Shares Of Energy Stocks Rising; WTI Rising -- August 18, 2016

I'll be off the net for awhile, but one last thought before going.

If folks take notice, not only is WTI rising, but shares of oil companies are also hitting new 52-week highs. The "stock market" usually "looks" out about six months, "they" say.

Right now, there's a bit of a perfect storm with WTI pricing:

• rebalancing has apparently already begun a bit, simply due to the usual market "supply and demand" conditions
• this comes despite some countries producing at record levels (notably Saudi Arabia and Norway)
• there is a bit of a short squeeze to be factored in (a lot of folks felt the situation was such, the price of oil would drop further; as it goes up, it creates a big a short squeeze on those who had bet "against" oil)
• the talk of the late September OPEC meeting

Most surprising: despite the glut, which by any standard, still remains huge, the price of oil is rising. I do not know to what extent the strength/weakness of the dollar is playing into this.

Later, let's see what the pros wrote about WTI. I wrote my post about an hour ago (the date/time stamp will have the exact time. The note below was started at 4:10 p.m. Central Time, same day, from Investors.com/Yahoo!Finance. Data points:

• Brent oil topped $50 / bbl for first time in six weeks
• continued optimism that top oil producers will agree to cap output next month
• US shale firms place more bets on a booming formation in Oklahoma
• Jones Energy is joining CLR in Oklahoma: Jones will acquire 18,000 net acres for $136.5 million ($7,600/acre)
• companies are rushing to take advantage of the new plays as production in North Dakota's Bakken falls off