Heating oil moves lower on macro concerns

30 July 2010

Written by Kim Bardsley

Heating oil prices were moving lower on the New York Mercantile Exchange this morning (July 30th), paring gains made yesterday on the back of a weaker dollar.

By 02:53 Central Standard Time, the August-delivery heating oil contract was trading at $2.0262 a gallon, down 1.1 cents on yesterday's settle price.

Both crude and heating oil staged a rally yesterday as a weak dollar made the commodities more attractive to foreign buyers, but both are on course to record a weekly loss.

Mark Pervan, a senior commodities analyst at ANZ in Melbourne, told Reuters that the markets are jittery about upcoming US gross domestic product data due out later today.

He explained that "the US economy still has big influence on oil demand" and as such, the figures will be scrutinised closely.

Analysts expect the data will show economic growth slowed to 2.5 per cent in the second quarter, down from 2.7 in the first three months of the year.