Inside the Trading Desks That Surfed 12 Days of Oil Market Mayhem
For today’s oil traders, headlines about bombs falling have increasingly become an opportunity to sell.
Just like in 1991, early spikes quickly turned into routs as traders focused on the reality of whether oil would keep flowing. And it did.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/BloombergTraders watched with alarm as US jets bombed a major Middle Eastern oil producer. An initial surge in the price of crude turned into a rout as soon as they realized that oil flows would continue unaffected.
The year was 1991, and the US bombing campaign was against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In just one night, prices collapsed by 30%.