Title:   Haymaker Daily — A Tale of Two Inventories
Show:    Haymaker (Substack) — Haymaker Daily, paid
Guest:   David Hay / The Haymaker Team (co-founder & ex-CIO Evergreen Gavekal)
Date:    2026-AUG-04
URL:     https://haymaker.substack.com/p/haymaker-daily-c07
Length:  written post (no timestamps)
Note:    Written paid Substack post — no timestamps; text as published, captured via Stephen's
         logged-in subscriber session. The one embedded chart (a Bloomberg year-to-date WTI
         chart with a yellow 200-day moving-average line) is an image and was NOT captured;
         its placement is marked in square brackets. Standard Haymaker legal disclosure block
         omitted. MACRO-ONLY — no security is named. The post references "the largest ETF of
         oil and gas producers" but does NOT name it, and no prior Haymaker issue in this
         archive identifies which fund is meant, so no ticker is inferred and the analysis
         page carries key points with no stock table. The thesis: the ceasefire-driven retreat
         in crude to $76 — right onto the 200-day moving average — is a buying opportunity,
         because inventories are drawing down globally (per John Kemp, even in the largely
         self-sufficient U.S.) and, per Cornerstone Analytics, refined-product stocks (jet fuel,
         gasoline) are being depleted just as severely while going almost entirely unwatched.

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Haymaker Daily
A Tale of Two Inventories

Hello, Haymakers:

Oil prices are once again retreating on the latest Iran War ceasefire news. This is despite repeated breakdowns of prior negotiations and an obvious unwillingness on the part of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to relinquish their Strait of Hormuz chokehold.

Meanwhile, inventories continue to be drawn down globally, even in the U.S., which is largely self-reliant when it comes to crude output vs consumption. Per one of the world's foremost experts on the state of the oil market, John Kemp, America's petroleum supply is diminishing at an alarming rate.

Yet there's an additional inventory shortfall to which most investors appear oblivious. According to another influential authority on the oil market, Cornerstone Analytics, it's not just oil stocks that are being severely depleted. Refined-products inventories, like jet fuel and gasoline, are also experiencing dramatic drawdowns. The data on these stocks are much less easily obtained and, consequently, prone to being ignored… at least until airports and gas stations around the world start running short on fuel.

In our view, the latest retreat by oil prices to $76 is a compelling opportunity for investors who appreciate the severity of the current energy crisis. It is further encouraging that crude has retreated to its 200-day moving average, as shown by the yellow line in the following chart. For energy bulls, it's also heartening that the largest ETF of oil and gas producers made an all-time high earlier this year and has held very near that critical breakout point.

Year-to-Date Chart of West Texas Intermediate (WTI)

[Bloomberg chart — year-to-date WTI with the 200-day moving average marked in yellow]

Bloomberg

The Haymaker Team