Crude oil prices lost ground after Fed Chair Jerome Powell offered something of a downbeat assessment on the fight against lingering inflation.With oil moving lower in reaction to hints of a higher-than-expected rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve, the market focus this week will be on U.S. inflation, but it should be a noisy week given the coming trove of influential data.
Data due from China on Tuesday should indicate that both industrial production and retail sales increased in February, but Weatherburn said U.S. inflation remains at the front and center of the market’s concern. From London oil broker PVM to Vanda Insights in Singapore, market analysts said data on U.S. inflation on Tuesday will be the thing to watch for clues about the direction of not only oil prices, but rate decisions at the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Meanwhile, OPEC and the IEA both release their monthly market reports this week and analysts will comb through those pages for clues about everything from market balance to economic momentum to get a sense of oil price direction. Giovanni Staunovo, a commodities analyst for Swiss investment bank UBS, said he’s expecting the IEA and OPEC to revise their estimates, adding he expects to see indications of strong global demand.