MW: Oil futures slip as Middle-East cease-fire holds
By Kristene Quan, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures fell on Friday as concerns about supply eased on a continued temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
Crude oil for January delivery CLF3 +0.06% fell 13 cents, or 0.2%, to $87.25 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex.
The contract had risen 63 cents to settle at $87.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday. Nymex floor trading was closed Thursday for Thanksgiving.
“Traders are just waiting for the next big stimulus to push oil prices in one clear direction, but may not get that stimulus until next week,” said GFT technical analyst Fawad Razaqzada.
The ICE dollar index DXY -0.25% , which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell to 80.537, compared with 80.704 during thin trading on Thursday.
In other energy trading on Friday, heating-oil futures for January delivery HOF3 -0.51% fell 0.6% to $3.06 a gallon, and gasoline for delivery in the same month RBF3 -0.61% dropped 0.8% to $2.70 a gallon.
Natural-gas futures for December delivery NGZ12 -1.36% fell 6 cents to $3.84 per million British thermal units.
Kristene Quan is a MarketWatch reporter, based in Hong Kong.
