After plummeting in the previous session, the price of crude oil edged higher Friday morning even as the U.S. dollar continued to trade strong against a basket of currencies.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for March 2010 were at $73.29, up $0.15 a barrel.
Yesterday, oil slipped by around $4 to settle at $73.14, taking cues from the falling global stock markets and amid a rising U.S. dollar. Investors across the globe sold stocks, pushing them to their multi-months lows on concerns over sovereign debt problem in the euro zone and ahead of the U.S. jobs data. The euro slipped to its lowest levels in 8-months against the dollar.
Moreover, crude inventories remain high amid modest demand. This week's data from the API and EIA indicated crude inventories have considerably moved up in the U.S., the largest consumer of this product.
Meanwhile, the greenback continued to strengthen versus the euro Friday morning, as the latter was pressured by high debt levels in some countries in the euro region.
Some of today's trading action may be guided by the much awaited non-farm payroll data from the U.S., which could throw some light on the strength of the recovery of the economy.
Economists expect that the U.S. economy created 15,000 jobs during the month, which wold be an improvement from the 85,000 jobs lost in December. The unemployment rate is forecast to remain unchanged at 10%.
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