As discussed in our Oil Report 2010, "Too fast, too furious... now time for a break", the risk/return profile for oil-investors was of limited attractiveness last year, both in absolute terms and in relation to equities or other commodities. But to be fair, we have to point out that the correction that we had anticipated for the second half of the year never happened. We underestimated the amount of ink that the Federal Reserve was going to pour into its "virtual printing press" and the extent of relentless deficit spending and, at the beginning of 2010, failed to foresee how little importance was going to be attached to monetary stability. The weak US dollar is a logical consequence of the quantitative easing, which in our opinion is really just a euphemism for printing "virtual" money.

Special Report Oil