Readers’ Choice 2025

This paper develops a set of innovative text-based indices capturing oil market sentiment and oil price uncertainty. The textual analysis includes over 6 million news items, spanning from January 1982 to June 2021. The evidence shows that sentiment indicators readily react to economic and geopolitical events impacting oil prices, thereby enabling said indicators to accurately predict the price of oil. In contrast, uncertainty measures have inherent weaknesses thus yielding unreliable oil price forecasts. This research results in a novel and robust text indicator that offers valuable insights into predicting the intricate dynamics of crude oil prices, particularly excelling in short-term forecasts and during periods of economic recessions.

The day-to-day world of crude oil traders is not usually open to outsiders. Few non-specialists appreciate how oil traders approach the markets, what their backgrounds are, and how they make money. This article briefly summarizes a book which brings the oil trading world to vivid life. The book, in turn, introduces the reader to 40 real-life trades or strategies that were carried out by named market participants. The 40 chapters cover different geographies and different crude oil markets, providing an unparalleled insight into how crude oil traders work and think, as well as insight into how the markets have developed over time.