Oil prices and related exchange traded funds could continue to slip further as Saudi Arabia in a counter-intuitive move wants to keep pumping oil and defend its market share.
Over the past three months, the United States Brent Oil Fund (NYSEArca: BNO) declined 17.0% while the United States Oil Fund (NYSEArca: USO), which tracks West Texas Intermediate oil, fell 12.1%.
WTI crude oil currently trades at $91.3 per barrel while Brent crude is hovering around $93.8 per barrel.
Signaling that oil investors are becoming weary of the continued weakness, oil ETFs saw greater redemptions over September. BNO experienced $5.8 million in outflows over September while USO lost $115.8 million, according to ETF.com data. [Investors Turn Sour On Commodity ETFs]
Now, Saudi Aramco has sharply reduced its official oil prices for Asian customers in November, potentially indicating that the world’s largest exporter is trying to undercut other countries and compete for a greater slice of the crude oil market, Reuters reports.
Saudi Arabia’s move is counter to expectations that it would further cut 9.6 million barrels per day in production to help support faltering oil prices, CNBC reports.
In contrast, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, is calling for higher prices after Brent crude oil dipped to a two-year low.
“OPEC appears to be gearing up for a price war,” according to Commerzbank analysts. “Such measures give rise to doubts about OPEC’s longstanding strategy of striving above all for price stability. We therefore do not expect prices to stabilize until this impression disappears and OPEC returns to coordinated production cuts.”
After Saudi Arabia’s announcement, some oil analysts expect crude oil prices to continue falling another couple percentage points, which could push down both the WTI and Brent into bear market territory.
“It’s both supply and demand. it’s basically the perfect storm that brought oil prices down,” Fadel Gheit, Oppenheimer senior energy analyst, said in the CNBC aritcle. “You have plenty of supply which you never thought possible, and all of a sudden, demand is shrinking, China’s slowing down, Europe never recovered.”
Meanwhile, the more aggressive oil trader may utilize inverse and leveraged ETFs to hedge against further oil price declines. The ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil (NYSEArca: SCO) tries to reflect the two times inverse, or -200%, daily performance of WTI crude oil. The United States Short Oil (NYSEArca: DNO) tracks the opposite moves of light. Additionally, the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Crude (NYSEArca: DWTI) tracks the daily -300% performance of oil prices. [Taking A Bearish Approach to Oil ETFs]
For more information on the oil market, visit our oil category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.