By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil prices rebounded in electronic trading Thursday to take back some losses made the previous day, as the dollar weakened and U.S. equity futures advanced.
July futures for light, sweet crude-oil CLN2 +0.33% rose 27 cents, or 0.3%, to $82.89 a barrel on Globex. The front-month contract dropped 70 cents overnight on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The increase on Thursday came as the ICE U.S. dollar index DXY -0.03% , which measures the greenback against a basket of six major global currencies, fell to 82.089 from 82.126 in late North American trading Wednesday.
A fall in the dollar tends to support commodities including crude by making them cheaper to holders of other currencies.
U.S. equity futures also advanced after Wednesday’s lower finish, with Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.62% futures gaining 39 points, or 0.3%, to 12,468, while Standard & Poor’s 500 Index SPX -0.70% futures rose 4.60 points, or 0.4%, to 1,313.40.
Among other energy products, July futures for gasoline RBN2 +0.09% and heating-oil HON2 +0.33% advanced by 0.3% to $2.66 per gallon and by 0.4% to $2.62 per gallon respectively. Natural-gas futures NGN12 -0.05% for delivery in the same month climbed 0.3% to $2.19 per million British thermal units.
The broad advances came despite unrelenting concern over the euro zone. Moody’s Investors Service late on Wednesday cut Spain’s sovereign credit ratings to Baa3 from A3, and placed those revised ratings on review for a possible further downgrade. Read more on Spain’s downgrade.
Meanwhile, the credit ratings of Cyprus were also cut by Moody’s and also placed on review for further downgrades on a higher likelihood that Greece, to which Cyprus and its banks have a high exposure, may exit the euro zone.
Also keeping investors cautious, Italy is set to auction €4.5 billion ($5.62 billion) in medium- and long-term debt on Thursday amid mounting speculation that the country, the euro-zone’s third largest economy may be the next country to require a bailout if its cost of borrowing from the market remains at elevated levels. Read more about Italy’s auction.
Varahabhotla Phani Kumar is a reporter in MarketWatch's Hong Kong bureau.
