Oil posts weekly loss as recession jitters dent commodity prices
BNN Bloomberg
Oil posted its first back-to-back weekly loss since early April as fears of a demand-sapping global recession and tighter U.S. monetary policy ripped through commodity markets to spur a broad sell-off.
West Texas Intermediate fell 1.7 per cent for the week to settle at US$107.62. US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s hawkish testimony to Congress earlier in the week overshadowed a fundamentally tight market.
Prices clawed back some of the week’s losses Friday as the University of Michigan’s final June reading of longer-term consumer inflation expectations settled back from an initially reported 14-year high, potentially reducing the urgency for steeper Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes.
“Wall Street remains optimistic that inflation will improve over the next year, and that is good news for risky assets, especially commodities,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda.
