E&P, Refiners` Charts To Watch And Track For The Duration Of The Seasonal Product Inventory Build

Summary

• A sharp rise in US inventories of refined fuel suggests (even confirms) that demand is falling. Lackluster demand will prevail over the next 4-6 weeks.
• The next likely market surprise should be a significant fall in refinery oil input, following the decline in gasoline production in the past several weeks.
• Meanwhile, gasoline prices should continue to fall. Crude oil prices cannot ignore falling product prices for very long, and should eventually fall as well.
• But subsequently, usually by February, gasoline consumption will start picking up and gasoline stocks will start drawing again.
• We expect a recovery in oil and gasoline prices, as well as the equities of Refiners and E&Ps, by January-February, rising into March-April (at which time we reassess the situation).

Robert P. Balan runs Predictive Analytic Models, #1-rated trading unit at Seeking Alpha. PAM trades Swiss HF funds using Federal Reserve, US Treasury, and term (money) market liquidity data flows as basis for trading decisions. He is domiciled in Zurich, Switzerland.

Robert Balan has 5 decades of experience in the financial markets. Education in Mining Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering, M.S in Quantitative Finance, and training in Economics led to a commodity analysis career during the commodity boom of the early 1970s. Robert made a switch to global macro focus in the early 1980 when the commodity bull market waned, with specialization in foreign exchange. Robert wrote a very high profile daily FX analysis while Geneva-based (Lloyds Bank Int'l) in the mid-1980s (the first FX commentary with a real global readership, "most accessed" in the Reuters and Telerate networks from 1988 to 1994).

He worked for Swiss Bank Corp and Union Bank of Switzerland (precursors of today's new UBS) as head of technical research in various finance centers (London, New York, and subsequently, head of prop trading at SBC in Toronto ) from the late 1980s to mid-1990s. A stint at Bank of America as head of global technical research followed in late 1990s to the early 2000s. 

Robert returned to Switzerland in 2004 as head of technical research and strategy, and FX market analyst for Swiss Life Asset Management in Zurich. Robert wrote FX analysis and capital markets commentary for Saxo Bank (Denmark) in the early 2000s. He joined Diapason Commodities Management (CH) in Lausanne in 2008 as senior market strategist, and subsequently Chief Market Strategist, utilizing fundamental macroeconomic drivers and structural/technical data in modeling asset price and sector movements. 

Robert wrote a book on the Elliott Wave Principle in 1988, which has been hailed by the London Society of Technical Analysts as best ever book written on the subject. Robert is a member of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), U.S.A.