Crude oil futures prices, like many other commodities, remain capped to the upside by Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and to the downside by rising geopolitical tension. The relatively narrow settlement range belied intra-day volatility, with prices oscillating $5 per barrel in the last week on high volume trade. “The black-box, high-frequency traders must have been fairly busy,” a market source suggested. Pre-EU summit euphoria offset a warning by Standard & Poor’s that even France and Germany face a possible downgrading of their precious triple-A credit ratings to take Brent over $110 per barrel on Dec. 6. When the European Central Bank (ECB) failed to live up to expectations on the eve of the meeting — turning down the role of EU savior by pouring cold water on an aggressive bond-buying program — the contract fell to a new low of $107.53/bbl on Dec. 8.
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