CFTC positioning

Positioning reads bearish on the speculative side: Managed Money (speculative) is net long 87.5k lots, the 24th percentile of 5 years, 7.6k added on the week; Producer/Merchant (hedging) is net long 315.5k lots, the 94th percentile of 5 years, 23.7k cut on the week.

WTI CTA trend proxy · long +0.09 daily · 3 years · through 2026-08-25

The flip level is the current-contract-equivalent WTI close at which that horizon changes sign; distance is from today's close.

Model proxy — not actual CTA holdings. It equally weights 1/3/6/12-month volatility-normalised WTI trends. SG CTA and SG Trend Index data are paid and unavailable here, so this estimate cannot be validated against either series. Gate rechecked through 2026-08-18: full-overlap r=+0.430 (n=252 weeks); recent 3y r=+0.397 (n=157). Required r ≥ 0.30 in both windows.

Signed-off stability checks: latest third r=+0.287; 95% moving-block bootstrap CI [+0.148, +0.666]; autocorrelation-adjusted effective n≈31.

Who is long, who is short weekly · CFTC disaggregated, WTI physical · net long as % of open interest

Each line is that player's net long as a share of open interest over the past 13 weeks; the number beside each name is the change over the week to 18 Aug. The two panels do not share a vertical scale — the hedgers run to ±25% of open interest and the rest sit inside single digits, which is why they are split. Across both panels the five net positions sum to zero by construction. Positions are Tuesday close, published the following Friday.

Hedging against stocks weekly · producer/merchant shorts vs US crude ex-SPR · one cell per year

x: US crude stocks ex-SPR (M bbl) · y: Producer/merchant shorts (k lots) · all cells share one pair of axes · thin line joins every week, thick line is the smoothed path

18 Aug: 429 vs 338 · r = +0.35 in 2026, +0.46 over 5y · 33 weeks plotted this year

Long positions 2015–2026 · thousand contracts

Short positions 2015–2026 · thousand contracts

Spreading positions 2015–2026 · thousand contracts

Net positions 2015–2026 · thousand contracts

The long and short charts share one axis and both top out at open interest &mdash; every contract is on someone's book twice. <b>Spreading and net are each drawn on their own scale</b>, not the one above them. On the net chart the height above the zero line equals the depth below it in every week, because the five players' net positions sum to zero; a band that crosses the line is that player switching from net short to net long, or back.

Options and volatility

Volatility premium · CBOE OVX less realised WTI · 21-session realised, annualised · volatility points · above zero = options priced over the tape · as of 21 Aug

OVX by calendar week CBOE crude oil volatility index · 2021–2025 range, mean, last year, this year · as of 21 Aug

• OVX is 49.62, the 85th percentile of 4,854 readings since 2007-05-10 (median 35.50). Against the last five years alone it is the 79th percentile of 1,256.
• The volatility premium — implied less realised — is -17.70 points: OVX at 49.62 sits below WTI's 21-session realised volatility of 67.32. That is the 3rd percentile of 1,249 sessions since 2021-08-31, against a median of +6.02; the premium has been positive on 78% of those days.
• Options are priced below what the tape has already delivered: thirty-day cover costs less than the past month of realised moves would have cost to hedge.
• The premium series starts at 2021-08-31 because that is where the local minute-bar history starts, not where OVX does — its percentile is drawn from 1,249 sessions, not from the 4,854 behind the OVX level above.
• Not covered: the option chain itself. Strike-level implied volatility, put-call skew and risk reversals need a paid feed (CME CVOL or a Databento option chain); everything here is derived from the OVX index and from futures prices.

Market sentiment

Five market gauges, each against its own history 0 = the most bearish end ever seen, 100 = the most bullish · equal weight, no fitting · 5 of 5 gauges in the average

• The five gauges average 59 out of 100, where 100 means every one of them is at the most bullish end of its own history. It is a description of where today sits, not a forecast.
• Term structure (WTI M1 less M12) is +13.25 $/bbl, the 96th percentile of 4,106 readings since 2010-06-07: prompt barrels are bid over deferred ones, so the market is paying to have oil now rather than later.
• Implied volatility (CBOE OVX) is 49.6, the 85th percentile of 4,854 readings since 2007-05-10: options are priced for a wide range, so the market is paying up for protection. It enters the average as 15 out of 100, not 85 — high volatility is risk-off, so it counts the other way round.
• Managed money (net long, % of open interest) is +4.6%, the 18th percentile of 1,054 readings since 2006-06-13: funds are light or short, so there is little length left to sell.
• Diesel crack (US Gulf ULSD spot less WTI) is 99.24 $/bbl, the 99.9th percentile of 5,060 readings since 2006-06-14: refiners are being paid a lot to make diesel, which is what a tight distillate market looks like.
• Brent-Dubai (the EFS) is +7.08 $/bbl, the 69th percentile — but of only 272 sessions since 2025-08-01, which is every day held locally. That makes it a one-year percentile, not comparable with the others, and it is the one gauge whose stability could not be checked.
• Not covered: the news tilt. The corpus is archived from 2026-08-21 forward and needs 60 trading days before it joins; 3 so far, 57 to go.