $78.12 a barrel while WTI oil futures for Jan delivery dipped 67 cents to $73.4 a barrel on Monday morning during Asian hours. Both the benchmarks lost around 2% last week despite of deeper cuts from OPEC+. Brent premium over WTI narrowed down to $4.81 a barrel in Friday session.
The world crude oil price index curves continued to demonstrate downside momentum after rising briefly today morning. Skepticism over implementation of deeper cuts into 4th quarter by producers is prevailed in the market. Weak manufacturing data that may deter demand growth also compounded bearish sentiment in the market. OPEC+ voluntarily agreed cuts totaling 2.2Mbpd for Q1 2024 as the de-facto leader KSA rolled over its current 1Mbpd while Russia widened its pledge to 500,000 b/d.
On the technicals side, Money managers increased their net length of 11630 contracts to 166735 with longs and shorts keep increasing positions to Nov 28th as per ICE data published. CFTC announced that investors net length reduced by 6408 to 98137 with longs booking profits while shorts built up positions.
