Below are the weekly charts for Brent and S&P. They are very similar price actions, but seems Brent chart is more bullish, more pressure to the upside, while S&P has that dip in the middle the past few weeks. But S&P made some more percent gain last couple of weeks compared to Brent.
You are mistaken in your assessment of "bullish". The weaker rally in Brent (and WTI) since the March lows as compared to the S&P 500 is just that: a sign of weakness as compared to the S&P. You are mistaking more room to the upside in Brent as compared to the Feb highs in Brent as "bullish" - it's not. You want Brent to be bullish, you've been begging for Brent to be bullish in at least three different threads here on ET. But it's stalled out. No reason for it to rally any more. If it rallied on geopolitical concerns it would be both short-lived and heavily sold into by producers. The EIA's price forecast from ten days ago appears intact. Both Gold and the US Ten Year Note has stalled out the past several sessions - those are your flight-to-quality instruments for geopolitical concerns.
According to my math, and correct me if I did it wrong, brent had a stronger rally since the coronavirus crash lows then S&P. Brent went from the low of 16 to about 43 today (168% increase). From March it was 24 if you want to count from there (79% increase). S&P's lows in the crash was about 2200 and now it's 3200 (45% increase). I don't agree with your characterization that I've been begging for Brent to be bullish. Also, it's not really a geopolitical play for me, because as I mentioned, last time there was tension it hardly had an impact on crude price, but it is something that I think might be a possible pressure to the upside for crude oil. If you don't mind me asking, are you short crude oil?
No, I am not short outright crude. I'm a spread trader. You are conflating what I've said and taking it out of context. Again. I asked you to compare the Brent rally from the March lows against the February highs. What "bullish pressure"? No such thing. When the stock market corrects and comes off, Brent will crash. There is no "pressure to the upside". If that were the case, with the stock market trading 6 percent off the Feb. '20 highs - why isn't Brent trading 6 percent off it's Feb. '20 highs? I have a question for you to answer: why isn't Brent trading $67.68 right now? That's where it was trading in December 2019 when the S&P 500 was at 320.00. Why are you smarter than Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Louis Dreyfus, and Goldman Sachs ? There is record supply on the market right now. OPEC + wants to cut production. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell (the largest producer of Brent Crude, btw) came out this week and said that he expects oil and natural gas demand to be lower in the coming years - even after the pandemic has passed. Saudi Arabia wants to cut production by 8M bpd but they doubt the other OPEC members would go along.
I understand what you mean now regarding the "weaker" rally of Brent. I don't know what else to say than what I already said. In the long term, which is the way I'm trading or investing in crude, without a stop loss, there is more room to go in my opinion. And if price drops significantly I may buy some more. Obviously there are different views on the subject. I posted an article earlier in this thread regarding JP Morgan saying it could go to 100, while Citi saying it will not go much higher than these areas, so my position is not without backing by smart money. Even if I'm wrong I'm in a spot where I can probably exit around these levels if I see the future of brent is not going to be much more than this. Trying to get out around 50s or 60s, on the other hand, if price rallies to there, might be more difficult to do. So if you're long term bullish it might be better to get in here a little, maybe wait for pullbacks to get the rest in. Or maybe wait for confirmation that for sure we got the virus beat and then go all in, though it might be at higher prices by then. Also, when the first crash happened it was more worldwide. But now we're seeing recovery in other parts of the world, and US may soon improve as well given all the new mask restrictions. So I don't see it likely that we'll see a major crash like before.
Oil is still low when you look at it historically, and we now have inflation as well. The question is if people will use it similar as before, or if something has changed so drastically that we'll never see anything similar in oil usage as before, which if I understand may be Citi's position. I think probably we'll see more of the same if the world recovers from the pandemic, give or take a little.
You believe or you know? Is this a real account or SIM? I ask because the Nymex Brent Futures is like a sketchy, super thin gappy market. Whenever I trade Brent I use the ICE market exactly because of that reason.
I just verified this is what I'm trading: BZ1U20 - Brent Crude Oil (NYMEX) SEP 2020. Maybe something has changed since you last traded it but as far as I can tell it has tight spreads. Right now 42.91 42.93, and I think maybe even tighter at times. But you're the pro so your judgement and needs might differ. I short term traded the prior month contract a bit and had no issues. I'm using Schwab.