The war premium came out of the barrel, and took the whole argument with it
Brent has fallen about a fifth since this paper's last issue. Five issues of warnings about dearer money and dearer inputs reversed inside a fortnight. This one is dated Wednesday because it is late, and a Sunday dateline would have been a lie.
Nothing was signed, and the price moved anyway. A draft proposal to end the US–Iran war began circulating in early November after Iranian negotiators left Qatar. Its terms have not been disclosed. No ceasefire has been signed. Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz continued through the fall and resumed on 11 November. And on that draft alone Brent went from $116.72 on 23 October to about $113 on the 30th, $103.60 on 3 November — its lowest close since 7 October — and $91.33 on 10 November, the lowest since August, after President Trump said the war was “effectively over”.
Everything this paper has been telling you to brace for ran backwards in the same fortnight. The 10-year government bond yield, which issue 11 led on at 7.474% and called the price of money rising without an announcement, is back to about 7.15% — the entire move given up. The rupee strengthened to 94.47, its best since 21 October. Foreign institutions, who had been selling for weeks, bought a net ₹45,960 crore of Indian equities in the week to 6 November, and the Nifty rose 8.58% to 25,030.35, a seven-session streak and its longest run in fourteen months. Lower crude is also now being read as room for the RBI to simply hold on 2–4 December.
The temptation now is the mirror image of the mistake this paper spent October warning about, and it is just as expensive. In October the error was quoting November work on September's cost base. In November the error is re-pricing down to a barrel that is cheap because of a document nobody has signed and nobody has read. Brent is still 40.7% higher than a year ago. It rose again on 11 November when the attacks resumed. A price that moved twenty per cent on a draft can move twenty per cent back on a breakdown, and the thing that protects you is the same in both directions.
A price that moved twenty per cent on a draft can move twenty per cent back on a breakdown.
From the argument on this page