The tentative deal that OPEC agreed to in Algeria last week has been met with a lot of skepticism , both because it might be difficult to finalize and because the size of the production cut announced was a little underwhelming. Nevertheless, the deal succeeded in one aspect, at least for the time being. Market sentiment has turned a lot more bullish since last week, with hedge funds and other money managers going long on crude. In fact, speculators began taking bullish bets on oil just ahead of the OPEC meeting, a gamble that paid off when OPEC surprised the markets with a plan to cut production by between 200,000 and 700,000 barrels per day. Money managers stepped up their long positions by 24,131 contracts and options in the week ending on Sept. 27, an 8.1 percent increase from the week before, the largest gain since January. And short […]