The market should not be overly enthusiastic over today’s oil price surge on reports that OPEC has managed to reach some kind of a deal to reduce supply, David Hunt, chief executive at asset manager PGIM, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.
Hunt, CEO of the asset management group that manages US$1 trillion in assets, said the oil price surge today is “probably not” sustainable.
Earlier today, OPEC managed to reach the much-hyped agreement to cut output in a bid to boost oil prices. The ministerial meeting in Vienna is said to have clinched a deal to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day to 32.5 million barrels per day, but the deal may come with a condition that non-OPEC producers also cut production, by some 600,000 bpd.
Oil prices are soaring on the OPEC deal news, and as of 10:50 AM (EST), WTI Crude was surging 7.21 percent at US$48.49, and Brent Crude was soaring by 7.65 percent at US$50.94, staying above the US$50 mark for a couple of hours now.
“For us who are long-term investors, we tend to look at the group of people who are gathering in Vienna and say ‘they’re fighting against history... The cost of producing crude, largely due to fracking technology, has dramatically changed the marginal economics of oil,” Hunt told Bloomberg Television. Related: Will Trump Send Electricity Bills Soaring?
According to Hunt, long-term investors like PGIM see the longer-run market fundamentals and sentiment as “much more important than whether we get a bounce of a couple of dollars on Brent today or not. Fundamentally the economics of oil have changed and we now need to work that through how different industries are pricing, and how commodities are priced on the basis of that”.
Hunt also cautioned against investors being too optimistic in the long run about equity indexes’ continued rally since Donald Trump was elected U.S. President.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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On the other hand, which shale company is making money at $50, or $60? Almost none. Hunt is clueless.