On Tuesday (January 24), international oil prices were generally stable. Although the recovery of fuel demand in China, the world‘s largest crude oil importer, is expected to be optimistic, the market is concerned about the slowdown of the US economy, which in turn limits the rise in oil prices. NYMEX crude oil may drop to $81.03 in the short term.
At 16:10 Beijing time, NYMEX crude oil futures fell 0.02% to $81.60 a barrel.
Commodities such as energy have benefited from a rebound in Chinese demand, lifting oil markets and refining margins. The 3-2-1 crack spread, which measures refining margins, rose to $42.18 a barrel on Monday, the highest since October.
Domestic and international passenger traffic by air, rail and road in China is expected to surge by April, leading to a significant recovery in fuel consumption with spillover effects to other Asian economies.
Investors returned to oil futures and options at the fastest pace in more than two years as concerns over a downturn in the global business cycle eased. Hedge funds and other money managers bought the equivalent of 89 million barrels in the six most important oil contracts in the seven days to Jan. 17.
But markets continued to assess the risk of a U.S. recession. The fourth-quarter GDP data of the United States will be released later this week, and the annual rate is expected to fall to 2.6%, which is 0.6 percentage points lower than the previous value.
In terms of inventories, preliminary surveys showed that US crude oil and gasoline inventories were expected to increase last week, while distillate inventories were expected to decrease. The private American Petroleum Institute (API) will release its inventory report at 5:30 Beijing time on Wednesday (January 25), while the official U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) inventory data will be released at 23:30 Beijing time on Wednesday.
On the daily chart, NYMEX crude oil started an upward (III) wave trend from $78.45, and the upper resistance looked at the 61.8% target of $84.75. The (iii) wave is the sub-wave of the upward ((iii)) wave that started from $72.46, and the ((iii)) is the sub-wave of the upward 1 wave that started from $70.08.
On the hourly chart, the short-term support of NYMEX crude oil is $81.03 and $80.54, which are the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level and the 50% Fibonacci retracement level of the upward range of $78.46-$82.62 respectively.