Crude oil witnessed a noticeable decline early this morning, reaching 2.32% for both Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, after witnessing the highest levels since last October last Friday, but they reduced those losses to approximately 0.4%.
Oil fell early today with hope that the conflict in the Middle East will calm down with progress in the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza.
While crude prices were supported by the significantly better-than-expected growth of German industrial production, in a fastest pace in a year, in addition to the lowest levels of pessimism among investors in the Eurozone in more than two years, which helped reduce the previous severe losses of oil.
We witnessed talk of progress in the ceasefire negotiations with increasing pressure from the international community, led by the United States, which is currently witnessing the electoral season, after a series of bloody events last week that fueled fears about the conflict being completely out of control.
As for today’s data, we witnessed a significantly larger than expected growth in industrial production in Germany by 2.1% on a monthly basis in February, which represents the fastest pace of growth since January of last year, versus expectations for a growth of 0.6%.
This supported the growth of the construction sectors in addition to the automotive and chemical industry, in exchange for a sharp decline in electrical energy production.
Also today, we witnessed the lowest levels of investor pessimism in the Eurozone through the Sentix Investor Sentiment Index, which recorded the highest reading in two years at -5.9 this April, which was better than expectations of -8.3.
On the other hand, despite a series of strong economic data from the US economy, it has ultimately led to reawakening fears about higher for longer interest rates, which may disrupt the upward path of energy markets that are counting on a broad reduction in interest rates around the world this year to stimulate demand and economic activity.
The probability that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by 25 basis points next June has fallen below 46% today, which is the lowest since last February, that is, almost since attention turned to June as the starting point towards an easing path for monetary policy.
