Oil prices extend slide one day after U.S. crude drops below zero; Dow plunges more than 600 points
Source: Washington Post
A crash in oil prices unleashed by the coronavirus lockdown hammered global stocks on Tuesday and opened another battlefront for economies already exhausted by the pandemic.
A world oil oversupply sent U.S. crude prices on Monday so low that sellers holding oil contracts paid buyers up to $30 per barrel to take the oil off their hands. The oil collapse went international on Tuesday, collapsing futures prices for global benchmark Brent crude to as low as $6.55 per barrel, a fraction of the $50 or so needed for a producer to make money. The single-digit prices for oil is a sign that oil markets and the world’s economy may not stabilize for months.
“The supply-and-demand balance for oil is so out of whack that global demand cannot grow fast enough and suppliers can’t cut supply quickly enough to put things back in order,” said Frank Verrastro of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There is so much oil sloshing around the world and so few people using it that there is no remedy. Even President’s Trump toolbox looks bare.”
Stocks plunged Tuesday for the second day in a row, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 631 points, or 2.7 percent. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 86 points, or 3 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged nearly 300 points, or 3.5 percent. All three indexes had pared back even deeper losses. European and Asian markets also were in decline as uncertainty gripped investors, who are hungry for any sign of relief from the economic stranglehold of the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/21/oil-crash-stocks-today-coronavirus/
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