Inferring Petroleum-Complex Fundamentals

This paper will discuss inferring crude-oil-market fundamentals through price-relationship data, largely through the perspective of a commodity futures trader. In doing so, the paper will briefly cover (1) the promise of big data; (2) the reality of data “black holes”; (3) the wealth of futures price data; (4) what futures prices potentially reveal about petroleum-complex fundamentals; and (5) caveats on the use of price data.