Dow Collapse Pushes Prices Down Despite Storm & Supply Concerns

Despite earlier in the week price increases on global supply concerns (Iran), and Hurricane Michael making landfall in the Florida Pan handle in the afternoon, Wednesday saw oil prices slump 2% on intraday trading.

Despite the fact that both of those variables usually push prices up, the catastrophic day for the US markets Wednesday overall pulled energy prices down with the ship, so to speak. The Dow Jones was down over 800 points yesterday, seemingly for no clear reason. (Currently, as of writing, the Dow is down slightly today, while the Nasdaq is up slightly).

Hurricane Michael is currently tracking through the Carolina's on its way back out to sea and has been downgraded to a tropical storm, which minimizes further supply interruption concerns. 

The energy markets today are again trending downward, as of 12:30 diesel was down over 4 and gas was down over 6. 

The EIA report this morning showed builds on Crude higher than analysts expected, with inventories up 5.98 million barrels. (projections were a 2 million barrel build). Both gasoline and distillates showed builds as well (951K barrels and 42K barrels, respectively) when projections showed both would be draws.

Presumably that looks good for continuing downward price pressure on refined products, but you never know. 

At the close yesterday, ULSD settled at 2.3949 (-.0289), RBOB at 2.0204 (-.0570) and Crude closed at $73.17. Today, as mentioned, we are trending down as well so we look to hold steady below the $2 & $75 benchmarks for the week.

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Stay Tuned!