Like I had mentioned in early March, "I also wouldn't be surprised if the late-day buying today was hedge funds and other speculators buying in very late into the rally as I have seen them enter the market later in the day at unpropitious longer term prices a few times this year. But this doesn't mean that the short-term upside momentum won't continue a bit longer..." This hedge fund buying continued the rest of the month with hardly a significant pullback blowing past the 200-SMA, and reports came in early April that hedge fund buying had stepped into crude oil in late March leading into the upshot rally into the mid 60s now. Because the market has rallied without much pullback on mostly OPEC+ rhetoric and delivery on supply cuts especially in response to global growth projection downgrades, the market is increasingly susceptible to a pullback in an overbought state in light of abundant global storage.
Rig counts and satellite/mobile data sources have shown a spike in future shale oil production over the past few weeks taking advantage of lofty spot prices. It seems that this market is extremely susceptible to bubbles and as these hedge funds inflate it while the longer-term ample supply fundamentals reassert themselves amid increasing US supply, it's not difficult to predict another crash by Summer.
Yesterday, a Saudi energy minister said they are comfortable with their level of supply cuts at this point, a change in tone compared to all of the rhetoric heard earlier this year. And in March, OPEC+ decided to forgo their next meeting and wait until June to decide on further production cuts. Today, the IMF downgraded global GDP from 3.5% to 3.3%. So there is reason to believe the market will react negatively to these two developments.
Of course, EIA reports the inventory number tomorrow which has been leaning toward surpluses lately and the crack spread was trending higher last week while there was a resumption in the oil tanker traffic off-taking exports in the Houston Shipping Channel post-benzene spill. So there is some reason to believe the inventory build may be less than last week which is not entirely bearish.
Additionally, XOP's RSI(7) fell more than 10 points today which has led to further downside 1-2 trading days later every time this happened since January predicting we will take out today's lows in the May contract in that timeframe which goes against the recent pattern of 6/8 most recent trading days did not take out the previous day's low. How about a first target of $63.25, then $62.85?
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