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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (209149)	5/6/2011 10:32:35 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 362473

Oil futures pare decline after April jobs report U.S. employment data provide some support for prices By Claudia Assis and William L. Watts, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures pared their losses Friday, helped by a mixed report on the U.S. jobs market report but still fighting to shake off weakness alongside other commodities. Light, sweet crude for June delivery /quotes/comstock/21n!f:cl\m11 CLM11 -0.08% fell 38 cents, or 0.4%, to $99.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It had earlier traded as low as $94.63. The decline came on top of losses of 8.6% in the previous session — oil’s biggest one-day percentage loss since April 2009 — and a settlement of $99.80 a barrel. The Labor Department said earlier that the U.S. economy gained 244,000 jobs in April, the biggest increase in nearly a year. The unemployment rate, however, rose to 9% from 8.8% in March, the first increase since November. Read more about the jobs report. Oil traders also took their cues from other commodities, particularly precious metals. Silver lost 3.9%, but gold gained 0.6%. Read more about metals. Commodities have fallen all of this week as repeat increases in margin requirements for silver caused the market to crash more than 25% since April 29. The increases in the money needed to put up to trade silver futures squeezed out investors unwilling or unable to meet the new requirements, and sparked an stampede of investors out of commodities. “It is great proof of just how much speculative money there was in the oil market,” said oil trader and energy-market expert Dan Dicker. “You’d expect (oil) to kick back. There was a lot of margin selling going on.” The sharp drop prompted exchange operator CME Group to expand its limits on how far oil can rise or fall during a session. CME raised the limit to $20 from the previous $10 level set for oil futures. A dive in heating-oil futures to their limit of 25 cents prompted the move, the exchange said. See report on CME’s changes to oil-trading limits. Heating oil for June delivery /quotes/comstock/21n!f:ho\m11 HOM11 +0.35% fell 1 cent, or 0.7%, to $2.87 a gallon. The contract plunged 26 cents, or 8.1%, to $2.89 a gallon on Thursday, its lowest settlement since Feb. 24, and the biggest one-day percentage drop since March 2009. June gasoline /quotes/comstock/21n!3089650 RBM11 +0.66% lost less than 1 cent, or 0.2%, to $3.09 a gallon in recent trading Friday. Gasoline also had plunged by its biggest percentage drop since March 2009. /quotes/comstock/21n!f:cl\m11 Add CLM11 to portfolio CLM11 LIGHT CRUDE JUN1 $ 99.69 -0.11 -0.11% Volume: 242,968May 6, 2011 10:19a /quotes/comstock/21n!f:ho\m11 Add HOM11 to portfolio HOM11 NO 2 HT OIL JUN1 $ 2.90 +0.01 +0.35% Volume: 30,015May 6, 2011 10:19a /quotes/comstock/21n!3089650 Add RBM11 to portfolio RBM11 NY RBOB JUN1 $ 3.12 +0.02 +0.66% Volume: 20,662May 6, 2011 10:19a Claudia Assis is a San Francisco-based reporter for MarketWatch. William L. Watts is a reporter for MarketWatch in London. Virginia Harrison in Sydney contributed to this report. marketwatch.com