Crude oil continued to struggle on Friday as both WTI and Brent faced pressure from downtrend lines, the 50-day EMA, and major resistance near $60. Supply remains ample, demand soft, and short-term rallies still appear vulnerable to selling.
The light sweet crude oil market has struggled a bit in the early hours here on Friday. As the downtrend line continues to be a bit of an issue, with the 50-day EMA sitting just above it. Furthermore, we also have the $60 level in this same neighborhood, and that, in and of itself, being a large round, psychologically significant figure, causes some issues as well.
If the market were to fall from here, it would just continue a pattern that we had seen since that announcement of sanctions coming out of Russia or being applied to Russia, I should say. And of course, the reaction, which did exactly what it should do. Russia has been under sanctions for as long as I can remember, and it doesn’t keep Russian oil out of the market. We still have plenty of supply and a little bit of a lack of demand.
The Brent market has also tried to rally, but you can see that the downtrend line and the 50-day EMA sit above there. So, I think all things being equal, this is a market that we’ll see selling opportunities on short-term rallies to show signs of exhaustion, which is exactly what I’ve done. And we’re in a nice down-trending channel at this point. If we do break out to the upside, it’s really not until we break above the $65 level that I think something has truly changed. I don’t necessarily think that crude oil is going to collapse at this point. I just think that it is in a bit of a funk that it just can’t seem to get beyond.
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Chris is a proprietary trader with more than 20 years of experience across various markets, including currencies, indices and commodities. As a senior analyst at FXEmpire since the website’s early days, he offers readers advanced market perspectives to navigate today’s financial landscape with confidence.