• Prior +0.1%
• Market index 202.1 vs 195.7 prior
• Purchase index 145.6 vs 138.7 prior
• Refinance index 500.7 vs 498.3 prior
• 30-year mortgage rate 7.13% vs 7.01% prior

Despite a jump in the rates, mortgage applications in the past week rebounded a fair bit. Both purchases and refinancing activities also climbed with the latter index at its highest since May last year.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

Iran-Israel tensions are casting a dark shadow over the market, providing what can be argued as a timely retracement in equities and risk trades. But whenever geopolitics tend to get involved, the first thing that always comes to mind for me is the saying buy value, sell hysteria.

It’s a tale as old as time and it works for almost anything as long as there is fear in the picture. If a meteor is said to be headed to earth and the market crashes, it’s the best time to buy the dip. If there’s a comet projected to hit earth and wipe out humanity, you should buy the dip anyway. At worst, we all die together. But by any chance the comet misses and we all survive, guess what? The world will carry on as it did before.

As much as tensions are staying heated when it comes to Iran and Israel currently, there’s every likelihood that at least one side does not want a war. I mean, we’ve gone through the whole Russia-Ukraine debacle two years ago and I preached the exact same thing here.

But putting that into today’s market, things might be a little different. We’ve seen stocks rally in rather one-sided fashion since the end of October. And this is perhaps as good an excuse as any to come off the boil a little. I mean, it is also coinciding with more stubborn inflation pressures.

Over time, the market is always quick to forget and move on. And in this day and age, it happens more quickly than ever given the information echo chamber. So, yes the tensions are high when it comes to Iran and Israel now. But this is an episode that the market will not care about in a few months‘ time, let alone a year.

And that’s what you should be looking at. That is to buy value, sell hysteria.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

The recent price action in
Crude Oil indicates that the market needs some rest as we haven’t seen a
sustained rally despite the big geopolitical risk in the Middle East between
Israel and Iran. Overall, the fundamentals remain supportive for the market as
we’ve been seeing a pickup in economic activity, although the expectations for
rate cuts continue to dwindle. The technicals will be important to monitor as a
drop below the key $83 support zone could start to signal a turnaround in the
bullish trend.

WTI Crude Oil Technical
Analysis – Daily Timeframe

On the daily chart, we can see that Crude Oil got
stuck in a consolidation lately with a slight bearish tilt as the price
continues to pull back into the key $83 support zone.
That’s where we can expect the buyers to step in as they will also find the confluence of the trendline, the red
21 moving average and the
38.2% Fibonacci retracement level.
The sellers, on the other hand, will want to see the price breaking lower to
invalidate the bullish setup and position for a drop back into the lows.

WTI Crude Oil Technical
Analysis – 4 hour Timeframe

On the 4 hour chart, we can see that the price is
breaking below another minor trendline which should see some sellers piling in
to target a drop into the major trendline for a pullback. There’s not much else
we can glean from this chart, so we need to zoom in to see some more details.

WTI Crude Oil Technical
Analysis – 1 hour Timeframe

On the 1 hour chart, we can see more
clearly the consolidation that’s been going on since last Monday. We can also
see that we have a downward counter-trendline where the sellers piled in for a
better entry to target a drop into the major trendline.

Upcoming Events

Tomorrow we get the latest US Jobless Claims figures.

This article was written by FL Contributors at www.forexlive.com.