Last week was an interesting one for oil traders (USO, quote) and speculators, as crude oil continued to move lower from Monday to Thursday, before bouncing strongly on Friday and closing in positive territory for the day, with a deep wicked candle on the daily chart and associated with high volume.
Oil prices have been extremely volatile of late, without making any significant progress in either direction. The long and short of it is that the stream of mostly negative news has helped to halt the recent rally, while ahead of this month’s informal meeting of the OPEC in Algeria not many people will want to be betting boldly on an oil price plunge. Therefore consolidation is the dominant theme in
In the past investors were limited in choices between paper assets like stocks , bonds and trust deeds, and physical assets. Physical assets were all forms of commodities (DBC, quote) , real estate, precious metals, agricultural, energies etc , along of course their labor.
The last few days have been interesting ones for crude oil (USO, quote) traders, with the commodity mirroring the volatile price action and associated volume profiles of related markets, and suggesting in turn, that we may be approaching a pause, and possible bottom to the current bearish trend.
Oil traders hoping for a slow down in the bearish trend, to enjoy a relaxing weekend away from the screens, may have been tripped up by the Chinese (FXI, quote) data which slipped out on Saturday, with industrial production coming in at 6.9% against a forecast of 8.8%, missing the forecast by some distance, and whipping up the perfect storm.
Brent crude oil (BNO, quote) dipped below $101 on Monday morning after last week’s jobs data disappointed. The commodity traded at $100.81 at 4:50 GMT as investors worried about demand in an oversupplied market.
Crude oil futures finally managed to find some bullish momentum today, courtesy of the oil inventories from Cushing, which helped oil to reclaim the $100 per barrel level, to currently trade at the time of writing at $101.26 per barrel.
The recent bullish trend for crude oil, appears to be running into a stubborn area of price resistance on the daily chart in the $104.50 per barrel area, the same level which saw the commodity sell of sharply back in early March.
Brent crude oil (BNO, quote) slipped below $109 to $108.58 at 5:50 GMT on Tuesday morning as investors put their faith in a meeting set to take place on Thursday between the US, the EU, Russia (RSX, quote) and Ukraine.
As we begin the week on increase turmoil between the Ukraine and Russia(RSX, quote) energy traders are seeing the highest crude oil prices since September of last year as producers are fear political driven supply disruption.
