Crude Oil Hits Mid-50s Target Amid Tariff Shock—Now What?
WTI Crude Oil Futures (May)
Yesterday’s Settlement: 59.58, down -1.12 [-1.85%]
WTI Crude Oil futures finished lower yesterday after showing bullish life in the overnight/morning session.
I had shifted my bias to Neutral from Bearish yesterday and was fairly bullish crude in the short term.
The bullish price action overnight came in the face of the clearly bearish 50% additional tariff threat from Trump. This gave me hope that risk sentiment was finally bottoming.
Yesterday’s flip to a more bullish stance was a break from my normal process and a mistake on my part. Last week, I had set my downside target in crude in the mid-50s and we favor profit taking on short positions here today. Always stick to the process.
Today, Crude Oil is down -2.38 [-3.99%] to 57.20
Trump tariffs of 104% have gone into effect and China placed an additional tariff on the U.S. last night. The EU just now put in place a +20% tariff on U.S. goods and metals.
This situation is clearly spiraling, thousands of U.S. businesses will be making plans to pause or entirely shut down operations over the next two weeks. I’ve held the opinion and discussed in this letter that these tariffs will lead to a fairly drastic slowdown in the global economy and lead to a fairly serious recession in the United States.
We need a walkback on these tariffs by the end of the week or this situation will become dire. The real economy will start feeling the shockwaves of this fairly quickly.
Technical Analysis:
Volatility will remain extremely amplified. Positioning based on longer term fundamental outlooks is borderline impossible in this market.
We closed our bearish positioning in crude as our price target has been hit.
For today, we advise staying liquid and in the pocket as volatility could bring extreme opportunities. Risk is extremely amplified, prioritize risk management and sizing while also utilizing risk-defined positioning….
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