WTI, Brent and Natural Gas Tracker

Crude did not give the gap back. WTI's Monday book implies $86.67, another 2.8% above where it sat two sessions ago, and Brent implies $92.32—which quietly narrows the WTI-Brent spread to $5.65 from $6.71. Natural gas came along for once, to $2.80.

The interesting number is not the level. It is what is parked above it.

Kalshi's 2026 year-high ladder holds $2,985,936 of open interest against $8,962 of daily volume—a 333-to-1 ratio, which is a position book wearing a trading book's clothes. Its single deepest position is $524,768 on $115.01 or above at 33.75%, a strike 33% above spot. The Election Day book, which turns $590 a day, carries $327,101, and its deepest leg is $60,628 on $117 or above at 9%.

And on Polymarket's all-time-high book, the deepest leg by volume is the September 30 rung at 2.2%, which took $21,499—three and a half times the flow on the December 31 rung priced six times higher.

Brent and natural gas on the same Monday settlement, plus Polymarket's monthly WTI book—which is where this story actually trades.

Polymarket's August book turned $180,581 in the last 24 hours against Kalshi's $44,290 on the daily. Seven of its rungs have already closed: every "reach $85 or below" leg is settled at 1.00, meaning WTI printed $85 this month. What is still live is $90 at 59% and $95 at 20.5%—and the $95 rung is the one taking the money.

The year ladders. These are the largest open-interest books in energy and among the largest on the exchange, and they barely trade.

Year-high (December 31): $2,985,936 of open interest, $8,962 a day. The distribution is not shaped like a forecast—it is shaped like a hedge. $524,768 sits on $115.01 or above at 33.75%; the deepest leg by volume is $135.01 or above at 15.15%, a strike 56% above spot.

Year-low: $273,105, and $90,204 of it sits on 79.99 or below at exactly 50%. That rung has to be right or wrong within four months and the book cannot pick a side.

The August max/min pair above them settles in nine days and is the near-term version of the same question.

Two books that price crude's tail rather than its level.

Election Day (November 3) is the thinnest important book in energy: $590 of daily volume against $327,101 of open interest, with $60,628 on $117 or above at 9%. Nobody is trading it and a lot of people are holding it.

Polymarket's all-time-high book is stranger. A new all-time high by December 31 prices at 13.5%; by September 30 at 2.2%. The September rung took $21,499 to December's $6,374. The cheap, short-dated tail is where the flow went—the same shape as the year-high ladder, five weeks out instead of four months.

For reference, Kalshi's annual-return book puts Brent ahead of WTI at 65.5% to 32%.

• Whether $86.67 holds into Monday's settlement. Two sessions of gains on real volume is a move; a third would make the year-high ladder's $115 strike look less like a hedge and more like a view.
• The WTI-Brent spread at $5.65. It has compressed a dollar in two sessions. Kalshi's annual-return book still favours Brent two-to-one, which is a bet on the spread widening again.
• The $2.99M sitting on the year-high ladder. If crude keeps running, that book has to start trading. Right now it moves $9k a day against three million dollars of exposure, and that is not a stable arrangement.
• Natural gas at $2.80. It has moved with crude for the first time in weeks. The month-end book is the tell for whether that is correlation or coincidence.
• The September 30 all-time-high rung. Two cents, five weeks, and the deepest flow in its book. Somebody is paying for a very fast, very large move.