Rigzone: Crude Oil Gains; Natural Gas Surges

Crude oil for July delivery entered the holiday weekend in the black, gaining 36 cents to settle at $100.59 a barrel. Oil received a boost from a weaker dollar, which made the commodity a more attractive buy for investors holding currencies other than the greenback. The ICE Dollar Index, which tracks the dollar's value against foreign currencies, fell more than 0.8 percent Friday. Crude oil traded within a range from $100.04 to $101.24 Friday. For the week, oil is up 1.1 percent.

Memorial Day marks the traditional start of summer in the U.S., and summerlike temperatures should prevail throughout the Midwest, South, and East during the next two weeks. As a result, investors expect stronger demand for air conditioning and gas fired power. Natural gas consequently ended the day 18 cents higher at $4.52 per thousand cubic feet. The July contract price peaked at $4.56 and bottomed out at $4.365. Since last Friday, natural gas has gained 6.9 percent. June gasoline settled four cents higher at $3.09 a gallon. The futures price fluctuated from $3.04 to $3.08, and gasoline is up 5.1 percent for the week.

Where Now for Gold and Silver

Well, that was fun wasn't it gang? A huge drop in silver from $49.75 to the $32 ranges after 8 months of rallying from 19 to near 50. A 150% gain in Silver in eight Fibonacci months, sounds like a pretty overbought situation. Gold in the same time frame lagged badly, but all of that was predicted by me late last August due to the consolidating "B wave" in Silver that was preceding what I felt would be a "massive rally" in the metal. Quite simply I said, investors will view silver as "cheap" relative to Gold and they will buy it instead of gold.

I realize that makes no logical sense, but since when are the herd behaviors ever logical?

What everyone wants to know still is what is next for both Gold and Silver in their bull markets? When dealing with human behavioral patterns, it's as much art as science, so I do my best to ferret out the coming pivot highs and lows, and here is where I am at right now.

Gold should work higher in a current "5th wave up" from the $1462 pivot lows to a bogey target of $1627, and once that is hit or close investors should be enjoying rallies in the Gold and Silver stocks but looking to trim back positions aggressively assuming I'm right. Where that forecast could go wrong is if we close much below $ 1440 on spot gold before attacking and piercing through the old $1577 highs.

As this final thrust up completes, not too many people will be on board because they all just got spooked out of the market with the silver crash. I expect a bunch to come in near the end and they may get smoked as Gold peaks out and reverses hard into a stronger correction than what we just saw. My subscribers will be informed at every pivot along the way as to the best action to take.

Silver will have the potential now to rally back up to the $38.70-$41.50 ranges if I'm right about the Gold forecast. We had an interesting retracement in Silver that was between two Fibonacci pivots of 61.8% and 78.6%. Often in my forecasting career, I have seen retracements that up around 71% of the prior major wave pattern up and therefore they throw off many Fibonacci watchers who are looking for that lower or higher level to make their entries. This is partially why I think Silver has bottomed out in price, but traders are hesitant to make a bold move here.

Silver and Gold have another three Fibonacci years left in a 13 Fibonacci year bull market cycle, so other than some intermediate term tops and bottoms and chopping action, I am looking for much higher prices by the year 2014 in both metals.

below is my outlook for Gold intermediately : 

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