Thursday, June 02, 2005

Crude Oil

Crude oil has rallied about $8 over the past week so I thought I would take a look at the boxes on the daily continuation chart for crude oil futures. I am long term bearish on crude oil and think the market will drop at least to $25 over the next 2 or 3 years.

The initial down leg in crude from 58.20 to 49.66 established a bear market box $8.54 from top to bottom. As rule I find that markets tend to respect the 1/2 and 1/4 division points of boxes as support and resistance levels, but sometimes one finds a situation in which the 1/3 and 2/3 levels are more important. That is the situation is crude oil at the moment.

I've drawn in the box divisions on the daily chart above. You can see that the low at 46.20 prior to the recent rally occurred near the 2/3 point of the second bear market box which stands at 46.81. Normally this would forecast a rally to the 1/3 point of the next higher box, but crude blew right past that level yesterday. I think the market will now stop near the 2/3 point at 55.35 making the rally from the low a full box in length. (Note that a rally of exactly a box would carry to 54.74.) The next big move in crude should be downward towards the $40 level.

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