MW: Crude falls below $81 a barrel as dollar rebounds
By Polya Lesova & Moming Zhou, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures fell Friday to below $81 a barrel, pressured by a rebounding dollar and lower stocks as investors digested the latest string of corporate earnings reports.
Crude for December delivery fell 86 cents, or 1.1%, to $80.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract earlier rose to an intraday high of $81.78 a barrel.
Oil prices, as gauged by Nymex front-month contracts, is set to end the week up about 3%.
"The market's attention will likely shift back to earnings today," said Brian Niemiec, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. Despite Friday's drop, "strong oil prices should remain."
In foreign-exchange trading, the U.S. dollar remained almost flat against the euro but rose against the British pound. The dollar index (DXY 75.38, +0.29, +0.39%) , which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, edged up 0.1% to 75.201. See Currencies.
"The main upside driver remains the dollar," said Edward Meir, senior commodity analyst at MF Global.
We are wary about joining the 'weak dollar' bandwagon at this stage in the game, especially given relatively oversold conditions and the fact that the rest of energy's fundamentals do not look that constructive," Meir wrote in a note to clients.
In other news, Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke said Friday that the biggest banks will be subject to more rules and regulations in coming months in order to protect the financial system. See full story.
Resales of U.S. houses jumped 9.4% in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.57 million, the highest in more than two years, the National Association of Realtors estimated Friday.
Elsewhere in energy trading, November gasoline slid 0.3% to $2.0379 a gallon, and November heating oil fell 0.9% to $2.0752 a gallon.
November natural gas lost 1.7% to $4.867 per million British thermal units.
The United States Oil Fund (USO 40.88, -0.47, -1.13%) fell 0.9%, and the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG 11.37, -0.13, -1.14%) lost 1.2%.
