The price of WTI crude oil settled at $77.41. That is up $2.29 or 3.21% on the day. The gains come in the face of a huge build in inventories today of 18.962M barrels in the current week. That was well above the expectations of a 2.2M draw, but was explained away due to the closures of refineries due to extremely cold weather. The private data estimated a build of around 14M, so it was not a huge surprise.

Technically, the price after the data release moved below the 200 hour MA, but that break was quickly reversed. The squeeze higher has continued over the last few hours with the price moving above the 50% midpoint of the move down from the January high. That comes in at $76.98. Stay above is more bullish.

Crude oil
Crude oil moved above the 50%