WTI Crude Oil

The WTI Crude Oil market went back and forth during the course of the Friday session, in reaction to the volatility that we normally see during a Nonfarm Payroll Friday. That being said, we ended up forming a bit of a neutral candle, so at the end of the day it looks like we are not ready to go one way or the other for any substantial amount of time. With this, I think that scalping will continue to be the way going forward, with the $43 level below offering support while the $46 level above offers resistance. Quite frankly, unless you have the ability to trade short-term charts, this is probably not a market to be messing around with right now.

Natural Gas

The natural gas markets initially fell during the day on Friday but turned around to form a nice-looking hammer. Quite frankly, it’s a perfect hammer and typically those will bring in buyers. However, we are still very much in consolidation, so it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where we can buy for anything more than a scalp. The market will probably be able to reach the $2.15 level above, but beyond that will be a bit of a stretch to say that it’s going to break above the $2.20 finally. After all, this is a market that continues to have quite a bit of supply compared to demand, and of course we are entering the warmer months in the northeastern part of the United States. That in and of itself can affect prices negatively, so with that being the case it’s difficult to imagine that there is going to be a massive move higher.

On the other hand, unless we break down below the $2 level, we don’t necessarily have a situation where I feel comfortable selling for any real length of time. We are most certainly going to see quite a bit of back and forth trading in the meantime.