U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures ended Wednesday’s session up $3.69, or 8.7 percent, at $46.22. WTI fell 6.7 percent to settle at its lowest level in a year and a half on Monday.
Brent crude oil futures, the global benchmark, was up $4.02, or 8 percent, at $54.49 around 2:29 p.m. ET. It earlier fell to $49.93, the lowest since July 2017, and posted a 6.2-percent slide in the previous session.
Recent selling “has felt less fundamentally driven and more a function of the overall market meltdown as increased equity volatility and growing macro concerns have weighed on a number of asset classes,” wrote analysts at Tudor, Pickering & Holt.
Funds have incurred heavy losses in oil markets this year, with the average commodity trading adviser fund, or CTA, down by 7.1 percent on the year through mid-December, according to Credit Suisse data. Funds took big bets on oil’s rally, only to see the commodity drop by more than 40 percent since the October highs.
The head of Russian oil company Rosneft, Igor Sechin, predicted an oil price of $50-$53 in 2019, a long way south of the four-year high of $86 for Brent crude reached earlier this year.
Still, oil’s outlook is not as weak as in 2016 when a supply glut built up, because OPEC this time is trying to prop up the market, said Olivier Jakob, analyst at Petromatrix.
from News fore today http://bit.ly/2CBvaIB
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