While thousands of retail investors crowd the bitcoin space, many are missing out on some substantial gains from oil, investment celebrity Richard Bernstein has warned, as quoted by CNBC.
“Bitcoin has been in a bear market, and everybody loves the asset. And, oil has been in a bull market, and it’s basically, you never hear anything about it. People don’t care,” Bernstein told CNBC’s Trading Nation this week.
“We’ve got this major bull market going on in commodities, and all people are saying is that it doesn’t matter,” he added.
Oil has indeed been on the rise for several weeks now, spurred by reopening economies that have pushed up demand considerably. Benchmarks hit the highest in three years this week as the prospect of Iranian oil returning to markets and changing the supply and demand dynamics became a little more distant than it was last week.
However, even last week, when the chances of additional supply from Iran seemed greater, oil was trending higher as the strength of demand recovery more than offset any possible worry of excessive supply. If anything, there have been warnings of supply tightness and even higher prices. The near-term outlook is also very bullish.
Global oil demand will rise by 6 million barrels per day (bpd) this year from the lows of 2020, led by strong consumption in China and the United States, especially in the second half of 2021 with growing economies and border reopenings, OPEC said last week in its monthly report.
The International Energy Agency, which was recently calling on the oil industry to suspend all new exploration, chimed in with its latest monthly oil report.
“Our first detailed look at 2022 balances confirms earlier expectations that OPEC+ needs to open the taps to keep the world oil markets adequately supplied. Global oil demand will continue to recover and, in the absence of further policy changes, by end-2022 reach 100.6 mb/d,” the agency said.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com