market folly

The guys over at MarketClub came out with a new video on crude oil yesterday that examines how seasonality typically effects the price of oil. And, their findings are interesting in that crude oil seasonally heads a bit lower this time of year, yet the market seems to want to head higher. The chart on crude oil has been pretty similar to that of the stock market in that it made lows in February/March and has trended higher. The main difference is that while the overall stock market has continued to head higher, crude oil has kind of traded sideways in a consolidation pattern since June.

There is a clear area of resistance around $75 a barrel and a nice triangle-like formation is setting up so that you can easily draw the lines to identify a breakout to the upside or a breakdown to the downside and trade it either way. Since the market just jumped up on the $75 level for the first time in over a year, it definitely seems like it wants to breakout to the upside as it has setup in a similar pattern to what gold was in before breaking out to above $1000. Also, if you run fibonacci retracements on crude oil from the highs in July of last year to the lows in February of this year, the retracements identify $83 a barrel and $95 a barrel as potential upside targets. You can check out their technical analysis video here.