Oil prices fell to over three-week lows on Friday in a volatile session,the spin is strong U.S. jobs data raised concerns about higher interest rates. REALITY IS THE WORLDS LARGEST OIL TRADING PLATFORM ION WAS HACKED BY THE RUSSIANS
Crude oil prices fell on Friday afternoon following morning reports of strong U.S. jobs data, with WTI crashing by more than 2.5% to $73.88. The U.S. January jobs report indicates that the jobs market is stronger than expected, with employers adding 517,000 in January. The unemployment rate in the United States is at 3.4%–the lowest rate since 1969, despite the round of tech layoffs. The Fed’s aggressive interest rate hikes are not slowing hiring as some would have expected, with fears lingering that this could still lead to a recession. Still, wage growth seemed to slow. With the ever-looming recession still looming, traders were slow to respond to Friday’s job data. WTI rose $0.55 per barrel to $76.43 (+0.72%) following the report, while Brent rose $0.46 to $82.63 (+0.56%). But prices quickly took a turn for the worse, with WTI falling $2 per barrel by 1:13 pm ET to $73.88 (-2.64%) per barrel. Brent had fallen by nearly the same amount to $80.21 (-2.39%) per barrel. Both the WTI and Brent benchmarks are set for a sharp weekly decline.
Both benchmarks have slumped about $7 per barrel so far this week, despite signs that China’s crude oil demand could be recovering and the EU’s ban on Russian crude oil product imports, which goes into effect this Sunday WILL LIMIT SUPPLIES.
Oil prices had already fallen earlier in the week as the United States Energy Information Administration data showed major builds in crude oil and crude products inventories, OPEC stuck to its guns and decided there wouldn’t be any changes to its output strategies at this time, and the Federal Reserve raised its target interest rate—and promised to continue those increases. Meanwhile, ANZ analysts noted a sharp jump in traffic in China’s 15 largest cities after the Lunar New Year holiday but said that Chinese traders had been “relatively absent.” Traders got nervors because of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Thursday that as a result of the ransomware attack on ION Trading UK, the CFTC’s weekly Commitments of Traders report will be delayed until all trades can be reported. ION Group, the financial data firm’s parent company, said the disruption could take days to fix, leaving scores of brokers unable to process derivatives trades.
Over half of the world’s crude oil volume is traded and tracked on ION products
Many automated computer Algos use this data and the ION platform.. No data no derivatives no trades processed…… Which means the computers automatically pull their bid.
NN BlackMask Blog: