February 13th, 12:55 pm by Barbara Zigah
(eToro Blog) Traders on OpenBook expect to see oil prices decline from their current offering of $99.47, and sentiment is bearish by a 6-to-1 margin. OpenBook trader tomekdyd5, who employs a high-risk strategy but has thus far 20 followers and 5 copiers, earlier closed out two long positions with an 18.9% and 24.7% gain, respectively. Primarily a commodities trader, in the past week this trader increased the portfolio’s allocation to oil to nearly 39% which has resulted in a 9.2% return.
Traders’ generally bearish sentiment may in part be blamed on the continuing Eurozone crisis, as overall demand for oil continues to be relatively strong. A recent report from the International Energy Agency said that oil demand would continue to grow this year in spite of a weakened global outlook driven primarily by demand from emerging economies. According to their report, emerging markets’ demand will increase some 2.8% or 1.2 million barrels a day, which would totally offset the 0.8% decline in demand from developed economies. In the aggregate, demand should rise to 89.9 million barrels of oil per day this year, which is an increase of almost 1% as compared to last year.
Chinese growth is, of course, the driver of oil demand, and hence, oil prices. Analysts forecast that oil demand will increase as the second quarter approaches, which is typically a period of seasonally strong demand there. Chinese growth is also the determinant of other commodity-linked currencies such as the Australian Dollar, which at 1.0766 is less than a cent from this year’s high. On OpenBook, sentiment for the AUD/USD is leaning toward bear territory with 12 sellers to every 7 buyers. Earlier, OpenBook trader XenderX gave his seven copiers a nice 71% return on a closed buy position. This trader allocates about 7% of the portfolio to the AUD/USD which has provided a 31.6% return this month alone, and which is keeping this trader on track to record a 267% gain for the month.
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