Fear of supply bottlenecks and the recently weaker dollar drove oil prices up further towards the end of the week. Brent North Sea oil rose in price by more than two percent to $86.44 per barrel, the highest it has been since the end of October. The price of US crude oil WTI rose 2.6 percent to $84.23 a barrel, marking its highest level since mid-November. The analysts at Commerzbank stated that the recent price decline triggered by the appearance of the Omikron variant has been fully recovered. “Because Omikron’s influence on oil demand has so far been much milder than initially feared.”
In the forex market, the dollar recovered somewhat from its recent losses. Accordingly, the euro fell to $1.1413 after previously rising to $1.1485. The US consumer price data for December, which were released mid-week, triggered the greenback’s recent downward movement. As expected, they had marked the highest level since 1982. According to market observers, investors used this data to rake in profits. However, analysts assume that the weakness of the US currency is only temporary.
Due to ongoing tensions with neighboring Russia, investors threw Ukraine’s government bonds out of their portfolios. This drove the yield on the papers running until 2025 and 2026 to more than eleven percent each, the highest level since the stock market crash in March 2020. At the same time, fears of default are growing. Insurance against default on a $10 million package of Ukrainian bonds rose $19,000 to $798,000, data provider Markit reports. This is also the highest level for almost two years.