WTI, Brent Bull Run Hits Pause

Both WTI and Brent crude futures trade lower early Friday, with prices opening a gap with the week's cycle highs of close to 6%. Prices have eased lower as production in the southern states comes back online after the cold snap. Facilities run by Marathon, Verdun Oil and Devon Energy have come back online with reduced output - but markets have taken that as a sign that normality will be restored when the weather eases over the weekend.

This has relieved some of the technical indicators that had pointed toward crude being overbought - the RSI has edged lower to 70 today after hitting the highest levels since the 1990 oil shock early Thursday.

Gold and silver are rangebound, with the latter finding some support at the 50-dma overnight. ETF flow data released overnight shows ETFs were buyers of palladium and sellers of both gold and silver at the tail-end of this week.