So busy have I been dissing crude-oil bulls, and patting myself on the back for nailing today’s top within 28 cents with a prediction made several weeks ago, that I failed to notice where the July contract is headed next. To exactly 53.17 is where, and it took two hawk-eyed subscribers shoving a very knowing chart (see inset) in my face to make me see the obvious. The chart (see inset) is persuasive, to put it mildly, featuring an ABC rally pattern that has already racked up: 1) two precise hits at the midpoint pivot; 2) an equally price pullback from p2;  3) an AB impulse leg that exceeded an honest-to-goodness ‘external’ peak at 48.35 recorded on November 25. Moreover, with Hidden Pivot levels working so precisely, the pattern looks like a ‘mechanical’ trader’s dream. Accordingly, I’ll recommend bidding 50.22, stop 49.23; and if that trade gets clocked, another attempt at the green line: bid 48.74, stop 47.25.

Just because I see crude going at least somewhat higher does not mean that I have turned bullish for the long-term. In recent interview with The Korelin Report et al., I’ve allowed for the current dead-cat bounce from $27 to extend into the ‘low $50s’. That still holds. Meanwhile, I still regard the desperately bullish crude-oil ‘story’ as a hoax, since it is built on the perceived threat of supply disruptions and slowdowns (i.e., respectively, Venezuela and Nigeria) rather than on tried-and-true hokum about a strengthening global economy. The latter story is clearly a non-starter in these times of intractable economic stagnation, and so the spinmeisters have had to hustle scare stories from the supply side to push Sisyphus’ boulder uphill. The larger goal of the spinmeisters and their devoted lackeys in the news media is to support a stock market and banking system that is hopelessly mired in hyper-leveraged energy loans and therefore dependent on rising crude-oil prices. And rise they shall, at least a little bit more, until the vastly larger reality of global debt deflation begins to reassert itself, as it must. _______ UPDATE (June 12, 4:15 p.m. EDT): Two days of pummeling has not much altered the bullish picture I laid out last week or its 53.17 rally target. The futures are a theoretical ‘mechanical’ buy at the green line (48.74), as implied by the hypothetical pullback I’d sketched out last Thursday. A ‘camouflage’ entry is advised, since there would be nearly $1500 of entry risk otherwise.