The short version: in December 2025, with WTI in the mid-$50s and the official forecasting apparatus projecting $50 crude for 2026, we put a buy zone at $60 on the public channel and said oil was going back to triple digits. Nine months later WTI trades above $102. This post is the scorecard: the oil call, plus the three positions that sat next to it. Gold from $4,000, Chevron from $165, and Occidental from $45.
On December 12, 2025, WTI settled at $57.44. Five days later it printed an intraday low of $54.97. The EIA's official outlook called for crude below $60 by year-end and averaging near $50 through 2026 on a supply glut. Glut was not a contrarian view. It was the only view.
The Call: Buy What Everyone Had Given Up On
The channel post was simple: accumulate around $60, because the price of oil was carrying no risk premium at all in a world that had plenty of risk to price. The thesis was not a prediction that war was coming. It was that at $55–60 you were being paid to own the asymmetry. If the glut scenario played out, the downside from there was a few dollars. If anything went wrong anywhere in the supply chain, the upside was not a few dollars.
Something went wrong. Strikes on Iran began in late February. A ceasefire memorandum came and functionally died within weeks. By September the conflict had become a tanker war, and WTI settled above $102. From a $60 entry, that is roughly +70%, before any leverage.
The Rest of the Scorecard
The oil position didn't sit alone. Three others from the same stretch of channel history, marked to this week:
| Call | Entry | Where it went | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| WTI crude · Nov–Dec 2025 | $60 | Above $102 in September | ≈ +70%, still open |
| Gold · Nov 2025 | ≈ $4,000/oz | $5,595 peak in January; back through $4,600 in August | +40% at the peak |
| Chevron · 2025 | $165 | ≈ $213 this week | ≈ +29%, plus dividends |
| Occidental · 2025 | $45 | ≈ $62 this week | ≈ +38%, still open |
None of these were exotic. They were unpopular. Gold at $4,000 was "already up too much." Chevron at $165 was "dead money in a glut." Occidental at $45 was priced as if the Permian had stopped existing. The common thread was entry price, not story: every one of them was bought where the consensus had stopped looking.
The Lesson: Preparation, Not Prediction
The desk did not know a war was coming. The December post didn't claim to. What it claimed was narrower and more useful: that the market had priced one scenario at 100%, and one-scenario pricing is where the best entries live. That's the same scenario framework that runs through everything here: define the cases, find the price where the bad case is already paid for, size it so you survive being early, and let the asymmetry work.
The forward-looking half of this story, why the desk thinks the oil move is not finished, has its own post: Oil at $150: The Call Stands.