The Daily Bullion: Crude Roars, Litecoin Leads a Split Crypto Tape

Crude is the clearest story into the new session. USOil jumped 3.53% to $81.79 and UKOil rose 3.3% to $86.71, capping weekly gains of 10.21% and 9.81% respectively.

Both benchmarks are now up more than 25% on the year. Energy is doing the heavy lifting while equities and metals drift.

Energy and commodities

The oil complex stands alone at the top of the board. USOil’s move is the strongest one-day advance outside crypto, and its 10%-plus week dwarfs anything in FX or indices.

Both grades are also well above their month-ago levels, with WTI up 10.39% and Brent up 11.74%.

Crypto

Litecoin led everything, up 4.39% to $47.05 and 8.26% higher on the week. Bitcoin added 1.22% to $64,663, while Ethereum rose 0.94% to $1,857 and is up 18.2% over the month.

The tape was split. Stellar (+1.36%) and Compound (+2.3%) firmed, but MATUSD (-2.74%), ARBUSD (-2.54%) and Chiliz (-1.89%) sat at the bottom. Polkadot slipped 1.65%.

Currencies and indices

FX is quiet by comparison. EUR/USD held at 1.1435 (-0.09%), GBP/USD eased to 1.3452, and USD/JPY was essentially flat at 162.39. The Norwegian krone and Swedish krona were the firmer G10 names, with USD/NOK down 0.23% and USD/SEK off 0.48%.

US equities opened on the back foot. The Nasdaq 100 fell 1.08% and the S&P 500 shed 0.82%, with the Dow down 0.57%. The Nasdaq is now off 3.67% on the week. In Asia the Hang Seng dropped 1.29% and the Nikkei lost 0.76%.

What to watch

Gold ticked up 0.82% to $4,018 while platinum fell 1.47%, leaving the metals mixed. The divergence between a surging oil complex and a softer US equity tape remains the session’s defining split.