Nothing much has changed from last week. At first I was thinking of opening a non-directional trade (Iron Condor), but I don’t think the price of oil will be rising strongly anytime soon. Although there are forces pushing the price up, like Venezuela sanctions, OPEC cutting supply, the market’s uncertainty over a slowing global economy is stronger. There are also factors such as US shale drillers who do not seem to be slowing their oil production despite the lowered prices and US oil oversupply. Even if the oil price were to move up, it needs to clear all these barriers first, and I don’t think any spectacular news will help it do that anytime soon.

Forecasting Checklist

• Oil industry news
  • Political Plays?
    • It seems that the HuaWei Heiress arrest is a proxy war for the US-China trade war. v
    • US slaps sanctions on Venezuela. ^
    • US government shutdown has temporarily ended.
  • Level of uncertainty?
    • Seems that this is pretty high. The global economy and China in particular reported as slowing down, but the effects don’t seem to be showing on the stock market.
  • Upcoming events/meetings?
  • OPEC  – 18 April 2019
• Check status of economies
  • Oil demand?
    • Unknown. This is dependent on the economy.
  • Oil supply?
    • There seems to be an oversupply in US, as their pumps keep going
    • OPEC cut their supply. ^
• Check other charts for movement
  • USD
    • Slight downtrend
  • Gold
    • It’s jumping up
• Technical analysis
  • TTM_LRC ranges
    • On a longer-term downtrend

The Forecast

It is less likely for prices to bounce up to previous highs than for it to drop downwards or stay sideways.

• • I am 87% confident that the price of WTI oil will not be above $61 on 15/03/2019.