Saudi's Foreign Exchange Reserves Getting Healthy Again? -- May 8, 2018

Link here. Exporting a lot less oil, but charging more for it?

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But Not Good News Today

Saudi "needs" $88-oil. Today, WTI and Brent are coming off recent highs. WTI is down 2.5%, now trading below $67. A reader asked my thoughts on why oil was going down today. My reply, somewhat "tongue--in-cheek":

I've never understood pricing of oil. The fundamentals certainly don't support $70-oil, but just as Scott Adams says that "facts don't matter," likewise, when it comes to oil, "fundamentals don't matter."

Movers and shakers are talking, moving the price of oil up and down, and making a lot of money doing it.

For the past month, the movers and shakers (traders in oil) have used Trump's tweets and threats on the Iran sanctions to move the price of oil up. Now that we are there (supposedly Trump will announce today) the traders in oil are suggesting that whatever Trump does or doesn't do will have no real effect in the Mideast.

For the Mideast, where there is always a war going on somewhere or the threat of a big invasion by some military, I'm sure the Iranian leaders are pretty much blowing off a lot of talk from Trump. At best, they see him around for three more years and then the US will elect a Democrat, perhaps Bernie Sanders, LOL, and so they aren't worried. And if Iran is not worried, traders in oil know things will pretty much go on usual. They probably read the CNBC report yesterday that reminded them that 100 million bbls of oil are moved every day, and whether Trump's 300,000 bbls or Obama's 1.5 million bbls are at risk, it won't affect anything.

Who knows, maybe the rumor on the street is that Trump listened to Angela and Macro and agreed to "stay the course."

In other words, I have no idea what's going on. Perhaps oil traders are simply taking profits.