Oil falls more than $5 US
The closely watched crude oil futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $5.33 US to $136.04 a barrel Tuesday.
Coupled with Monday's decline of $3.92 US, oil is off more than $9 US over the past two trading sessions.
The price fell Tuesday amid a lessening of Mideast tensions, the strengthening of the U.S. dollar and the declining probability that Hurricane Bertha will do damage in U.S. oil-producing areas. The U.S. National Hurricane Center downgraded Bertha to a Category 2 storm on Tuesday morning.
Oil hit a record intraday high of $145.85 on July 3 as traders worried that Israel would attack Iran to stop it from building nuclear weapons.
The slumping price of crude oil dragged Toronto stocks down on Monday, and the TSX composite index was off nearly 60 points just after noon Tuesday. But the market turned around in the afternoon, ending the day with a 96.97 point gain at 13,809.77.
Finance, information technology and industrial issues led the pack. Even the energy group recovered most of the ground it lost in early trading.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 152.25 points to $11,384.21. Falling energy prices are seen as a benefit to U.S. businesses, which are more often energy consumers than producers.
0 comments:
Post a Comment