Oil lost ground on Friday following unnerving economic reports from China and the US, although the decline was moderated by the latest report of declining activity in the US’ oil patches.
Futures in New York closed down 1 percent, after a monthly jobs report showed that US hiring was the weakest in more than a year and China said exports had tailed off last month.
Still, prices recouped much of the losses after Baker Hughes Inc said working oil rigs in the US fell for the third straight week.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) eked out a 0.5 percent gain for the week, despite a barrage of tepid economic reports from around the globe.
“The bearish signs are more prevalent than any kind of bullish ones right now,” said William Rhind, chief executive officer at GraniteShares, a commodity-focused exchange traded fund. “You have a world that is slowing.”
Crude prices climbed more than 25 percent for the year through the middle of last month as OPEC and its partners curbed output, and US sanctions on Iran and Venezuela tightened supplies.
However, the rally has sputtered since then. This week alone, the European Central Bank (ECB) cut economic forecasts, China reduced its goal for expansion and the OECD lowered its global projections.
The US also reported a surprisingly big jump in oil inventories.
WTI for April delivery closed down US$0.59 at US$56.07 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent for May settlement fell US$0.56, or 0.8 percent, to US$65.74 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract gained 1 percent for the week.
In a possible sign that the US’ jobs engine is starting to slow down, non-farm US payrolls increased by a mere 20,000 last month, the US Department of Labor reported on Friday.
The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey had predicted a gain of 180,000.
The ECB cut its eurozone growth forecast for the year by the most since the advent of its quantitative-easing program four years ago.
Even then, some of its policymakers thought the outlook was too optimistic.
Earlier this week, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development slashed its estimate for world economic growth to 3.3 percent this year, downgrading almost every G20 nation’s economy.
“Worries over global economic growth prospects continue to be a big cap on oil prices,” said Vandana Hari, founder of Vanda Insights, a Singapore-based provider of oil market analysis.
OPEC’s monthly report would “help shape market sentiment next week, with the market paying particular attention to any changes in global demand-growth forecasts,” she said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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