Stocks & Commodities V. 23:11 (98): At The Close by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Stocks & Commodities V. 23:11 (98): At The Close by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

For reasons that are obvious (think prices at the gas pump if you’re confused), I have been watching the action in the crude oil market recently. Given that haven’t seen prices come down that much at the gas pumps, I thought I’d pull up a chart of the continuous crude oil contracts to see where things were heading. I’m not trading crude oil contracts but thought I’d share my observations. Usually, I overlay a 50-period moving average but in this case, I thought a shorter period would fit better. I applied the 40-day moving average to the daily chart of the crude oil continuous contracts, since it seemed to closely correlate with the trendline displayed in Figure 1. If you look at the current action (as of September 16, 2005), you will see some interesting behavior, in terms of the trendline and moving average displayed.