As of yesterday:
Source: Barchart, accessed 6/27/2026.
Literally, prices are higher near future than front month, which is different from backwardation (which was typical during most of the war).
This seems to coincide with a recent drop in re-opening expectations.
Source: Kalshi, accessed 6/27/2026 4:45pm.
Just a guess. With near contracts now cheaper and with “time value” falling too, holders of futures are rolling forward where there is more risk asymmetry – $60/bbl downside, $120 upside.
The interpretation is the same, with or without a spec trade: It ain’t over.
Off topic – scary stories from Eastern Europe:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/26/russia-provocation-baltic-states-poland
Poland and Latvia are raising a red flag – Russia may attack them in an effort to face NATO with a crisis, hoping NATO makes a Sudetenland choice, not a Poland choice.
While Poland and Latvia have reason to overstate the threat – front line states, ya know – it’s not clear that Ian Bremmer does. While Bremmer sees the U.S. as the central source of geopolitical risk right now, he identifies Russia as the biggest tail risk. At his Eurasia Group Summit a few days ago (find it on YT), he argued that its predicament in Ukraine means Russia is prone to lash out, and that lashing out includes the risk of using nukes against Ukraine.
Bremmer is just one guy, but I think he’s saying what others are thinking – that’s often the way punditry works. Like our war-criminal-in-chief’s war with Iran, Russia’s aging autocrat has painted himself into a corner with Ukraine. He can’t afford to continue a war in which the enemy is attacking Russian infrastructure at will, he can’t afford to give back the territory he has stolen and he apparently lacks the resources to win a conventional war. That leaves…what Bremmer said?
Bremmer calls such recklessness a tail risk, but it’s an identifiable tail risk – not some black swan. That risk isn’t just nukes, but things like expanding the war. Moldova has long been mentioned as a potential target, Poland’s extraordinary military build-up has drawn Russian attention and the Baltics are buying weapons and building tank traps at a rapid clip.
Of course, our war criminal’s stupid fraying of alliances and squandering of of weapons stocks makes Russian adventurism more likely.
A conflict with nato gives putin an excuse to use nukes in Ukraine. It also then gives him a credible threat to use them against nato if that conflict escalates. Trapped animal.