Brent oil holds in red on Thursday and pulls back from previous day’s high at $80.10 (the highest since 22 May). Rising concerns about slowdown in global energy demand on growing trade tensions between two largest oil consumers, the US and China and turmoil in emerging markets, offset positive impact from much stronger than expected fall in US crude inventories. Daily techs suggest that pullback could extend as RSI turned lower after touching overbought zone border, daily slow stochastic is overbought, while 14-d momentum heads lower after forming bear-cross and bearish divergence. Today’s strong close in red would complete reversal pattern on daily chart and signal further weakness towards pivotal supports at $77.98 (rising 10SMA) and $77.71 (bull-trendline drawn off $70.39 (16 Aug low). Holding above the latter would signal that larger bulls are correcting and positioning for fresh upside and would reduce immediate downside risk. However, strong barriers lay at $80.00/50 zone, where broader recovery from 2016 low was repeatedly rejected, keep so far upside attempts limited and another failure here would risk deeper pullback on sustained break below $75.63 (06 Sep trough/100SMA).
Res: 79.69, 80.10, 80.48, 81.00
Sup: 78.74, 78.39, 77.98, 77.71