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US Crude Oil – Just Another Correction?

US Crude Oil – Just Another Correction?

Kristian Kerr, Sr. Currency Strategist

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Talking Points

  • US Crude Oil rebounds sharply from key symmetry
  • Early March should be an important timing test

US Crude Oil – Just Another Correction?

I am starting to wonder whether this rally in Crude deserves more respect. Last month when sentiment got to negative extremes (DSI at 10% bulls or below on all timeframes out to a month) it wasn’t hard to imagine that an aggressive counter-trend rally could unfold and clear out the “one way thinking” that was so pervasive in the market. That is precisely what happened as WTI rallied some 15% from the January lows. This advance was pretty short lived, however, as the commodity fell to new multi-year lows just last week.

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So why would this rally be any different? I think a few things suggest it could, but the most important is probably the level where oil rebounded from. The low in the FXCM Crude CFD contract was 26.03. Now one of the more frustrating things in doing technical analysis on commodities especially in the longer-term is dealing with rolls. A futures front month continuous chart will look a lot different so levels are all a bit of an approximation, but that all said the CFD contract reacted at a very interesting level. The 25.00 to 26.00 zone is important as it marks 10 square roots from the high in 2008 and is the 88.7% retracement (square root of 78.6) of the 1998 – 2008 advance. Therefore, unlike last month, the commodity is rebounding from a fairly clear level of symmetry. This is important. The price action could also be interpreted as just a minor undercut of last month’s low and the backtest of a larger potential basing pattern. We will see.

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Wednesday’s high around 31.50 is a clear near-term obstacle with a close above needed to trigger a move to test more important resistance between 32.40 and 32.90. Through there and I think this advance could turn into something. The aspect I do not like is the timing. As I have written before there is an important confluence of timing relationships around the start of March. If the commodity is going to embark on a more important counter-trend recovery in 2Q then I would like to see it occur from a low sometime around then. Therefore, the clear risk in the way I look at things is that we still need another leg down before oil can meaningfully recover.

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--- Written by Kristian Kerr, Senior Currency Strategist for DailyFX.com

To contact Kristian, e-mail instructor@dailyfx.com. Follow me on Twitter @KKerrFX

DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.

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