comment: Market is probably finding a bottom here around 72 and on the 4h chart this looks like a lower low major trend reversal. Confirmation would only be above 74 though. So any longs with stop below 71.8 are a good trade from the current structure. Bears have tried to make meaningful lower lows but the Monday low 72.39 was only broken by 47 ticks.
current market cycle: trading range
key levels: 71 - 80
bull case: Bulls let it go a bit below 74 but it does look like they want to buy this more aggressively, given the last 2 big bull bars from Friday. They need to make higher highs now and then I don’t think many bears want to fight this after they have tried to get the market below 71 for a whole week. The 50% retracement for the complete bull trend was around 74 and for the bear leg from 79 down to 72 is around 76. So my first target for the bulls is finding acceptance above 74 and then 76. On the weekly chart you can see than bulls kept it way above the breakout price of 69, so once we are seeing decent 1h closes above 73, they have taken control of the market again.
Invalidation is below 71.
bear case: Bears want to continue sideways between 71 and 74. The longer they do this, the better for them because we are still below the daily 20ema. Market has gone nowhere the past 5 days but at least the bears closed 4 out of 5 days red. Their issue is, that they can not find sellers below 72 so the market will try only so many times at a support price before it tries the other way or strongly breaks below it. I do think we will see a bigger impulse either on Monday or Tuesday and my money is not on the bears right now.
Invalidation is above 75.
short term: Slightly bullish until we get a 1h close above 74, then really bullish for 78/80. Bearish only below 71 and on very strong selling pressure. Neutral 71 - 74.
medium-long term - Update from 2025-01-19: Triangle is dead and market is now in a proper trading range with upside to 80 or even 85.
current swing trade: None
chart update: Added broken bear trend line and possible very shallow bull trend lines on higher tf.