London (Platts)--13Oct2009/626 am EDT/1026 GMT

Global crude futures reversed earlier Asian losses Tuesday and continued to ascend to new highs for the week. Both the NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent contracts surpassed Monday's highs, supported by firmer equity markets, sources said. At 10:08 GMT, the front month ICE Brent contract added $0.54/barrel to the overnight settle to trade at $71.90/b. The NYMEX WTI contract was also buoyant, trading at $73.84/b, a $0.57 overnight rise. In the currency markets, the ICE Dollar Index continued to lend support to the crude complex trading at 76.042 index points, a 0.084 overnight fall.

"We're seeing support from equity markets, technical traders and investment funds," a London-based broker said.

And Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob said: "This remains an extreme technical market and we find no real fundamental story to promote."

"The next obvious target being the resistance at $75/b," Jakob said in a report. "The main problem with the current technical trend is that it would be nothing without the support of the falling Dollar Index. Hence for the directional clue on WTI we still need to focus mainly on the Dollar Index."

He added: "WTI on a Euro/barrel basis has now reached the levels seen early in September but is still Eur2.50/b away from the August highs."

According to the London-based crude broker, a potential ceiling to the recent rally could come in the form of large US inventory builds.

"There could be trouble on the horizon if we see large builds in crude and products."

The American Petroleum Institute releases its weekly stock report Wednesday, the EIA on Thursday, one day later than usual due to the US Columbus Day Monday Holiday.

Analysts polled by Platts are predicting a 2.2 million build in crude stocks, a gasoline stocks climb of 1.6 million barrels and a fall in distillate stocks of 1 million barrels.

--George Johnson, george_johnson@platts.com