Crude, Where's My Car to Climb the Wall of Worry?

Despite gaps higher and impressive relative strength in KITE MBLY and TSLA this morning, equities as a whole are under a bit of pressure after a solid close last Friday. 

While pinpointing an exact reason for moves in the markets is often futile, it is worth noting that crude oil continues to stay weak, unable to muster even a modest counter-trend rally. As we have been discussing for a while now, though, crude is seeing much more of an orderly move lower as opposed to a flash panic of sellers scrambling for the exits. And the longer it takes for crude to rally, the more likely it is that the angle of descent likely needs to change lower for a more textbook capitulatory event before we do see that tradable, snapback rally. 

Connecting the crude weakness to equities may not be correct all or even most of the time. But given stocks' inability to hold gains last Monday, I am keying off crude a bit more than usual to see if black gold can take a few baby steps to the upside first and foremost.

As a corollary to that analysis, also note the energy stocks on the XLE ETF, below on the daily chart. Whichever way price breaks off that 20-day moving average base (orange lime) should also give us good insight into the next crude move, ad perhaps equities as well.