By Virginia Harrison, MarketWatch
SYDNEY (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures edged higher in electronic trading Thursday as a degree of risk appetite returned to commodity and equity markets.
Benchmark crude for October delivery CL1V -0.42% rose 7 cents, or 0.1%, to $85.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange during Asian trading hours.
The mild gains tracked the performance of equity markets across Asia on Thursday, as optimism about the global economy rose. Read more about Asian equity markets.
Investors are looking ahead to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s scheduled speech Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and whether he will announce another round of quantitative easing — or QE3 — to prop up the U.S. economy.
The Fed chairman used the same forum in 2010 to hint at the launch of a QE2, which sparked a rush into risky assets and away from dollar. Read a preview of Bernanke’s Jackson Hole speech on Friday
“Even if Bernanke does go further along the road to QE3, we would still not expect any boost to commodity prices to last very long,” strategists at Capital Economics said. “QE can push up asset prices through several channels, but after two previous rounds from the Fed, these are now largely tapped out.
“Commodity prices are more likely to benefit from increased demand for a hedge against inflation or further dollar weakness,” they said.
