It happened again this week, and I’m still trying to figure out what causes it.

The US Dept. of Energy releases it’s This Week in Petroleum update, commonly called the TWIP at 10:30AM on Wednesday, as scheduled. The oil futures market immediately reacts–this week it was in the downward direction–stories hit the wire about why–this week it was the slight, unexpected build in US crude oil stockpiles–only to reverse that reading of the figures later on Wednesday or Thursday–as we’re now reading that oil is up largely because the rise in overall stockpiles was more than offset by a decline in the stockpiles at Cushing, OK.

I don’t keep track of such things, but these TWIP U-turns, as I’ve been calling them for some time, happen relatively frequently, perhaps once every three or four reports.

What the hell is going on here?

Is this a case of the market having a knee-jerk reaction to the information in the top few paragraphs of the text version of the TWIP, without reading the rest of it? (The full text version is released all at once at 10:30AM US Eastern. The fancier version comes a few hours later.)

In more general terms, I’m highly skeptical of these reports that say the entire market for oil or even the stock market in general moved for one particular reason. In some cases, like a surprise announcement of an interest rate change by the Fed or a value for a key economic indicator, it’s probably a reasonable conclusion. But I think the market watchers and writers get very carried away with their estimate of their own ability to read the mind of the vast, seething, and slightly psychotic marketplace.