A bafflingly coherent Biden skipped the COP29 to have an ecstatic lunch/photo op with Trump in the White House, and with all the big liberal names missing the conference, the only real news came from a righteous speech from Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev, who argued crude oil is a “gift from God”. Who are we to argue? It’s been a week since the election and Brent saw an unremarkable weekly downtrend as other assets are soaring. Bitcoin is at an all-time high, and the Dow Jones is still extremely strong. Net positioning from money managers in Brent crept up in the week to 5 Nov, likely due to risk-averse shorts taking profit. Outside of the States, China’s trade surplus is on track to hit a record of almost $1 trillion and German industry saw the worst slump in orders since ’09. It seems with the presidential election over and the OPEC+ barrels’ return pushed back the market is struggling to look away from economic weakness.
