Title: Haymaker Daily — You've Been Watching the Wrong Energy Price Show: Haymaker (Substack) Author: David Hay / The Haymaker Team Date: 2026-09-10 (SEP 10, 2026) URL: https://haymaker.substack.com/p/haymaker-daily-0b3 Note: Written post — no timestamps; text verbatim from the paid post (captured via Stephen's logged-in session). Two chart images are described below as bracketed placeholders. Disclosures omitted.
Hello, Haymakers:
For much of this year, being a bull on oil prices has been a surprisingly lonely stance. The reason for the perplexity is that any sentient person realizes the supply shock over the last seven months has been the most severe in history, as we have often pointed out (seemingly, to little concurrence).
Since late June, oil has mounted a furious rally. Lately, it has been gaining momentum and is beginning to look a lot like a classic short squeeze. Based on the fact that the short position in oil futures was larger than during Covid, and one of the most extreme of the last 15 years, this is a reasonable assumption. (As we have noted in the past, oil futures volumes are often 30 times the trading of physical oil, or more, a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.)
15-Year Chart of Futures (COT) Positioning in West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Oil
[Chart image — credited "Evergreen via Bloomberg". Bloomberg panel "Crude WTI Non Coms", 2011–2026. Orange line: WTI generic future price ($/bbl, right axis), last 101.64 after a spike from ~60 to ~110 in 2026. Green area: WTI non-commercial long positions as of 9/1/26, last 0.332M contracts. Blue area (inverted): short positions, last -0.203M, with the deepest short readings of the 15 years in 2025 and mid-2026. White line: long/short ratio (log left axis), last 1.6414, having dropped to near its series lows (~1.3) in late 2025 and again in mid-2026. Lower panel: 14-day RSI (WTI), last 77.32, having touched rare lows near 20 earlier in the year.]
The blue upside-down mountain chart shown above represents the short or bearish position in U.S. (WTI) oil futures. The right-side-up green mountain chart displays the long positions. The white line is the net difference.
As you can see, late last year and earlier this summer, overall positioning hit exceptionally bearish levels. (The bottom blue panel tracks relative strength, which also hit a low rarely touched, another indication of the intense bearishness that engulfed the crude futures market as summer began.)
In our view, this will go down in oil market history as one of the strangest divergences that has ever occurred. It also implies that the upcoming direction of oil prices should continue to be higher. Of course, corrections are to be expected after a 50% price eruption in less than three months. (We sincerely hope Haymaker readers caught this wave, at least with energy equities.)
However, as oil prices were bouncing around the lowest inflation-adjusted prices of the last 20 years, excluding the pandemic, refined product prices, like gasoline and diesel, were behaving in a much different fashion. Even at the depths of the oil sell-off back in June, diesel was selling 50% above last year's prices. Now, they are double that level, as you can see below.
[Chart image — credited "Bloomberg AI". "NY Harbor ULSD Wholesale Diesel Price (USD/bbl) — 5 Years", 2021–2026. Peaks near $215 in 2022, then a long decline to a ~$85–110 range through 2023–2025; a surge in 2026 to ~$190, a pullback to ~$130, and a renewed climb to a last print of $191.97.]
Because end-users consume refined products, not crude oil, it is these prices upon which they should be much more focused. If they had been, they would have realized this was an energy shock of considerable proportions. Based on the escalations of attacks on refining and production facilities in both the Middle East and Russia, this is likely to get worse before it inevitably normalizes. The stock market may soon take note of the severity of this supply crisis, particularly for the energy products which actually power the global economy.
The Haymaker Team