The March Brent contract climbed back to $30 per barrel, trading 80 cents lower at $30.08, after hitting a 12-year low of $29.30 earlier in the day.
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Michael Pistillo Jr. follows stock prices at the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Jan. 15, 2016.
Disappointing reports last week about China’s manufacturing sector and a fall in the yuan’s value triggered a global stock sell-off and an even more dramatic decline in the price of oil and other commodities.
For now, the stock beat down likely will continue because US markets will be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Day. Tech shares fell 2.8 percent and biotech 5.4 percent. The Nasdaq composite dropped 162 points, or 3.5 percent, to 4,452. Dow futures were up 0.7 percent at 16,168 and S&P 500 futures were also 0.7 percent higher at 1,895.50.
VOLATILE MARKET: Stocks were coming off a broad rally on Thursday that gave the S&P 500 index its biggest gain since early December.
Goldman Sachs said in a report that oil will turn into a new bull market before the year is out as the price rout shuts down production, putting the US shale-oil boom into reverse in the second half of the year. New York’s West Texas Intermediate dived to 29.39 – a low dating back to November 25, 2003.
LONDON – Brent crude futures clawed back from 12-year lows on Friday, but intense downward pressure remained as the market braced for increased Iranian oil exports once global sanctions are lifted, possibly within days. Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co, says as many as half of the independent drilling companies working in US shale fields could go bankrupt before oil prices stabilize. Marathon Oil slid $1.28, or 14.1 percent, to $7.79.
Group 313.50p -10.73% Pendragon 42.36p -8.41% Jupiter Fund Management 385.30p -8.37% Vedanta Resources 222.00p -7.88% Aldermore Group 180.00p -7.69%.
“Headline inflation will return to target once oil prices stabilise, but recent further declines in global oil prices are calling into question when such a stabilisation may occur”, St Louis Fed president James Bullard told the Economic Club of Memphis.
EUROPE: Stocks opened higher in Europe but quickly fell. Germany’s DAX lost 3.1 percent, while France’s CAC 40 dropped 2.9 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 2.4 percent.
ASIA’S DAY: In China, the Shanghai Composite Index finished down 3.6 percent, sliding to its lowest close since December 8, 2014.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported that banks’ new yuan loans during the last month fell over a year earlier, in a sign that momentum for the credit that fuels economic growth was slowing. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.5 percent.
But the dollar picked up against emerging market currencies, with the South Korean won down 0.6 percent and the oil-reliant Malaysian ringgit weakening 0.4 percent.
The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield US10YT=RR plumbed its lowest levels since late October as investors sought safety in government debt.
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The euro was slightly higher on the dollar, at $1.0874, while the greenback slipped slightly to 117.72 yen.
