‘There’s Some Real Concern About Oil’: U.S. Oil Fund Put Volume Surges

There’s some real concern about oil from people who are speculating.

That’s from Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, and he’s referring to the following set of headlines which crossed a little while ago:

U.S. Oil Fund Put Volume Surges, August Trade in 134k Block

U.S. Oil Fund August $8.5 put options trade ~146.9k lots as of 1:45 p.m. ET, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

134.1k bought for 10c in single block ~12:10 p.m.
Open interest 218.8k Wednesday

Thursday’s total put volume outpacing call volume by 2.6 to 1

USO total put volume 234.8k, vs 103k 5-day avg

puts

(BBG)

You can draw your own conclusions there, but do note that despite this morning’s confirmation of yesterday’s ostensibly bullish API data, crude can’t catch a break and has now erased its morning gains.

This comes on the heels of a (very) rough Wednesday session that saw the bottom fall out on two separate occasions (see here and here).

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