Seeing the Oil Barrel Half Full Today

Crude oil is up nicely today while natural gas is taking a shellacking.

From my perch it is instructive to see natural gas-related stocks, like Northern Oil (below on the updated daily chart) basically ignore the natty selloff and remain either pushing higher or tightening up for fresh consolidations, such as with CTRA. 

Going forward, we still likely need to see oil itself sustain strength in order for energy stocks to maintain momentum into the end of 2024 and beyond, as you can see for yourself when you pull up a USO chart at the overall lack of direction for crude for a while now. 

As for the broad market today we have another record-setting (or close to it) low volume session, which seems odd given that December just started--We usually see the super light volume come at the end of the month.