WTI Crude Oil
The WTI Crude Oil market initially fell during trading on Thursday but found enough bearish pressure to turn things around and rallied rather significantly. By doing so, we have maintained the consolidation area that we have been in and going into the jobs number that’s not a huge surprise, as a lot of traders would be a little bit leery of putting too much money to work before that volatile announcement. I believe that if we can break above the $69 level, we are very likely to go to the $70 level after that. A breakdown below the $67 level should send this market looking for the $66 level. I believe there’s much more likelihood that we go higher than lower, but of course the US dollar moving after the jobs number could have a bit of an adverse effect on this market. Russia announcing that it was going to stick to the OPEC deal, despite having 2 months of noncompliance, during the session on Thursday also added a bit of bullish pressure.
Natural Gas
Natural gas markets continue to sell off every time you get an opportunity, and as you can see we broke down below the $2.70 level at one point during the day. Traders probably squared their positions of going into the close as we are heading into the nonfarm payroll announcement, which of course will move the US dollar, and perhaps drive the perception of demand for natural gas going forward. I think the market continues to be very noisy, but in the end it’s much easier to sell this market than it is to buy it. Market participants will continue to be very suspicious of rallies, and rightfully so. I believe that the $2.80 level should send this market higher, perhaps sending a “fear of missing out” rally into effect. However, I suspect exhaustion will appear on short-term charts that you can sell.
