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February 22, 2023
West Texas crude is down to $74.78 per barrel, after ending yesterday at $76.36. Overall, a 2.07% loss or $1.58 today.
United States FOMC Meeting Minutes is next today at 19:00 UTC.
While price action maintains a negative bias, United States Existing Home Sales (Jan) came out at 4 million, while a consensus of analysts was expecting 4 million. United States 2-Year Note Auction released yesterday at 18:00 UTC with a figure of 4.673, while the previous figure was 4.139. United States Existing Home Sales released earlier showed a marked improvement to -0.7% from the preceding data of -2.2%, but fell short of the 2% figure forecast by a consensus of market analysts.
Trend and momentum analysis indicates that the Commodity Channel Index (CCI) indicator is below -100, meaning the market price is unusually low and below its rolling moving average. Technical analysis indicates that a new, strong downtrend could be forthcoming with short positions favored. Asset volatility analysis shows that West Texas crude's lower Bollinger Band® is at $73.75, indicating that the asset has overextended to the downside and could, therefore, bounce back as buyers look for bargains.
All in all, the technical analysis suggests WTI crude oil has no clear-cut direction.
Taking a look at other Energy commodities, negative performances are evident as Brent Crude Oil is down $1.64 from the beginning of the session and now trades around $81.41. Heating Oil slips 1.39% to trade around $2.75.
Positive performances can be seen by looking at other Energy markets as having closed the previous session at $2.07, Natural Gas is up 5.4% today to currently trade at around $2.19.
With markets struggling for positive sentiment, upcoming macro data could potentially attract buyers in the market as as things stand, upcoming United States Crude Oil Inventories data is projected to fall short of market expectations with newly published data of 1.17 million, following on from the preceding figure of 16.28 million. New data is set to be published tomorrow at 16:00 UTC. Tomorrow at 13:30 UTC data for United States Initial Jobless Claims will be released, with an expected decline to 200,000 from the preceding figure of 194,000.
Furthermore, United States GDP is expected tomorrow at 13:30 UTC.
West Texas crude is now trading 38.8% below the significant high of $124.77 it set around 11 months ago.
