Oil Steadies Despite China Weakness as Dip May Have Gone Too Far

Alex Longley and Yongchang Chin

Mon, Mar 10, 2025, 3:27 AM 2 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Oil held its betterment from past week’s slump arsenic traders weighed anemic information successful China against signs prices whitethorn person fallen excessively much.

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Brent traded backmost supra $70 a barrel, aft creeping higher successful the past fewer sessions from oversold territory and the lowest terms since 2021. Crude is inactive down astir 15% from its mid-January peak.

China’s user ostentation fell much than expected and was beneath zero for the archetypal clip successful 13 months, highlighting persistent deflationary pressures successful the biggest crude importer. US equity futures struck a risk-off tone, too.

Crude has been deed by a confluence of bearish factors, including the escalating planetary commercialized war, plans by OPEC and allies to summation production, and talks to extremity the three-year warfare successful Ukraine. That’s spurred speculators to chopped net-bullish bets connected planetary benchmark Brent by the astir since July, though they besides slashed bearish wagers against West Texas Intermediate crude.

“It seems similar the crude lipid marketplace is uncovering immoderate enactment with sellers struggling to found momentum beneath $70,” said Ole Hansen, caput of commodities strategy astatine Saxo Bank. “Overall the temper remains bearish, but considering however acold we person dropped and the information we are not that acold from a antagonistic proviso reaction, it seems similar we person a buy-on-dip market.”

In the US, President Donald Trump told Fox News the system faced a “period of transition” aft his actions connected tariffs, portion avoiding making calls for a recession. On Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the emergence successful uncertainty, but said officials didn’t request to unreserved to chopped rates.

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