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Oil futures traded lower early Friday, but remained on track for weekly gains as investors weighed the outlook for interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve along with geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and uncertainty about the outlook for crude demand.
Price action
-
West Texas Intermediate crude
CL00,
-0.82%
for March delivery
CL.1,
-0.82% CLH24,
-0.82%
fell 46 cents, or 0.6%, to $77.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. -
April Brent crude
BRN00,
-0.93% BRNJ24,
-0.93% ,
the global benchmark, was down 67 cents, or 0.8%, at $82.19 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Market drivers
“The recovery in oil prices has run out of steam: The geopolitical situation remains tense, but demand concerns have re-emerged, partly because hopes of rapid interest rate cuts in the U.S. were probably premature,” said Barbara Lambrecht, commodity strategist at Commerzbank, in a note.
Expectations for a rate cut as early as March took a hit earlier this week after a hotter-than-expected January consumer-price index reading, which also sent the stock-market skidding and Treasury yields higher. Equities subsequently recovered most of their losses and yields stabilized, however, helped by a soft January retail sales report on Thursday that soothed worries economic growth would lead to a resurgence in inflation.
“The resilience in yesterday’s session illustrates how concerned traders are with the future outlook for economic growth as the bad (retail sales) data was actually well-received because of its monetary policy implications for central banks globally,” wrote analysts at Sevens Report Research, in a Friday morning note.
”So, as long as geopolitical tensions remain elevated in the Middle
East and Eastern Europe, and demand doesn’t fall off a cliff, any news, data, or headlines that support a less hawkish policy stance will be supportive of oil and potentially see a run to new 2024 highs beyond $80/barrel,” they wrote.
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