Eoin Treacy's view In the third of these interviews, Jing Ulrich mentions her bullish outlook for coal citing the fact that China is now a net importer of the commodity having rationalised the domestic industry over the last few years.

While making no allowance for the difference between thermal and coking coal, this chart of the spread of China's coal imports over its exports clearly illustrates the growth in imports since the sustained move above 0 from March 2009.

Despite this bullish fundamental, coal futures prices fell aggressively during the global recession and have been unable to sustain upward breaks for much of the last year. However, they have held the progression of incrementally higher reaction lows since bottoming in March 2009. These would need to be taken out, with a move below 46.4, to question potential for further higher to lateral ranging.

The Market Vectors Coal ETF remains in a relatively consistent uptrend, but encountered resistance in the area of $40 two weeks ago and has now fallen back to test the progression of rising reaction lows. If the fund were to rally from here, the consistency would remain intact while a decline very much below current levels would likely suggest a swifter mean reversion, defined by the 200-day moving average, is underway.

The Bloomberg Global Coal Index is heavily weighted by Chinese companies and continues to encounter resistance in the region of 500. It pulled back from the upper side of the range again two weeks ago and needs to sustain a move above that level to reaffirm the medium-term uptrend.

Shenhua Energy, the largest weighting in the Index has been an upside leader until recently. It posted a failed upside break earlier this month, capping the advance in at least the short term, and broke the progression of higher reaction lows last week. This is also the largest reaction in a year, suggesting that some additional consolidation of the advance may be unfolding.

Exxaro successfully broke out of the 5-month range in December and is now somewhat overbought in the short-term. Some consolidation of recent powerful gains may be unfolding but a sustained move below ZAR9,500 would be required to begin to question the consistency of the advance.

The prime consistency characteristic of Peabody Energy's uptrend has been the unbroken progression of higher reaction lows since late 2008. They are now being challenged but a sustained move below $40 would be required to question the consistency of the medium-term move.