The price of crude oil was moving higher Monday morning amid firm global cues, with the US dollar trading weak versus a basket of currencies.
Last Friday, the People's Bank of China scrapped controls on lending rates, which means banks are now free to set their own rates, with a few exceptions and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party won a decisive victory in parliament's upper house, strengthening Abe's mandate to push ahead with difficult economic reforms long overdue.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for September delivery, rose $0.56 to $108.61 a barrel. Last week, oil advanced to a fresh one-and-half year high higher tracking rising global equity markets on some better-than-expected initial job claims data from the U.S., following a more-than-expected drop in weekly crude oil inventories yesterday. Investors also speculated on the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's statement before the Senate Banking Committee that there was no set time line to start tapering down the Fed's quantitative easing program.
This morning the U.S. dollar slipped back toward a one-month low versus the euro, sterling and the Swiss franc. The buck was ticking lower against the yen.
Traders will look to the existing home sales report for June from the National Association of Realtors, due out at 10 a.m ET. Economists expect existing home sales to come in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.27 million units compared to a 5.18 million unit-rate in May.
During this week, focus will be on the Commerce Department's new home sales and durable goods orders reports for June, the final consumer sentiment reading based on a survey by Reuters and the University of Michigan and the weekly jobless claims report.
Also, focus will be on the crude oil inventories data from the API, due out Tuesday after the market hours, and the EIA due out the subsequent day.
