On Thursday, oil prices remained well-oriented, backed by statistics, and, following announcements by OPEC, committed to continuing its efforts to regulate its demand. To continue to deflate global supplies and boost costs, the community of producing countries plans to keep the production of oil below demand this year.
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The March WTI contract for crude oil futures improved 1% on Nymex to $56.23 a barrel, while April’s Brent advanced 0.7% to $58.84. Since the beginning of the year, oil prices have now risen over 16 percent.
On the other hand, the return of investors’ risk appetite has led gold to suffer. For the April futures market on Comex, the yellow metal lost another 2.4 percent to $1,791.20 an ounce.
Despite constraints linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the new economic figures published in the United States appear to demonstrate the strength of the U.S. economy. After an increase in the expansion of activity in both the manufacturing and service sectors has been published in recent days, the new weekly job figures have brought good surprises.
There were 779,000 (consensus 835,000) jobless claims for the week ending 30 January, down 33,000 from the previous week, while the four-week average was 848,250. While the figure is still very high relative to the pre-health crises, this is the third straight week of reductions in claims (approximately 200,000 claims per week). Markets will pay careful attention to the monthly U.S. job data on Friday. After 140,000 demolitions in December, the consensus is for around 60,000 work vacancies. It is estimated that the unemployment rate will be steady at 6.7 percent.
Moreover, Factory Orders released on Thursday in December rose more than expected, by 1.1 percent on a month-on-month basis, versus a forecast of 0.7 percent, and after a 1.3 percent rise in the revised reading of the previous month.
The only cloud on the table was that in the fourth quarter, Non-Farm Productivity dropped by 4.8 percent, compared to a -2.8 percent consensus and a 5.1 percent rise in the previous third quarter. In the fourth quarter, unit labor costs jumped by 6.8 percent, contrary to a forecast of 3.5 percent, following a 7 percent fall in the third quarter.
