NYMEX crude oil short-term look at 74.51 US dollars
On Wednesday (March 8), international oil prices continued to release selling pressure following a nearly 4% drop overnight. Investors worried that more aggressive interest rate hikes in the United States would hit demand, while the market waited for further clarity on U.S. inventory information. NYMEX crude oil looks at $74.51 in the short term.
At 16:31 Beijing time, NYMEX crude oil futures fell 0.15% to $77.46/barrel; ICE Brent crude futures rose 0.06% to $83.34/barrel.
The two cities suffered a severe setback on Tuesday (March 7) as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a semi-annual monetary policy testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, which may need to raise interest rates more than expected in response to recent strong economic data.
While some of this unexpected economic strength might be attributed to warmer weather and other seasonal effects, Powell said it might also be a sign that the Fed needs to do more to curb inflation, possibly even resuming rate hikes above 25 basis points .
Although the Fed resumed raising rates to the traditional 25 basis points at its first policy meeting of the year following raising rates aggressively last year to combat high inflation not seen in decades, interest rate traders expect the central bank to move ahead on March 21-22. A 50-basis-point interest rate hike at the policy meeting on Monday.
“Fed Chairman Powell’s remarks regarding ‘maintaining high interest rates for a long time’ spooked the market and caused risky assets, including commodities, to fall sharply overnight,” said CMC Markets analyst Tina Teng. There was a brief rebound in early trading followed by a decline. This may be some short-term profit-taking, but there is no fundamental change in market sentiment.
Traders are also awaiting crude oil inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) at 23:30 Beijing time on Wednesday. The American Petroleum Institute (API) inventory data released earlier showed that U.S. crude oil inventories fell by 3.835 million barrels last week, far exceeding the expected decline of 308,000 barrels.
On the daily chart, NYMEX crude oil showed repeated bottoming following approaching $70 in December last year. Oil prices started a new wave of short-term decline from US$80.94, and are expected to fall below the 38.2% target of US$76.96, and further test the 61.8% target of US$74.51.
