Oil clawed back part of Wednesday’s heavy losses on Thursday, 5 November 2026. Traders began to doubt that the US midterm election results would bring a quick end to the war with Iran, which has squeezed global supply.
Yet the companies that pump Latin America’s oil moved the other way. Petrobras closed at US$18.80, Ecopetrol at US$15.54 and YPF at US$38.66, as a sharp fall on Wall Street pulled money out of emerging markets.
The message for a newcomer: crude is no longer the only thing driving these shares. When global investors panic, they sell Brazilian, Colombian and Argentine stocks first and ask questions later.
What matters today. Oil rose, but fear in the wider stock market, not crude itself, set the direction for Latin America’s oil shares.
01 The session in one read
Think of Thursday as two markets pulling in opposite directions. Crude recovered after a brutal Wednesday, with the oil-tracking fund up 1.93%.
Equities, however, had a day of fear. The S&P 500 fell 4.36% and the VIX, a gauge of expected stock-market swings, leapt 69.66% to 28.18.
The best-supported reading is that a broad flight from risk, visible in the S&P 500 drop of 4.36% and the VIX surge, hit the most volatile oil shares hardest, with YPF suffering the biggest fall. Oil’s bounce reflects relief that the war may not end quickly, which is good for crude but not for equities; the variable to watch is whether Friday’s stock market stabilises and the VIX falls back from 28.18.
Oil — the daily wrap.02 The board
The oil-tracking fund closed at US$148.21, a proxy for crude rather than the spot price itself. Petrobras ended at US$18.80 in New York, Ecopetrol at US$15.54 and Argentina’s YPF at US$38.66.
YPF’s fall was the steepest of the three, which fits its reputation as the region’s most nervous energy stock. Investors in Buenos Aires-linked assets tend to sell fastest when global risk appetite disappears.
Source: RT close, 2026-11-05. Where a commodity has no spot feed, an exchange-traded tracker or leading producer is shown as a labelled proxy.
Latin America — Cross-Market Board
03 Why it moved
First and heaviest: the stock-market rout. With the S&P 500 down 4.36% and the VIX up 69.66%, funds cut exposure to anything seen as risky, and emerging-market oil companies top that list. Confidence in this cause is high, because the three stocks fell together despite higher crude.
Second: the oil rebound itself came from doubt, not good news. Traders had pushed prices down on Wednesday hoping the midterm results would end the Iran war, then reconsidered on Thursday when it seemed a swift peace was far from certain. Medium confidence.
The usual drivers were mixed. The dollar index was flat at 101.56 and the US 10-year Treasury yield eased 4 basis points to 4.85%, which normally helps emerging markets. That they still fell points to fear overriding everything else.
Official US data add a supply angle: the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US government’s energy statistics agency, reported commercial crude stocks of 409.8 million barrels for the week to 30 October, down 0.9 million, and distillate stocks down 3.6 million to 99.3 million. Third, and least certain: after a sharp run-up to 23 October, holders of Petrobras may be taking profits, since it is down 4 sessions in a row. We rate this low-to-medium confidence.
04 The trend behind it
The oil fund is 12.6% below its 12-month high of 169.53, set on 23 October, and down 11.88% over five sessions. It remains 124.0% above its 12-month low of 66.17 from 16 December 2025, and 16.4% higher than 60 sessions ago.
Petrobras tells a harsher story: down 23.86% over 20 sessions and 62.9% above its 12-month low of 11.54 from 7 January. Ecopetrol is at a three-month low and 68.7% above its own 12-month low of 9.21.
This looks like a continuation of the pullback from the 23 October peak rather than a new phase, but with a twist: the stock market, not oil, is now the main source of pressure.
Our own price history offers some perspective. After earlier falls as large as Petrobras’s 23.9% in 20 sessions, the shares were higher 20 sessions later in 11 of 23 cases (48%), with a median of -1.0% and a worst case of -50.0%; history is not a forecast.
05 What it means for Latin America
Producers are in a strong position operationally. Petrobras’s own pre-salt output, from deep offshore fields beneath a thick salt layer, reached 2.96 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, up from 2.78 million in the second quarter, and the Mero platforms averaged 760,000 barrels a day.
Guyana’s output averaged about 910,000 barrels a day in the first four months of 2026. In Argentina, shale oil from Vaca Muerta reached about 622.7 thousand barrels a day in May.
Mexico is the laggard: Pemex produced about 1.658 million barrels a day in the second quarter and returned to a net profit of 18 billion pesos (about US$960 million), but output stagnated in the first seven months.
For investors in Sao Paulo, Bogota or Buenos Aires, high crude helps government budgets and export earnings, but the local shares can still tumble when global fear spikes.
06 The names to watch
Petrobras is the bellwether. Its record third-quarter output of 3.512 million barrels of oil equivalent a day makes the share-price slide look like a market mood swing rather than a business problem.
YPF has a target of 250,000 barrels a day of net shale output by December, against 248,000 now, and a new export pipeline, VMOS, is due to start its first stage between late 2026 and early 2027. Ecopetrol’s three-month low makes it the one to watch for a failed bounce.
Abroad, ConocoPhillips more than doubled its third-quarter profit to US$4 billion and raised its dividend by 11%, a sign that high crude is lifting global producers even as US shale giants hold back on drilling.
07 What would end it
The first test is the stock market. If the VIX retreats from 28.18 and the S&P 500 steadies, Latin American oil shares should recover some ground.
For the oil fund, watch 169.53 as resistance and the recent 5-session low area as support; a decisive peace deal would likely push it lower, while renewed US strikes on Iran would lift it. For Petrobras, 26.16 is the ceiling and 18.80 the level to defend.
The honest answer: this stops when fear ebbs, and that depends on Iran headlines and the next round of US inflation and jobs data, whose dates we cannot confirm here.
08 What to watch
What Prediction Markets Say
Polymarket, a prediction market where users bet real money, shows a 73.0% chance that WTI crude oil touches US$95 a barrel at some point in November and a 64.0% chance that it dips to US$85, with about US$1.35 million traded. Prices were read at 7:59 p.m. ET on 5 November 2026.
Why we show this: prediction markets turn real-money bets into a live probability that moves within minutes of the news, which is why investors, campaigns and newsrooms in the United States now follow them closely. We show them next to polls and official results, never instead of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did oil shares fall when oil rose?
A sharp stock-market selloff made investors flee risky emerging-market assets, which outweighed the 1.93% rise in the oil-tracking fund.
Is Petrobras in trouble?
Not operationally: it reported record oil and gas output of 3.512 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in the third quarter, though its shares are down 23.86% over 20 sessions.
What is the oil fund USO?
It is an exchange-traded fund that tracks US crude, so its price is a proxy and not the price of a barrel.
Is Guyana still growing?
Yes. Its output averaged about 910,000 barrels a day in the first four months of 2026.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI ·