Panic caused oil prices to plummet 5%

Due to the pessimistic economic outlook that led to the spread of market panic, international oil prices plunged more than 5% on the 4th. New York oil prices closed at the lowest level in 6 months.

On the same day, the crude oil market saw a sharp sell-off as investors worried that the US economy may have a double bottom and the European debt crisis will continue to increase. The New York Mercantile Exchange's September delivery of light crude oil ** prices fell $ 5.30 to close at $ 86.63 a barrel, a drop of 5.77%. In September, the price of Brent crude oil in London's North Sea plunged 5.98 US dollars to settle at 107.25 US dollars per barrel, a decrease of 5.28%.



New York's oil prices have fallen for the fifth consecutive trading day with a cumulative decline of 11%. Raymond Carben, a senior crude oil trader at the New York Mercantile Exchange, said: "At present, New York's oil price has fallen to the range of $64.25 to $87.15 per barrel in 2009. In this range, there will be a large number of technical sell-offs in the market. ."

After the end of the US debt crisis, investors turned their attention to news of economic fundamentals. Following a series of weak economic data, the US Department of Labor announced on the 4th that initial jobless claims last week returned above 400,000. Although the result was better than the market had expected, it failed to boost investor sentiment and the market stagnated the US economy. Concerns over the pressure on oil prices.

In Europe, the European Central Bank announced on the same day that it would maintain its 1.5% interest rate level and said that it would repurchase government bonds in the secondary market to inject liquidity into the market to deal with the deteriorating debt crisis. However, the European Central Bank did not announce any plans to buy Italian and Spanish government bonds on that day. It did not intend to help the two countries solve the problem of rising Treasury bond yields. This series of actions led the market to speculate that the European debt crisis is deteriorating, panic has intensified again, European stock markets have fallen sharply, and the exchange rate of the euro against the US dollar has also fallen by about 1.4%.

In addition, the Bank of Japan also intervened in the Japanese market after the Bank of Japan’s accession to the Japanese market and placed 1 trillion yen in the same day to suppress the yen’s exchange rate, causing the yen to fall sharply against the US dollar. The dollar index, which tracks changes in the exchange rate of the dollar against a basket of currencies, surged by about 1.6%. A strong dollar boosted the decline in oil prices.

In addition, gasoline prices also fell by 19 cents to 2.74 US dollars per gallon that day, a drop of 6.6%. Carben said that the current risk aversion in the market, the US July employment report to be announced on the 5th will determine the future short-term trend of oil prices.