What a delight to have met so many of our clients, partners and friends at the iconic Campbell Bar at the Grand Central Station in New York on 20 Sep. The event was testimony to the rapid growth of the Vortexa brand, following up successfully on the massive, industry-leading Innovation Series header in London last week. Houston, Abu Dhabi and Singapore are still to follow.

 Fabio Kuhn: “Amazing to see all the interest in and appreciation of the Vortexa brand here in NYC – it has grown so much and so fast – I can’t wait to be back here with an even bigger Innovation Series event next year!“

 Our guests included traders from the leading regional houses, all types of representatives of the shipping industry up to the CEO level, players from the big financial community (hedge funds, banking, investment), and analysts from various research houses and consultancies, also a quickly growing part of our client base.

 Joseph Cacioppo: “I’m excited to work with all these fantastic logos in trading, shipping, and financial markets in the area. Getting confirmed from big and small hedge funds that our data (incl. point-in-time) provides loads of relevant trade signals is making my work easy. And tripling the attendance of our event vs. last year makes me proud.”

 For my part, I enjoyed all the deep discussions on market developments. The puzzling activity of the OPEC+ group and its impact in terms of sustained deep onshore and offshore stockdraws over the last two months has been a key aspect. Backwardation in WTI futures has surged since our coverage on 25 August (See our blog and LinkedIn post).

 The outlook for product cracks and refining margins was another bone of contention. There are bullish and bearish aspects in refinery operations (maintenance, grassroot start-ups) as well as on the demand side (massive import demand in growth belt from the Med and East Africa to Australia and East Asia, seasonal downside after peak summer travel and cooling needs).

Altogether I’m positioned on the bullish side, which does not mean further increases in lofty margins and cracks, but solid returns throughout the winter period with the potential for spikes here and there, including gasoline. The key risk is demand destruction amid rising crude prices, more so than a timely start-up of new refineries.

See more Vortexa events here.