Crude stuck

Crude oil was a touch firmer in early trade this morning, helped along by some barely OK manufacturing data from China. There’s an OPEC+ meeting on Thursday, postponed from yesterday, where the group is expected to extend its production cuts once again, this time from the end of this month. There’s a uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. At the end of last week, front-month WTI closed a touch above $68, just a few dollars below where it ended in 2023. This year, front-month WTI topped $87 per barrel in April before dropping back to $73 in early June. It rallied again, topping $84 just four weeks later. But it went into a steady decline over the next two months, briefly breaking below $65 in September. That has proved to be the year’s low, so far. One month later it was up at $78 – again, briefly. But overall, the pattern has been a succession of lower highs since April, with selling momentum only exhausting itself near the mid-60s.