Most investors and oil traders started the year 2023 with a bullish outlook on crude prices, primarily driven by strong oil demand growth expectations of around 2mbd. That was particularly palpable at the IE Week in London in late February. Fast forward to mid March, crude oil was trading around $10/b lower, with ICE Brent zooming in to just $70/b. So, were most people wrong?
Probably not. The mini collapse was largely driven by the banking crisis, with some poor economic readings coming in as well for Q1, feeding GDP growth fears. However, not much is pointing towards a fully-fledged recession. And it may anyway be better to look at direct crude/oil market fundamentals than macro indicators. What are we seeing there?
