Trading in NYMEX Crude won’t start for another hour, so I’ve had to imagine a pattern to predict how things might turn out. It is a foregone conclusion that quotes will open significantly lower, since Trump, as fully expected, has announced on a Sunday yet another ceasefire. This dog-and-pony show continues to impress because of what I call the “next idiot” theory (which I’ve explained many times in the chat room). It holds that if there is breaking news which a trader working at 305 Wacker Drive believes will cause his colleagues at 307 Wacker Drive to sell crude contracts, then he, too, is obliged to sell or face an avalanche. This is irrespective of whether anyone actually believes that Trump’s weekly, ginned-up announcement about “talks” will cause peace to break out in the region or even ease the tense situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Allowing for the ‘next-idiot’ effect to determine this afternoon’s opening price, I’ve imagined an initial bar that has Sep Crude trading down to around $81, about $5 or $6 lower than Friday’s settlement price. I doubt the selling will be much worse than that, implying the bullish pattern projecting to as high as 91.70 still holds. That is what I expect to happen once it becomes clear by mid-week or so that Trump’s cessation of air strikes against Iran has, as we might have expected, achieved nothing. _______ UPDATE (Aug 3, 9:50 p.m.): The futures have come to life in after-hours trading, thrusting to within 12 cents of the 81.34 profit target of an explicitly detailed trade I posted in the chat room early Monday morning. If you held a position after the regular session ended this afternoon, you should be out of at least half of it. The 84.24 ‘d’ target remains viable (as well as one at 91.70 given above). These are not exactly longshot bets, since traders appear to have caught a pungent whiff of the flatulence behind Trump’s latest ceasefire announcement. They are obviously having second thoughts about the heavy pounding they gave crude Sunday night in a classic ‘next-idiot’ reflex.