Brent oil prices rose on Wednesday, pushed higher by threats from Iran and a drop in U.S crude inventories for the second week in a row. Prices rose above US$78 a barrel after the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he was ready to prevent regional crude exports if Iran’s oil sales were banned by the United States.
The most-active brent futures contract for September delivery closed up 48 cents to $78.24 a barrel. U.S crude futures rose to $ 74.33 a barrel.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani emerged on Tuesday (03/07) threatening to disrupt oil shipments from neighboring countries if Washington continues to pressure all nations to stop buying Iranian oil.
The call for U.S sanctions against Iran’s crude oil exports, force majeure in Libya, as well as unplanned pipeline outages in Nigeria have obscured the prospects for crude supplies despite the output of the OPEC. With unclear prospects, investors are turning to the option to protect themselves from sudden moves.
In the Euro zone, European stocks traded flat on concerns over the persistence of global trade issues, with sentiment on semiconductor stocks particularly worsening after Micron Technology banned chip sales in China.
The Stoxx 600, ended flat, with Germany’s DAX and the British FTSE 100 index down 0.3 percent. Trading had fluctuated before the deadline set on July 6 when the United States imposed tariffs on goods worth $34 billion from China.
The issue of trade disputes has plagued market sentiment in recent weeks. The news that a court in China temporarily forbade Micron Technology to sell chips in China, the world’s largest memory chip market, hitting semiconductor stocks.
But, in our views, JCI is still in a downward trend if it has not touched the resistant level and Rupiah stable and maintained at the level of Rp14,000 per U.S dollar.
In the coming days, analysts warned that the issue of trade war between the U.S with China and Europe is still the strongest catalyst.
Why, cause so far there is no positive sentiment that encourage market continuous the strengthening. Investors will take a wait and see attitude to anticipate the foreign exchange reserves data that will be published this weekend.
Email: linda.silaen@theinsiderstories.com