Oil and gold face near similar technical configurations

I’ll let the charts speak for themselves with this one. Let’s take a look at oil first:

I’ve continued to maintain a more bullish outlook on oil but am still finding it tough to pick at levels for long entries.

Since peaking near $130 amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, oil has been sort of stuck in a bit of a range with the lower bound quite clearly defined near $95. The low dipped to just below $93 but daily closes have always been salvaged since March. As such, that is still the key support region to watch.

But what is clear is that we are seeing lower highs established during the period, with emergency oil reserve releases coming into the picture alongside China’s continued appetite for harsh lockdown measures. The latter in particular is a major curveball and has put a rather big dent on sentiment over the past few weeks in my view.

And so, we are seeing a sort of flag pattern emerge in oil and for the chartists, this is potentially an opportunistic moment. Price action will have to break out one way or another and the next key trade is to run with that.

Looking over to gold:

It may not be as evident or as tight, but there is also a sort of flag pattern emerging for gold as well.

Since peaking in early March above $2,000, buyers’ last push to try and test the big level faltered and we have seen price retrace back to test support at $1,900. The lows around $1,890-95 adds to some support region just below the figure level but it is clear that if the region breaks, the downside for gold will be much heavier.

The 100-day moving average (red line) may provide some comfort @ $1,873 for buyers but it may not mean much in the context of a bigger technical breakdown especially after the February to March rally relied heavily on geopolitical tensions – which have eased considerably since (or at least the market isn’t as captivated anymore).