Crude oil for January month delivery on the NYMX slumped 51 cents (i.e. 1.26%), to trade at $39.47 a barrel during European morning hours.
The 12-member group produced approximately 31.5 million barrels per day last month.
For OPEC, it is not about maintaining their profit for the time being. The most important elements are maintaining the market share and even more significant is keeping the united front. So, OPEC exporting countries opted not to cut production in order to defend market share.
Let's not forget we have new members coming in OPEC and Iran ready to pump more and given that the current quota is already not working- new members will be very displeased if they would have reduced the overall number.
The Saudis are not abiding by their rules and other members have started to follow. Iraq is very ambitious and increasing its output aggressively. In summary there is more supply to come and perhaps that will damage the non-shale production.
Technically also, from mid-November, CL1! futures has not even been able to clear 23.6% fibo retracements, it tend to collapse the moment it hits 43 levels.
RSI is still signaling downward convergence with the slumping prices (currently RSI 14 trending at 37.2672 while articulating).
Most likely scenario: Contemplating both above fundamental and technical reasoning, we could foresee 37.75 in the weeks to come.
For now, recommendation is still favoring bears and hence good to sell on every rally.
On hedging perspectives, spot WTI oil is currently trading at $39.52 (-1.14%). An options trader who is aggressively bearish on this commodity can execute 3:2 put back-spread by shorting 2 lots of near month 7D (3%) In-The-Money puts with positive theta values and buying 3 lots of near month same 2W (-0.90%) Out-Of-The-Money -0.42 delta puts for the net credit to enter the trade.
