Tremendous Moxie for Their Size

As slippery and untrustworthy as oil has been, you cannot deny the moxie, grit, and underlying bid that the oil services and equipment stocks in the OIH ETF have showing for a while now. Case in point: Even with crude having a soft session (but rallying off the session lows as we speak in the USO ETF) NBR (below on the daily chart) is one of many oil services green and continuing to sport impressive technicals. 

That said, as bullish as I am on oil's long-term prospects, as far as swing trading goes I still want to see oil get with the program and sustain at least some upside before loading up on oil stocks. 

But the larger point is that the struggle between oil's trepidation versus the oil services stocks' self-assurance is a microcosm of what we are seeing across many asset classes as well as monetary policy debates at The Fed in general: The dangers of both slowing economic growth and entrenched inflation. Which side prevails? Which side has it right? Or, perhaps, a devastating continued mix of both for the dreaded stagflation?

I still lean towards the latter scenario, which means we are one geopolitical event away from an oil shock crushing consumers like in the 1970s with the Arab oil embargo.