WTI Holds Gains as US-China Meeting Takes Center Stage

WTI Crude Oil Futures (July Future)

**Bias shift to Neutral / Bullish

Friday’s Settlement: 64.58, up +1.21 [+6.23%] for the week, +1.21 [+1.90%] for the day

The announcement of a US – China trade meeting in London propeled crude futures to finish at the highs of the day / week on Friday.

For the week, geopolitical risk and Canadian wildfires outweighed accelerated OPEC+ supply as Crude finally broke out of a two week trading range. Sanctions on Russian oil continues to bite global export supply as the war rages on.

Today, WTI Crude Oil is higher by +0.34 [+0.53%] to 63.52

Crude is holding ground into the U.S. open as traders wait on news surrounding the US – China trade talks. The White House has announced that Howard Lutnick and Scrappy Scott Bessent will attend. The London trade meeting will be the key driver for markets today. No major data releases are scheduled for today.

Markets are trading risk-on in anticipation of the meeting. Over the weekend, the breakup of Elon Musk and President Trump and newsflow around Elon’s problems within the White House garnered a lot of attention.

Data Releases:

N/A

Technical Analysis:

Futures have settled back up above our longer term pivot and point of balance as of Friday. Crude oil momentum was very apparent last week. We got OPEC+ accelerated supply hikes, pretty bearish fundamental news, and a breakout higher of the most recent trading range – pretty bullish price action. Bullish price action in the face of bearish fundamental news is a pretty good sign these markets want to go higher.

Keep an eye on price action today as markets look to establish a new trading range. We would wait to establish longs until news out of the London meetings. Rhetoric out of the Chinese will be interesting and this “breakout” could be short-lived if these talks break down.

For intraday trading, our pivot and point of balance is set at…