After Monday’s big rises for most energy commodities, there was a very sharp turn as crude oil price fell sharply by over two percent.
Later on today the EIA (Energy Information Administration) will issue its weekly report on the US crude oil & petroleum related products (such as gasoline and propane) inventories and consumption of the passing week.
Last week’s EIA report showed a decline of 0.5% in crude oil stocks, which is a drop of over 9 million barrels of crude oil. As the winter progress we will probably continue seeing a decline in crude oil stocks (see read my previous review on crude oil stocks).
For Natural gas prices there was a less consistent change yesterday: The natural gas spot price (Henry Hub) continues to increase, this time it rose by 1.3%; the Nymex Henry Hub Future Prices (futures for February) fell by 1.6%; while natural gas spot price (NY city gate) after it had risen by 15.7% on Monday, yesterday it fell by over 5%.
Gold and Silver prices after Monday’s moderate rises, showed a very steep fall yesterday as Silver prices fell by over 5%, falling back below its 30 USD mark, while Gold price fell below 1,400 USD mark as it fell by over 3%.
The last time there was such a steep fall in these precious metals was back in the second week of December 2010. Furthermore, these price levels were last seen a couple of weeks ago.
These fluctuations of Gold and Silver prices could be related to heavy trading in the beginning of the year. This recent decline is far from being a sign of a shift in the trend of these metals, and only a consistent change will convince that there is a shift from an upward to a downward trend.
A summary of yesterday’s Prices Changes:
The following table presents the main descriptive data from last business day – January 4th, for precious metals, energy commodities and exchange rates. The table includes: settled prices, daily percent change, and quantitative change in US dollars (except for USD/CAD, in which the change is in Canadian dollars):
For further reading:
- Weekly outlook for Crude oil, Natural gas and Gold 3-7 Jan (in this site)
- Crude oil price & Natural gas spot price – Weekly recap Dec 27-31 (in this site)
- Monthly recap on Gold prices & Silver prices for December 2010 (in this site)
- Monthly recap of Natural gas spot price & Crude oil price – December 2010 (in this site)