Prices trade under $76 on heels of Thursday's retreat of nearly 4%
By Claudia Assis & Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures turned lower Friday as traders who anticipated that the pullback had run its course have instead run for the exits.
Meanwhile, contracts for other energy products also weakened.
Crude for June delivery, the most active contract, lost another $2 a barrel, down 2.6% to $75.12 on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's its lowest price since mid-February, when prices dropped to a little above $74 a barrel.
Crude was taking a bigger hit than other commodities such as base metals since it had attracted "a sizable speculative interest" up until last week, said Walter de Wet, analyst at Standard Bank in London.
"Long" investors, or those believing prices would go up, made for about 12% of the open interest in oil contracts, compared to an average of 5% to 6% in past years, de Wet noted.
"A lot of those longs are unwinding now," he said.
Investors also appeared to be sidelined as oil prices fell 3.6% on Thursday as concerns boiled over about prospects for the Greece debt crisis giving rise to contagion in the euro zone.
"Everything is still very much in a fragile state. Who wants to jump in just yet?" said Brad Samples, commodity analyst for Summit Energy Inc. in Louisville, Ky.
Investors pondered whether it would be wiser just to let "the uncertainly shake itself off," he said.
Earlier, oil staked out modest gains following news the U.S. economy added more jobs than expected in April, even as the unemployment rose. Meanwhile, Germany's lower house of parliament approved aid for Greece.
The Labor Department said the U.S. economy added 290,000 jobs in April, but the jobless rate climbed to 9.9%. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected the economy to add 185,000 jobs, with the jobless rate holding steady at 9.7%. See Economic Report on jobs.
In Berlin, the lower house of parliament approved legislation under which Germany will contribute 22.4 billion euros to the international bailout package for Greece. Another vote in the upper house is due later Friday. Read more on the votes.
The euro (CUR_EURUSD 1.2706, +0.0077, +0.6097%) changed hands at $1.264 in recent foreign-exchange trading. The shared currency touched a 14-month low on Thursday.
The dollar index (DXY 84.92, +0.03, +0.03%) , which measures the greenback against six other currencies, gained slightly to 84.94.
Energy traders also keyed on U.S. stocks, which again sustained broad-based losses in volatile trading.
Meanwhile, natural gas for June delivery lost 2 cents to $3.91 per million British thermal units. Gasoline for June delivery also gave ground, off 3 cents to $2.13 a gallon.
