Crude oil futures took a beating Monday after seeing a major rally in prices for the last 10 days amid appreciating dollar and news of profit-taking from the Asian markets.
Light, sweet crude futures for November delivery traded at $80.72 a barrel at 0654 GMT, down 53 cents in the Globex electronic session of the New York Mercantile Exchange, after recovering from an intraday low of $80.55 a barrel. Brent crude futures for delivery in November traded at $81.94 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange, showing a dip of 51 cents.
Crude futures are in trouble after the earlier expectations that quantitative easing measures from the U.S. Federal Reserve would boost oil's prices dissolved into thin air. Analysts believe that those measures are already priced into the market and thus new announcements would not cause much difference. Taking a cue from this news, the ICE Dollar Index rose 0.39 to close at 76.96; the index is the calculation of the dollar's value against a trade-weighted basket of currencies.
Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for November, which is considered the benchmark gasoline contract, saw a decline of 42 points to trade at 209.96 cents a gallon, while heating oil for November delivery traded at 222.15 cents, a drop of 93 points.
ICE gasoil for November delivery traded at $700.50 a metric ton, showing an $11.25 drop last settlement.
Analysts believe that oil futures would remain volatile in the coming months but there are little expectations of them rising to any new record highs.
