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Oil futures began the week with a bounce, rising Monday after the U.S. benchmark suffered its biggest weekly drop since October on worries the continued spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 will dent demand for crude.
West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery
CL00,
CLV21,
rose $1.96, or 3.2%, to $64.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. WTI dropped 8.9% last week, taking the U.S. benchmark to a three-month low. October Brent crude
BRN00,
BRNV21,
the global benchmark, jumped $2.15, or 3.3%, to $67.33 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, after also falling to its lowest since May last week.
Both benchmarks were on track to snap seven-day losing streaks.
Analysts said signs of resilience in the physical market for crude belied the carnage seen in the futures market last week as metals, oil and other commodities came under heavy selling pressure.
“The financial market rout is moving at an asymmetric downward pace to what the physical market is telling us,” said Michael Tran, commodity analyst at RBC Capital Markets, in a note. “Atlantic Basin marginal barrels, while off the recent highs, are not signaling a struggle as extreme as the financial price weakness.”
Tran said that several marginal barrels in the North Sea were pricing at physical premiums not far off the highs of the year seen just two weeks ago.
“Most crudes are pricing softer, physically over the past week, but not in a fashion that would suggest distress. Headline fears of the delta variant and weak Chinese buying programs have weighed on the financial market for the past month, but the relative firmness in the physical market in prior weeks is indicative that other buyers are emerging to pick up the slack,” he wrote.
A surging U.S. dollar was also a factor in a broad selloff for commodities last week. A stronger dollar can be a negative for commodities priced in the currency, making them more expensive to users of other currencies.
The dollar backed off on Monday, with the ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, down 0.2% after soaring last week to a nine-month high.
Investors were also looking ahead to this week’s monetary policy symposium, which was set to be held in Jackson Hole, Wyo., but won’t take place virtually due to health concerns around the spread of the delta variant. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak Friday morning, with investors looking for clues to when the central bank will lay out a timetable for the tapering of its monthly asset purchases.
See: Investors look for Fed clues on tapering as Jackson Hole goes virtual because of delta variant
