CRUDE OIL IS RALLYING

Crude is rallying again.

After falling as much as 9% on Wednesday, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil was up as much as 7% on Thursday morning to move back to near $52 a barrel after touching $48 a barrel yesterday. 

Near 2:45 pm ET on Thursday, crude had pared some of these gains but was still up better than 4% to trade near $50.50 a barrel. 

Crude prices have been extremely volatile in recent days, rallying more than 20% from Thursday to Tuesday before a huge sell off on Wednesday.

In a note to clients earlier this week, analysts at Morgan Stanley outlined four reasons why any rally in oil prices will likely not last, as the firm sees prices going lower in the first half of this year. 

In January, Business Insider's Sam Ro wrote about how market tops don't just cleanly come and go but are violent and chaotic processes.

And the same can be said about market bottoms, which it seems crude is currently trying to find.

Here's the rally in crude on Thursday. We'll see how long it lasts.

Business Insider