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Overseas markets continue to stage a "recession trade", and the crude oil market is also caught in a game between bulls and bears.

U.S. WTI crude oil futures closed down 0.3% on Monday, and once dropped to $71.67 per barrel during the session. In the past three trading days (August 1 to August 5), crude oil prices have fallen by more than 5%. After experiencing a short-term surge last week, Brent crude oil futures prices began to fall continuously, reaching $75.05 per barrel on August 5, a new low in nearly six months.

On August 6, domestic crude oil futures also fell sharply. As of press time, the main contract of Shanghai Futures Exchange crude oil futures fell 1% to 552 yuan per barrel, and the intraday low hit 541.1 yuan per barrel, setting a new low since mid-December last year.

However, on August 6, the main contracts of U.S. oil and Brent oil futures rebounded after falling during the session, and at one point rose by more than 2% during the session.

Hu Ziyang, an energy and chemical analyst at Nanhua Futures, told the First Financial Daily that the U.S. non-farm data was lower than expected, causing the market to panic about an economic recession. The market began to trade in a U.S. recession. The FOMC meeting showed that the Federal Reserve's attitude had eased, and a rate cut in September was a high probability event.

From the perspective of positions, according to data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as of the week of July 30, 2024, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) crude oil futures reported a decrease of 22,077 long positions or 1.28% to 1,702,361; reported a decrease of 24,818 short positions or 1.41% to 1,735,072; non-commercial net long positions decreased by 30,505 to 245,493, accounting for 13.8%. The total position was 1,787,630, a decrease of 21,464 or 1.19% from the previous month.

In terms of macro data, Zhuochuang Information crude oil analyst Sang Xiao believes that the US July non-farm report was beyond market expectations, with new employment hitting the lowest record in three and a half years and the unemployment rate rising to the highest level in nearly three years. While the weak non-farm data deepened the Fed's expectations of rate cuts, it also aggravated the market's concerns about the economic recession and the impact on energy demand, and the oil market was under pressure. At present, the market's pessimistic sentiment has been released, and the sustainability of the oil price decline may be limited; the trend of oil destocking during the peak summer oil consumption season in the United States and the geopolitical situation provide support, and there is a possibility that crude oil prices will stop falling and rebound.

GF Futures analyzed that international oil prices may fluctuate and weaken in the short term, mainly due to the slowdown in global economic growth, especially the US non-farm payroll data that was lower than expected and the weakening of manufacturing in major economies. In addition, although geopolitical risks in the Middle East still exist, the current situation is relatively controllable and the impact on supply in the short term is limited.

Yang An from Haitong Futures Energy Research and Development Center believes that as time goes by, OPEC+'s support for oil prices will gradually weaken, and expectations of oil prices falling below the "production cut bottom" are increasing. At present, the supply and demand pattern of the crude oil market is still relatively healthy, but the long-term oversupply pressure is worrying. Although the short-term crude oil price trend has weakened and the decline has obviously exceeded expectations, considering that it is currently at a low point in the past two years, it is still a high probability event for the market to fluctuate.