Trading: you can be sure of Shell

Oil won’t stay low forever – and Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell looks both lean and cheap.

Shell has worked hard to cut its production costs © Getty

These are torrid times for the oil industry. The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark US oil futures, has fallen from $60 at the start of the year to under $20, while even Brent crude is around $25. This is due to two factors: an increase in supply owing to the breakdown of the agreement between oil cartel Opec and Russia, and a collapse in demand as the world goes into lockdown.

The mismatch between supply and demand is now so great that there are reports of companies getting close to running out of space to store the excess oil. They may even end up paying some customers to take the oil off their hands.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri