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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Crude slips


Crude prices drop marginally

Crude prices fell on Tuesday, 30 December, 2008. Prices fell as dour economic data that hit the wires today.

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for February delivery closed at $39.03/barrel (lower by $0.99 or 2.4%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. During intra day trading, prices touched a high of $40.03. Prices reached a high of $147 on 11 July but have dropped almost 73% since then. Last week, prices ended lower by 11%. For this year in 2008, crude prices have dropped 54%.

For the month of November, crude prices ended lower by 19.7%. Before this, for the month of October, 2008, crude prices had ended lower by 32.6%, the biggest monthly drop since 1983.

Among major economic reports for the day, the Conference Board reported today that worries increased about current labor-market and business conditions took consumer confidence to a record low in December. The December consumer confidence index fell to 38 from a downwardly revised 44.7 in November. Market was expecting a December reading of 45.8.

As per the report, consumers' view of current conditions worsened in December, with those saying business conditions are "bad" rising to 46% from 40.6%, and those saying jobs are "hard to get" rising to 42% from 37.1%.

In a separate report, the Case-Shiller price index reported today that home prices are back to their March 2004 levels, having dropped in 20 major U.S. cities by 2.2% in October and by a record 18% from the previous year.

Against this background, February reformulated gasoline gained 1 cent to end at 93 cents a gallon and February heating oil finished unchanged at $1.31 a gallon.

February natural gas futures fell 22 cents to end at $5.86 per million British thermal units