The price of crude oil was little changed Monday morning as traders focus on the developments in the Middle-East and the outcome of the FOMC meeting, due out later this week.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for October delivery, the most actively traded contract, slipped $0.53 to $106.76 a barrel. Last week, oil gained over 1 percent to settle near a 2-week high on concerns over supply disruption from the Middle East with the Suez Canal skirting a tense Egypt as violence continued to escalate. Also, traders continued to weigh the more-than-expected drop in oil inventories over the previous week as indicated by the official data from the Energy Information Administration.
This morning the U.S. dollar was slipping back near its 2-week low versus the euro and extending its two-month low against sterling. The buck was trading flat versus the Swiss franc and the yen.
In economic news, house prices in the U.K. decreased for the first time in eight months in August, the results of a survey by Rightmove revealed. The average property asking price fell 1.8 percent month-on-month to GBP 249,199 in August, according to the online real estate firm. This represented the first decline since December 2012 and followed the 0.3 percent increase in July 2013.
During this week focus will be on the National Association of Realtors' existing home sales and the Commerce Department's new home sales reports both for July and the weekly jobless claims report. The FOMC minutes are also likely to be under the radar, given the fears surrounding stimulus withdrawal. The results of a few second-tier manufacturing surveys, the Federal House Finance Agency's house price index for June, the Conference Board's leading economic indicators index for July and announcements concerning the Treasury auctions of 2-year, 5-year and 7-year notes round up the economic events of the week.
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.
