Global oil prices rebounded in early Asian trade on Wednesday after automated trading systems at major financial institutions noticed the price had fallen for four consecutive sessions and determined that five would simply be too many.
The market shift, described in morning notes by commodities analysts as a "technical recovery," occurs when the physical realities of global energy production are temporarily set aside because a computer program noticed a 50-day moving average crossing a 200-day moving average. Trading volumes spiked shortly after midnight when high-frequency algorithms began purchasing millions of barrels of crude oil based entirely on the aesthetic shape of a price graph.
Financial analysts confirmed that the underlying fundamentals of the petroleum industry—including refinery capacity, Middle Eastern geopolitics, and global shipping logistics—had absolutely zero bearing on the sudden influx of billions of dollars into the commodities market. Instead, the price of the world's most critical energy resource was adjusted upward because the line had reached a "support level," a conceptual floor drawn on a chart by quantitative analysts using a digital highlighter.
We simply looked at the relative strength index, saw that it had dipped below an arbitrary threshold we decided on years ago, and immediately instructed our servers to buy twenty million barrels of petroleum that we have absolutely no physical capacity to store.
The algorithmic purchasing spree brings temporary relief to global oil producers and energy ministers, who spent the early part of the week frantically searching for real-world reasons their product was losing value.
Industry executives have reportedly suspended their analysis of physical supply chains and shipping bottlenecks, and are now just waiting to see if the Wall Street trading bots decide to draw a triangle or a rectangle on the chart tomorrow.