A brief talk on Petroleum data report

The importance of oil prices to economic health is self-evident. As oil prices rise or fall, inflation rises or falls. Oil is widely used in a variety of situations, including heating, manufacturing and even transportation, so if oil prices rise, the prices of many consumer products and the overall cost of living will also increase. In times of high oil prices, the Federal Reserve (Fed) even needs to adjust interest rates to prevent inflation from rising further. This is just a manifestation of the fundamental relationship between oil and the US economy as a whole.

Even if the trading volume increases, the basic principles of supply and demand are always the key to understanding the trend of oil prices. When watching the status of supply, energy traders pay special attention to the weekly oil status report released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which contains data on crude oil depots inside and outside the United States. The report is released by the Energy Information Administration every Wednesday at 10:30 eastern time.

Traders also followed the weekly statistical bulletin released by the American Energy Association (API) at 4:30 eastern time on Tuesday. The report covers U.S. crude oil inventories and data related to the refined oil market, as well as U.S. crude oil inventories and data related to the production, import and inventory of four major petroleum products: automotive gasoline, kerosene jet fuel, distillate fuel and household fuel oil.

In addition, weekly Baker Hughes drilling reports the total number of oil rigs in the United States to examine future oil production and inventories in the United States.

These weekly releases provide key data on the state of US oil supplies, but traders must also pay attention to international politics and policy. In the Middle East, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries (OPEC) meets regularly to control production quotas and oil prices. Since OPEC controls 60 per cent of the world's oil, its policy changes could have a significant impact on global oil supply and demand.

In analyzing the outlook for the energy market, the main difficulty is that supply and demand are affected by a variety of factors, including geopolitical tensions and seasonal factors, such as winter heating and summer driving peak seasons, oil product supply disruptions and events inside and outside the United States.

To this end, many successful oil traders have an in-depth understanding of the political events in the oil-producing areas and master the technical knowledge in the refining process. On the other hand, inventory updates released by the American Energy Association and the Energy Information Administration do not require much analysis. In fact, if the EIA data show that crude oil supply stocks are growing faster than expected, it means that supply is strong, which is bad for crude oil prices. Similarly, if supply is lower than expected, it indicates strong demand.

There are many factors to consider when trading using US oil data, but with a certain amount of insight and careful preparation, traders can find many opportunities.

Source of course: CME