Well, you suggested he was long in the 2022 - 2024 area, so I it's the spread I looked at, rather than the Z7Z8.
If I were long some part of the yield curve, yes, it would be 100% fair to say that I am long rates. In rates, as well as in commodities, it's reasonably well-established that the first factor (outright direction) dominates.
And yes, I agree, his fund made money in 2014. It's, obviously, impossible to know what precisely didn't work out for him in 2015 - present, but let me give you a flavor of the various quotes I can find in BBG:
May 2015: “We have now reached a turning point,” Hall said in a letter Friday to investors in Astenbeck Capital Management LLC, his commodities hedge fund. Growing demand and supply pullbacks “rendered all the doomsday forecasts self-defeating.”
Jul 2015: “Phenomenal demand growth in most markets” has stemmed a surplus in oil supply that, at 240 million barrels, is about half what most analysts predicted, Hall wrote in a letter to investors in his Astenbeck Capital Management dated July 1.
Sep 2015: The absence of “extreme contango,” which occurs when commodities prices close to delivery are cheaper than those to be delivered at later dates, suggests that “the world, whilst moderately oversupplied, is not awash in oil,” Hall said in a letter to investors.
Nov 2015: Astenbeck’s Hall Expects Oil Prices to Reverse. Astenbeck’s Andy Hall expects that rig counts will continue to drop. “We think the degree of negativity is unwarranted,” Hall, who runs $2.6 billion hedge fund Astenbeck Capital Management, said Nov. 4.
Jan 2016: Astenbeck Capital Management Chairman/CEO Andrew Hall, in Jan. 4 letter obtained by Bloomberg, says shorter-term headwinds “ultimately trumped” by longer-term outlook for oil prices, which “remains firmly to the upside.”
Feb 2016: As oil production slows and the daily over-supply becomes a deficit, inventories will rapidly shrink and force prices into a sustained rise “from levels that are required to destroy supply to levels that are required to create it,” Hall said. He projected West Texas Intermediate, which settled at $32.28 a barrel today, to rally to the $60-$80 range.
Mar 2016: *ASTENBECK’S HALL SAYS REASON TO BELIEVE OIL ‘BOTTOM IS NOW IN’
Aug 2016: After taking a pounding for two months, global oil prices are set for a “violent reversal" upwards, storied oil trader Andy Hall is telling his investors. “The market is being driven by its own momentum and currently that is down," Hall wrote to investors in his Stamford, Connecticut, hedge fund, AstenbeckCapital Management LLC. “But extreme positioning coupled with improving fundamentals should ultimately – and at potentially any time – result in a strong reversal."
Oct 2016: Dismissing skeptics, storied hedge fund manager Andy Hall said OPEC’s promise last week to limit crude production was a “significant development" that will accelerate the end of the global surplus bogging down oil prices. A cut in production “will bring forward the drawdown in excess oil inventories and associated increase in oil prices to a market that appears already to have achieved a balance between supply and demand," he said.
May 2017: After a "frustrating month for oil bulls," trader Andy Hall is challenging assumptions about the market, telling investors the magnitude of the inventory glut may be "significantly less than generally believed." "More investors have lost patience and thrown in the towel," Hall wrote to investors in his Stamford, Connecticut, hedge fund, Astenbeck Capital Management LLC. "We must confess to a high degree of frustration ourselves." "The inventory excess is being eliminated but not in places where it is readily observed," the letter said. "That should change over the coming months."
Jun 2017: Contrary to the “sea of negative sentiment" in crude markets, global inventories should fall at a higher pace in the second half of 2017,Astenbeck Capital Management LLC’s Andy Hall says in latest investor letter.
