What's Moving the Oil Markets?

 

•Crude futures moved lower on Friday, taking a breather after a week filled with fresh record highs across the petroleum futures complex. With no fundamental news around and the US dollar moving sideways, little market direction was available for the crude futures complex today, with even RBOB futures, the main driver of the price rally seen in the last two days, reverting to the downside.

•"Oil has been taking so widely its directional clue from the dollar that when the dollar does not move, oil does not know where to go and when oil does not know where to go, the rest of the commodity spectrum stays as undecided," analysts for Petromatrix said in a report Friday.

•The euro/dollar rate surged to a new record value on Thursday, just short of 1.6, and since then only marginally retreated from the high.

Updated: April 18, 2008

 

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