Oil prices have continued to rally this year as economies recover from impaired pandemic levels, however, calendar spreads have been unable to realize their bullish intent. In fact, calendar spread structures have continued to disappoint into expiration.In some respects, this is less about a failure of the front-month contract heading into expiration and more about a handing-off of strength to the next contract, which narrows the front spread into expiration. The close-knit nature of 1-month spreads relative to moves in flat price may not reveal a useful pattern. Towards that end, when we lengthen our spread analysis to incorporate more time into the picture (6 or 12 month spreads vs 1 month spreads), the pattern becomes more visible. The pattern being that bullish sentiment is portrayed through calendar spreads until expiration. In both cases (the Dec/Dec 12 month spread and the Dec/June/Dec front vs back condor spread) are prone […]