Tuesday April 18… at 04am (Zurich)… the fateful hour when the oil market can swing in one direction or another.
Why?
Simply because Chinese GDP data for the first quarter of 2023 as well as China's annual GDP will be published.
If you follow oil, you know… the price of black gold essentially depends on Chinese growth and the good health of its economy.
China being the world's largest importer of oil, if China goes, oil goes… and vice versa!
January's oil price boom focused on China's economy recovering strongly from its government's abrupt halt to the Zero Covid policy .
Prices which subsequently fell as the Chinese economy did not come back with a bang as advertised.
This was followed by the dazzling banking crisis which knocked the price of a barrel down… with $64.30 for WTI at its lowest on March 20 2023. The recession had become imminent and the specter of 2008 had returned to haunt us.
OPEC gave us a nice trick by drastically cutting their production during the weekend of April 2 in order to start the barrel rising again.
And since April 3 the price of a barrel has stagnated in a range of $80-82...
But all that might change next Tuesday…
If expectations for Chinese growth are honored, the price of the barrel could directly jump despite the weekly RSI already being between 90 and 100, underlining an overbought oil and a next theoretical decompression.
But… if these growth expectations are disappointing… there, the price of the barrel can really fall, decompress and potentially go to retouch the range of $74-76 per barrel when the RSI will again touch 0 to 20 on a weekly basis.
Everything will be played next Tuesday night, at 04h Europe/Zurich time.
China's annual GDP previous figure: 2.9%, expected figure: 4%
China's quarterly GDP previous figure: 3.9%, expected figure: 2.2%
Also note that next Tuesday at 8 a.m. we will have the figures for the evolution of job seekers in England as well as the average English salary.
And Wednesday, April 19 at 11 a.m. will be published the CPI of the European Union as well as the CPI CORE.
And at 4:30 p.m. we will be entitled to US Crude Oil stocks as well as those of Cushing…
Even if this information will have a certain weight for the price of the barrel, it is Tuesday at 04 am that China will "give the LA" to orchestrate the direction ascending or descending oil.
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