US Oil Short From Bullish Flag; High Risk:Reward Ratio

USO has broken it's uptrend a few weeks back, and since has been heading violently lower with no signs of stopping, at least not yet. Not in my eyes. I had a plethora of converging indications, so I've marked them in the chart A - F, and then explained my trade setup. Good luck.

A) RSI has broken above the 35 level, but this is likely because it bounced a bit from being oversold. It remains below 50 which is a bearish indication and still has resistance at the 40 level.

B) The cream of the crop. B marks the head of a head and shoulders pattern in USO. You can see when the neckline was broken here, while simultaneously breaking a series of important EMAs, USO began it's slide. We would expect some sort of throw back to this neckline. This will be important in our trade setup later.

C) Here is our bearish flag and Andrew's Pitchfork. You can see the slight countertrend movement off the lower bollinger band, and what now looks to be a hanging man. This entire move up is hitting resistance in the pitch fork, as well as the flag formation, and has formed entirely on declining volume. That's not a positive sign for continued upward momentum.

D) PSZ (Prior Support Zone) from way back when. I'm expecting a move down into this zone where it will coincide with support at the lower BB or lower median pitchfork line. We may get a bounce down here, or more consolidation.

E) Volume Decline Throughout Bear Flag

F) Declining & Still Negative MACD

The one thing I didn't like here was the RSI, and that the weekly chart shows that we may need a throwback before extended downward momentum. This is where that neckline comes into play. We may very well see a throwback to the 66 area before we are awarded with any serious downside momentum. However the weekly RSI is also in a downtrend, reinforcing our bearish outlook. I'm short a directional diagonal on this play, to take advantage of Theta decay, and let oil slowly drift lower in my favor until we reach that prior support and I debate what the next play will be. More downside, or a retracement? Maybe a renewed uptrend? Who knows?
analysisAndrew's PitchforkaveragebandsBBBearish PatternsBollinger Bands (BB)convergenceDivergenceExponential Moving Average (EMA)exponentialFLAGindexMoving Average Convergence / Divergence (MACD)movingOilPitchforksrelativeRelative Strength Index (RSI)shortstrengthsupportSupport and ResistancetechnicalUSOVolume Indicatorzone

Also on:

Disclaimer