- The Record
- desk-oilen-002
Distillate stays tight and cracks stay elevated — a product-margin call, explicitly not a crude flat-price call
- Status
- Confirmed
- Date made
- July 26, 2026
- Resolution window
- Weekly EIA WPSR distillate inventory and crack-spread prints
- Resolved
- October 24, 2026
- Graded
- October 27, 2026
- Outcome
- Both legs held through the window's Oct 24 close. Distillate: every weekly EIA print from the week ending Jul 31 through the week ending Oct 16 sat below the bottom of the 2021–2025 range for its week, between 9% and 14% under the average; the last print, 104.3M barrels, was the lowest for mid-October in EIA's weekly data since 1982. Cracks: the New York Harbor 3-2-1 crack against WTI Cushing, computed from EIA daily spot prices, ran from $44.03 (Oct 19) to $81.86 (Sep 25) and never fell under the $40 line; EIA spot data stops at Oct 20, and December futures put it near $52–53 on Oct 21–23. The diesel crack alone rose from $88 at the window's start to $107–124 in October. Invalidation needed distillate back inside the five-year band for two straight weeks and a 3-2-1 under about $35–40; neither happened.
- Desk
- Energy · Intel Suite Desk
- Source
- Desk — Crude Is Cheap. Diesel Isn't.
- Call ID
- desk-oilen-002
Regrade log
- 2026-10-27 open → confirmed. Graded Oct 27 2026 after the window closed Oct 24. Provisional CONFIRMED since Oct 19; held only for the final two weeks of prints.
Provenance
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View Intel Suite plansRelated calls
- OPENEnergy2026-10-17
US distillate inventories stay at least 8% below the five-year average in every weekly EIA print released Oct 21 through Dec 31 2026
- OPENEnergy2026-10-17
The NYH ULSD crack against WTI, from EIA daily spot prices, averages above $90/bbl in both November and December 2026
- CONFIRMEDEnergy2026-07-12
Distillate holds its structural premium through September 1 absent a formal ban reversal
- CONFIRMEDEnergy2026-07-01
Iranian permission-barrels (>40 Mbbl, ~1.6 mb/d) are the single biggest bearish force on crude and run entirely on GL X. Published second watchlist branch: if GL X lapses and Iranian flows drop, ~1.6 mb/d comes off and crude re-converges UPWARD.
- MISSEDEnergy2026-06-14
$91 is a floor being tested.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. This is published research of general circulation and is not individualized investment advice. Each call is graded against the invalidation condition it was published with.