Oil Trading Alert: Bulls Vs. Resistance Area

 | Aug 23, 2016 12:52AM ET

Trading position (short-term; our opinion): No positions are justified from the risk/reward perspective.

Although U.S. dollar moved higher on Friday, crude oil extended gains and closed the day above $49 for the first time since the beginning of Jul. Thanks to this increase light crude gained 0.45% and approached a resistance zone. Will it encourage oil bears to act in the coming week?

Let’s take a look at the charts and find out what we can infer from them (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com ).

On Friday , we wrote the following:

(…) this week’s rebound took crude oil above $46.84, which means that the bearish engulfing pattern (marked with red) was invalidated, which is a positive signal (especially if we see a weekly closure above this level, which is very likely, looking at the current price of the commodity). Additionally the CCI reversed and the Stochastic Oscillator generated buy signal, which increases the probability of further improvement.

From today’s point of view, we see that the situation developed in line with the above scenario and crude oil closed the week above $49, invalidating the bearish engulfing pattern. Taking this positive event into account and combining it with buy signals generated by the indicators, it sees that the commodity will extend gains in the coming week.

Nevertheless, when we take a closer look at the size of volume that accompanied last week’s increase we’ll see that the move materialized on smaller volume than earlier upswings, which suggests that oil bulls may begin to lose their strength.

Are there any other technical factors that could encourage oil bears to act? Let’s examine the very short-term chart and find out.