The price of crude was deliberately pushed under $50 a barrel by OPEC for several reasons. First is these uncertainty that ISIS is creating in the region. The Saudi royal family doesn’t like their persistent threat and in order to cut their funding they pushed for lower oil prices. Consequently the oil wells that ISIS hijacked aren’t making them much money on the black market. Next, is Russia, they got way out in front with their aggression. The US was unable to have much leverage, so OPEC let Putin know who really runs the world. The message was back off and leave the Ukraine alone or we’ll bankrupt your country. So far they’ve done just that and it’s really starting to hurt the Russians. Next, OPEC loves being a monopoly to the world, more or less, and this Bakken field with its massive reserves that exceed their own, threaten their future riches. OPEC could let crude drop to $20 a barrel and still make money, the shale oil producers are losing money under $50, so Saudi’s hold the upper hand. That said, all things a cyclical, even oil. This price war won’t last forever, so it provides a low entry point for long term investors. OIL, the symbol for the electronic traded fund dealing with portions of all the big oil companies is seeing historic low pricing. See the graph, this is an anomaly. There will come a correction and my guess is will be within the next 4-5 months that OIL will start moving upwards. If the fair market price of crude oil is $85-$90, then OIL should return to about $21 a share. That’s a pretty nice climb from $11 a share now. And don’t forget this is a fund, it’s incredibly safe and it would take a break through with an oil substitute to ruin this sweet deal. Other than that long shot, oil stocks are good as gold…er, for the long term of course. The short term they’ve been ruthlessly hammered and they are very volatile.