What’s Up, What’s Down: Crude Oil and Dollar Gain After Jobless Data
Comments for Thursday May 7, 2009
ENERGIES:
EIA Gas Storage report released today. Yesterday we saw higher to sharply higher settlements for crude and heating oil along with the rbob and natural gas. The crude and heat made new recent highs and closes both giving me buy signals. The rbob also made a new recent high and close looking strong. Although natural gas also had a strong settlement it’s still in a resistance area and hasn’t broken out, at least not yet. It did however break out of a small bull pennant.
CURRENCIES:
Higher closing prices on May 6thfor the Canadian Dollar, British Pound, Aussie Dollar, Swiss Franc, Euro Fx and Japanese Yen while, conversely, lower for the dollar. The euro and franc continue to be forming potential bottoms and are still close to buy signals. I still don’t have them and, therefore ,continue to stand aside until I get them or they turn back down. The yen closed higher but still in a downtrend overall with lower lows and lower highs since the middle of January. The Canadian Dollar closed higher eleven out of the last twelve trading sessions including today making another new recent high and close leading the way along with the Aussie dollar.
The pound also settled higher again now in a small bull pennant looking very bullish. The Aussie Dollar closed higher again making its highest close since last October once again continuing to be the strongest of all the currencies overall and having a large trading range today. The dollar index settled lower now in a bear flag still needing to hold the 8400 area. The last three weeks of action has hurt the dollar which is now poised to continue its downtrend unless it holds the area mentioned above.
See the balance of my morning comments, including the Metals, Softs, Energies and Grains, at my website. For my complete coverage, visit my commentary page at www.markethead.com.
Rick Alexander has been a broker and analyst in the futures business for over thirty years. He is a Vice-President for Sales and Trading at the Zaner Group (www.zaner.com) a Chicago-based futures brokerage firm. If you would like a free booklet explaining the charts mentioned above, email Rick at ralexander@zaner.com.