Four Days After Predicting Oil Will Double, T. Boone Pickens Sells All Oil Holdings
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedege.com
02/04/2016
Just four days ago, on Monday afternoon, “legendary” oilman T Boone Pickens said that crude has hit bottom at $26 per barrel, and predicting that prices should double within 12 months.
Pickens then doubled-down on his wrong call from last year, telling CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that oil prices will rise to at least $52 per barrel by the end of the year. That said, he was at least honest enough to admit that his virtually identical call from last year, when he thought prices would strongly rebound, was wrong.
Whether it’s $50 or $70 by the end of 2016 will largely be determined by the global economy, he added reiterating the same flawed thesis he used to justify his bullishness a year ago: “We’re still building inventories, and we will for the next several months. And then we’ll start to draw,” Pickens said. “Once you start to draw, you’re not going to start back building again. The draw will come here in the next few months. It’ll become pretty clear.”
He was wrong then, and he will be wrong this time again for the simple fact that while historically OPEC exercised a rational production strategy, as of the 2014 OPEC Thanksgiving massacre, there is no more OPEC, as can be seen by the relentless attempts by roughly half the members to call an OPEC meeting unsuccessfully, confirming what we said in late 2014 – OPEC no longer exists, which means it is every oil produer for themselves.
Putting T Boone’s forecasts in context, in a CNBC commentary in October, Pickens conceded his prediction for $70 oil by the end of 2015 wasn’t going to happen, because worldwide demand did not go up as much as he thought and supply did not markedly go down. Oil closed the year at $37: his prediction was off by 50%.
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Yet while being merely wrong is excusable, being a “legendary” hypocrite is not.
Earlier today, literally days after he predicted oil would double from its $26 “bottom”, Pickens told Bloomberg that he has cashed out.
But, but, what happened to oil prices will double from their bottom? And did he just liquidate all his holdings just $4 above this so-called bottom?
Well… yes.
The Rest…HERE
