Notice that crude at a current $68 per barrel has made no upward progress in nearly 20 years. Adjusting for inflation, producers have taken a big hit. However, the quadrupling of oil prices in the early 1970s left them with a base price that ensured that no Saudi prince would ever go begging for a fleet of Lamborghinis in every color of the rainbow. Although the pattern shown is bullish and allows for a move to $125, or even to $187 (!), we have little to gain speculating on when prices might break out of the constipated, $30 range that has confined them for the last three years.  Crude oil, the largest, most politically rigged market in the known universe, is, to repeat, ‘just a trade’. ______ UPDATE (Oct 27): And what about prices breaking downward? This will depend on when a global financial bust that has been postponed since the S&L crisis of the early 1990s comes barreling along. There is no predicting when this will occur, but when it finally does, it will crush demand for oil, along with its price. For now, though, even when prices are falling, they are relatively strong, considering that China’s economy has gone slack. Their demand for fuel is what sets oil’s price at the margin, One could infer that it is mainly incalculable geopolitical risks that have kept the price of crude from crashing, and bears from amassing large short positions.