Oil Price News and Information

Stocks rallied higher today, breaking the four week long loosing streak since the S&P US debt downgrade. This morning, markets sold off following the GDP growth rate announcements and the Michigan sentiment data. GDP grew at 1.1% this quarter, down from the revised estimates of 1.3%. The sentiment index came in at 55.7, slightly worse than the expected 55.8 number. Ben Bernanke spoke in Jackson Hole, Wyoming today about the economy and future outlook.  While he did not announce a QE3 policy, he did suggest that means need to be taken to increase hiring and job growth. He also stated that the outlook for the next two years will be slow growth, worse if jobs do not return. Apparently the markets took this as good news, because they revered their early losses to close higher at the end of the day. The Dow Jones rallied over 134 points, as the S&P gained 17.5 and the NASDAQ added 60 points. Gold rallied higher today, moving away from its inverse correlation with the US markets. The gains are not overly surprising however, given the $150 drop over the previous two days. AT 1770 dollars per ounce, many people think gold is a good price, especially when some analysts project over $2500 gold by the year’s end. Gold futures contracts finished trading this week at $1827 an ounce. Oil prices traded choppily all day, closing higher by 0.30%. The October crude oil futures contracts settled today at 85.55 dollars per barrel. In other news, hurricane Irene is moving up the eastern seaboard this weekend. The category 2 storm is likely to make a head-on collision with New York City and Boston sometime on Sunday. Hopefully, the NYSE will not be flooded Monday morning!

Stock rallied for the third straight day Monday as M/A activity spurred buyers on wall street. In mergers and acquisitions today, Google bought Motorola’s mobile company Monday morning for $12.5 billion. Google will now own the Droid cellphone line. Together with their proprietary Android software, Google has taken a commanding stake in the mobile phone marketplace.  US stocks closed today higher than their August 5th levels, the high price before the “crash” last week. The Dow Jones gained 214 points to settle at 11,480. The S&P 500 rose 25.7 points to finish trading at 1,204.50; just above the technically significant 1,200 point level.  Despite the 3-day rally in equities, gold prices continued to rally higher today.  Still below the recent all time highs, gold gained $23 this morning to end at $1,763 per ounce.  It is concerning that gold continues to trade higher in a bull market. There is continuing uncertainty surrounding Europe’s debt problems as well as jobs and consumer confidence in the United States. Tomorrow, German chancellor Merkel will meet with French president Sarkozy to discuss how the European Central Bank will handle the debt concerns and deal with Greece, Portugal and Italy. The markets should react strongly to any unforeseen resolutions or crises. In the energy sector, oil prices continued their rally higher again today. A bullish sign for the economy, but a short term gain none the less. Crude oil futures gained $1.62 to close at 87 dollars per barrel. There is still a lot of upside for the WTI and Brent contracts; but only if the economy can recover and growth return.

The market volatility was noticeable yet again today, rallying higher throughout the day. Better then expected jobless claims numbers helped the bullish sentiment grow on the street. But with so much volatility in the market, it uncertain if this rally was really a rally or just a bounce after yesterday. In fact, since the US debt has been downgraded, the market has either rallied or sold-off by more than 400 points every day. The Dow Jones gained 423 points or 4 percent today, while the NASDAQ and S&P both shot higher by over 4.6%. In addition, gold prices dropped today for the first time this week. Gold futures fell over 50$ today to settle below 1800 again.  Part of the sell-off however was due to profit taking and because of a regulation change by the Nymex commodities exchange. The margin requirements to trade gold futures contracts was increased by 22% on Thursday, adding downward pressure to the precious metal’s price. Oil also traded higher today, a bullish sign that the markets may have reached a bottom. Many professional traders and analysts however would suggest exercising caution about the “bottom”. The rally today could just have been a bounce from the 500 point drop yesterday, pushed higher by machine and algorithm trading.  Nothing has really changed in the past week to suggest that the problems are over. The debt crisis in Europe has not been resolved and the US credit downgrade is wreaking havoc on treasury rates and bonds. Will the rally continue tomorrow or will we plunge another 500 points?

Markets surprised the street by opening lower Wednesday morning, following the strong rally at the close yesterday. Asian markets rallied following the rally, but overnight futures on the Dow and S&P hinted at a weak open. Stocks traded with increased volatility again today, tumbling lower by 519 points (4.6%) on the DJIA. The S&P 500 market index lost 4.4% while the NASDAQ composite fell 4.1% on the session. We are down over 10% in the past week. Some analysts are calling the recent downturn a “crash” resulting from the credit downgrade and debt ceiling crisis, while others blame the sell-off on speculation and algorithmic computer trading. Gold continued once again today to make new record highs. The Gold futures front contract topped 1800 dollars an ounce, and continued trading higher after the stock market close. Investors world wide are cautious to jump in to stocks at these levels, despite their attractive prices and P/E ratios. There is still too much uncertainty in Europe and the States following the US credit rating downgrade. Oil opened higher today after the rally on Tuesday and rallied slightly higher following the weekly API announcement of a supply drop. Crude then fell lower on the session, as bears sold their positions and got short on fears of further market downturn. Tomorrow the jobless claims number will be announced and everybody will be waiting for its release to place their trades. The expected number is 400,000. If there are more out of work laborers than expected, markets may trade lower on Thursday.

Markets continued their wild volatile trading today in the US stock markets. On Monday the Dow Jones sold off 635 points, over 5 %. The volatility index ^VIX gained over 50% on the trading session. Asian markets continued the slaughter overnight, the Kospi (Korean Index), fell over 9% while the Japanese (Nikkei) and Hong Kong (Hang Seng) markets also dropped nearly as much. Today markets opened slightly higher on a short-covering rally, influencing a morning bounce from yesterday’s mayhem selling. Stocks were in the green until the FOMC meeting highlights were released and induced selling back into the market. The FED announced that interest rates will remain at their lowest, between 0.0% and 0.25% for the next 6 months.  In addition, the outlook of the “recovery” is not great. Growth is beginning to slow and European debt issues are pushing the Euro zone indexes lower. The markets today edged higher following the crazy volatility and swings during the FOMC announcement, to close much higher into the close.  The Dow was up 430 points while the S&P rallied 53. Gold traded at new all time highs this morning, being up over 60$ per ounce, to settle the day up only 4$. The 10 year note bond auction today also traded with heavy volatility. The rates dropped to as low as December rates, a very wild day for treasuries. Oil prices hit their lowest level in over a year today, but like everything else, it bounced back at the close to end higher. Although today’s market traded higher, we did make new lows after the Fed announcement. In addition, oil traded lower while gold moved higher. Over all, the reasons for the US credit rating downgrade and the uncertainty in Europe ( the two main factors in Monday’s sell off) are still very real and have not changed. Some Analysts still believe we have not seen the bottom of this market yet. I partially agree with these viewpoints and will look for short opportunities around the 1,200 S&P level, that is if none of the bearish underlying factors become resolved before then. Good luck tomorrow!