Oil plunges as the crude market seeks direction

In trading, there's a saying: the trend is your friend. Energy traders like to add: and no trend is nobody's friend. And "no trend" that certainly describes today's crude market.

Oil bears deploy technically correct trades and are soon hammered by a market reversal. Oil bulls set longer term buy positions, only to see record-high oil inventories take center stage in mid-rally, stopping out their positions.

On Wednesday, the the bulls were hurt again, as oil plummeted $3.91 to $63.32 per barrel -- crude's biggest price drop in three months -- on a larger-than-expected increase in U.S. oil inventories, and amid concern the U.S. and global economic recoveries will not be strong enough to reduce those high distillate inventories.