I’m ready to bury that earlier prediction of $117 a barrel, since the daily chart has evolved to provide no hint of it. Not that it couldn’t happen. There is an ABCD pattern stretching back to 2021 that would allow for a move to above $115. The original forecast assumed that a growing conflagration in the Middle East would drive the price surge. However, it turns out that speculation, including by the U.S. military brass, that Israel would face a long, drawn-out war, turned out to have been based on Israeli disinformation. In fact, Hamas has trapped itself in a tunnel die-off, every shaft, entrance and exit of their supposed fortress having been mapped by Israel at the time they were created. As for Hezbollah opening up a new front to the north, they haven’t, and one can only surmise that neither they nor their paymasters in Iran want to cause the total destruction of Lebanon — or of Iran’s nascent A-bomb capability, since a couple of bunker buster boms such as Israel used on Gaza City could end the weapons program in a trice. Returning to January Crude’s chart, it is a mess of dueling impulse legs that are tradeable, but only with diligent attention to the intraday bars. At the moment, the chart is neither bullish nor bearish, nor are there any price targets of interest that I can discern.