Black Monday? (repost LinkedIn Pulse needing login)

OilPro posted yesterday on the Monday oil price route and suggested that oil may settle nearer $40 a barrel. Euan Mearns earlier wrote on the trials & tribulationsof oil price predictions, his sophisticated study concluding that #itscomplicated. And Paul Hodges chimed in the same on OilVoice.

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On the other end of the scale I simply tracked the price of oil from bp Statistical Review of World Energy that provide, among other things oil prices back to 1861. I used it to illustrate our industry's need for innovation, as well as a backgrounder for my AAPG Visiting Geoscientist lecture this summer.

Excel's simple trend line analysis had an interesting 5th degree polynomial - note this is pure number crunching - no framework industrial or statistical:

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I clipped oil prices in 2014 US$ for the last 50 years, and the trendline shows a sharp dip. Balderdash! you might say... But adding OilPro's prediction for this year, that extra number however soft gave the same trendline:

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In no way does this replace others' erudite treatment of the oil price game, but doesn't adding a number that preserves a trend give credence to that trend?

Only time will tell whether we can feel bullish about the market , or have to whip it into shape like the station hand* atop.

*: Australian cowboy, above Don Slack at his station or ranch near the Gold Coast, Queensland