WTI crude gains fifth straight day, breaking above December high

Darren Chu, CFA Tradable Patterns

Happy 2025! Hope you enjoyed your holiday season. WTI Crude (CL) gained another 1% plus Friday, closing the NY’s shortened week just shy of the psychologically key 75 whole figure level. The bigger picture is of CL breaking what is arguably a Bull Flag resistance connecting the highs of March 2022, July 2024, October 2024 (as seen easier on a monthly continuous chart on tradingview.com). Any monthly close above the October high would all but complete the major bottoming since December and is now moderately likely by February. After 5 straight up days though, CL is likely to see healthy profittaking as early as Tuesday with the US ISM services PMI and JOLTS job openings and if not, by Wednesday with the US ADP non-farm employment change, unemployment claims, highly anticipated weekly crude oil inventories and FOMC meeting minutes.

CL should firm once again by Friday with the US average hourly earnings, non-farm payrolls (NFP) and unemployment rate. The weekly and daily RSI, Stochastics and MACD are bottomish or rallying. I am looking at entering long in the green zone (of the daily chart), targeting the red zone for Friday. The amber/yellow zone is where I might place a stop if I was a swing trader (although in my personal account with which I seldom hold overnight I sometimes set my stops tighter).

Author

Darren Chu, CFA

Tradable Patterns

Darren Chu, CFA, ex-Intercontinental Exchange | NYSE Liffe, TMX Group, CMC Markets, is the founder of Tradable Patterns – a publisher of futures/FX technical analysis on Bloomberg, LSEG (Refinitiv) and Factset.

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