It has been a seesion of violent, volatile gaps, starting with sharp gap up in S&P futures on Wednesday night, just around 10pm, which saw ES spike and rally to new all time highs on no news...
In the end, the OPEC Vienna meeting - which technically won't conclude until tomorrow - was anticlimatic, with the recommendation by Joint OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee in line with what was "trial ballooned", and leaked in advance:
When OPEC sits down on Thursday, keeping the price of Brent above $50 (to avoid a budget catastrophe and social upheaval in Saudi Arabia) and below $60 (to prevent US production from going exponential), will be just one problem the cartel nations and various hangers-on will be desperate to solve. A much bigger one, literally, is the problem that led to this week's OPEC meeting in the first place, and years of headache for OPEC and non-OPEC nations: a record global oil inventory glut.
More OPEC jawboning and continued (modest) draws in crude inventories beat production increases and SPR sales headlines heading into tonight's API data and with inventory drawdowns across the entire crude complex sending both WTI & RBOB prices jumped higher. However, prices quickly reversed lower as traders realized the Crude draw was smaller than expected...
API
Last week, ahead of the OPEC meeting, BofA commodity analyst Francisco Blanch said the oil cartel faced three specific choices ahead of its May 25 meeting in Vienna, when it is widely expected to extend the November 2016 production cut: