Oil Extends Climb; Gold Prices Fall
Crude oil prices soared yet again Friday amid continued supply worries, while gold took another beating.
Front-month contracts for light sweet crude were tacking on $1.08 at $124.77 a barrel in recent activity on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, the price hit an all-time high of $126.20 a barrel before pulling back.
"Medium and long-term perceptions of the tightness of oil market balances have worsened," writes the London-based commodities team at Barclays in a recent research report. There has been, "persistently disappointing non-OPEC performance so far in 2008, as well as supply disruptions in various locations, not least Nigeria," the report continues.
The exchange-traded funds that track the commodity,
iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index
(OIL) - Get Report
and
United States Oil
(USO) - Get Report
, were up about 0.2%.
Among stocks,
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Report
was losing 1.8%,
Chevron
(CVX) - Get Report
was down 0.7% and
ConocoPhillips
(COP) - Get Report
was weaker by 1.5%.
Halliburton
(HAL) - Get Report
was losing 1.3%, and
Transocean
(RIG) - Get Report
was off 3.9%.
Elsewhere in the commodities complex, gold prices were slipping, with benchmark contracts down $6.10 at $876 an ounce on the Comex division of the Nymex.
The bullion exchange-traded funds, which own bars of solid gold, were dipping also.
streetTracks Gold Shares
(GLD) - Get Report
and
iShares Comex Gold Trust
(IAU) - Get Report
were both down more than 1%.
In currencies, the greenback was falling against the euro, with one dollar selling for $1.544 vs. $1.5404 a day earlier. One dollar was buying 103.21 Japanese yen, down from 104 yen previously. The British pound was selling for $1.9472 vs. $1.9529.
The
CurrencyShares Euro Trust
(FXE) - Get Report
and the
CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust
(FXY) - Get Report
were rising 0.4% and 0.9%, respectively. The
CurrencyShares British Pound Sterling
(FXB) - Get Report
was off 0.3%.









