Crude slips

Crude prices drop marginally

Crude prices fell on Tuesday, 30 December, 2008. Prices fell as dour economic data that hit the wires today.

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for February delivery closed at $39.03/barrel (lower by $0.99 or 2.4%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. During intra day trading, prices touched a high of $40.03. Prices reached a high of $147 on 11 July but have dropped almost 73% since then. Last week, prices ended lower by 11%. For this year in 2008, crude prices have dropped 54%.

For the month of November, crude prices ended lower by 19.7%. Before this, for the month of October, 2008, crude prices had ended lower by 32.6%, the biggest monthly drop since 1983.

Among major economic reports for the day, the Conference Board reported today that worries increased about current labor-market and business conditions took consumer confidence to a record low in December. The December consumer confidence index fell to 38 from a downwardly revised 44.7 in November. Market was expecting a December reading of 45.8.

As per the report, consumers' view of current conditions worsened in December, with those saying business conditions are "bad" rising to 46% from 40.6%, and those saying jobs are "hard to get" rising to 42% from 37.1%.

In a separate report, the Case-Shiller price index reported today that home prices are back to their March 2004 levels, having dropped in 20 major U.S. cities by 2.2% in October and by a record 18% from the previous year.

Against this background, February reformulated gasoline gained 1 cent to end at 93 cents a gallon and February heating oil finished unchanged at $1.31 a gallon.

February natural gas futures fell 22 cents to end at $5.86 per million British thermal units