This morning April oil is trading over $100.00 a barrel and that is front and center for the stock markets. The S&P 500 e-mini futures(ES H1) are trading lower by 5.25 points to 1300.25 before the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. S&P 500 Futures have now declined by 42.00 points in just three days. The catalyst for the market sell off is the continued tension and protests in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Libya is taking over where Egypt left off as a revolution looks to be occurring against Moammar Gadhafi. Oil is trading higher from this news and can spike higher if the situation worsens in the region and spreads into Saudi Arabia.
Weekly jobless claims declined by 22,000 to 391,000 new claims. This news is simply noise today as oil is front and center. Traders must keep an eye on oil and really nothing else. The U.S. Dollar Index has also declined over the past week and is testing the $77.00 support level. Rarely, have we seen the stock market and the U.S. Dollar Index both decline at the same time. Retirees and people on fixed incomes have just lost more of their purchasing power this morning. The U.S. Dollar Index has usually rallied whenever a crisis erupted around the world and that is not occurring this time around. This is a definite change in character. Investors and traders are now running into gold and silver as the one true reserve currency.
Last night the Asian markets sold off sharply. The Nikkei 225(Japan) and Hang Seng Index(Hong Kong), traded lower by a little over 1.00 percent. The highly followed Shanghai Index(China) traded higher by 0.56 percent. The Indian Sensex Index declined by 3.00 percent and this is a large decline. Traders in the U.S. must watch stocks such as Tata Motors Ltd.(NYSE:TTM), India Fund(NYSE:IFN), and other India related companies to be in focus and likely under pressure. India has already been plagued with high inflation and the oil spike is certainly taking its toll on that economy.