US recap: EUR/USD rebound fizzles before Friday’s lows as risks persist

Sept 27 (Reuters) – The dollar rose on Tuesday after unexpectedly strong U.S. home sales and consumer confidence reports enhanced the U.S. economic outlook, in contrast to Europe’s increasingly dire inflation and recession risks that sent gilt and euro zone bond yields sharply higher and riskier assets lower.

Brief and corrective dollar pullbacks against the euro and sterling hit the wall by Friday’s 0.9668 and 1.0840 lows.

Massive gilt yields gains of 27bp and 39bp in 2-year and 10-year tenors spread across European government bonds and to less extent Treasuries, funneling funds back into the relative safety of the dollar.

Though strong, above forecast U.S. single-family home sales and consumer confidence also displayed modest signs of disinflation.

Dollar-supported upside in short-term Treasury yields diminished following St. Louis Fed President James Bullard’s comment that fed funds would probably peak near 4.5%, a level market pricing had already slightly surpassed.

Sterling was about flat after slipping from Tuesday’s 1.0837 high, which is near Friday’s low, but failed to sustain the rebound from Monday’s 1.0327 record low even after BoE Chief Economist Huw Pill said the UK central bank is likely to deliver a “significant policy response” to the government’s fiscal stimulus plans.

EUR/USD was down about 0.1% and 1% off Tuesday’s 0.9670 high on EBS. The euro’s outlook is dimmed by the deteriorating prospects for Europe’s economy amid increasing energy insecurity that threatens significant losses for businesses and soaring costs for consumers and governments trying subsidize energy costs.

USD/JPY’s early dip with Treasury yields reversed in NorAm trading, lifting prices close to major 145 options expiries this week and ahead of Thursday’s 24-year peak at 145.90 on EBS that triggered Japanese intervention.

But Tuesday’s BOJ yield curve control buying of JGBs to cap 10-year yields at 0.25% reinforced the impression that monetary policy would not be giving the MOF any assistance in supporting the yen anytime soon.

Therefore, USD/JPY drops on intervention are buying opportunities unless U.S. disinflation takes hold faster than expected and peak Fed funds pricing has already been witnessed.

Otherwise, a close above 145 would suggest 145.90 is in play, and perhaps tech targets near 150.

High-beta currencies also shed earlier gains. And a strong start for bitcoin and ether became losses as the S&P 500 breached June’s major lows.

Russia-related risks and energy price cap plans will be watched along with U.S. PCE data Friday, followed by non-farm payrolls next Friday.

(Editing by Burton Frierson; Randolph Donney is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own.)

S&P 500 falls to two-year low, bear market rally snuffed out

Sept 27 (Reuters) – The S&P 500 fell to its lowest level in almost two years on Tuesday on worries about super aggressive Federal Reserve policy tightening, trading under its June trough and leaving investors appraising how much further stocks would have to fall before stabilizing.

Stocks have been under pressure since late August after comments and aggressive actions by the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled the central bank’s top priority is to stamp out high inflation even at the risk of putting the economy into a recession.

The S&P 500 touched a session low of 3,623.29, its lowest point on an intraday basis since Nov. 30, 2020. A late rally helped push the index off its worst level of the day, but the index still closed lower for a sixth straight session as it lost 7.75 points, or 0.21%, to 3,647.29 .

After the benchmark index fell more than 20% from its early January high to a low on June 16, which confirmed that the retreat was indeed a bear market, the S&P then rallied into mid-August before running out of gas.

That bear-market rally is now over.

“As long as the Fed continues to raise rates, and investors don’t anticipate an end of the rate hikes, I think this market is going to continue to be weak,” said Tim Ghriskey, Senior Portfolio Strategist, Ingalls & Snyder, New York.

The big blow for the index that re-ignited selling pressure was Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole that confirmed the Fed’s resolve to fight inflation, followed by a third straight 75 basis point interest rate hike by the central bank last week. The index has tumbled more than 12% since Powell’s speech and has shown little signs of stabilizing.

Many analysts had looked at 3,900 as a strong technical support level for the index. That gave way 11 days ago under four straight days of selling.

“When you have these cascades of selling like we’ve seen since the Fed, really, support doesn’t really matter, you can slice right through it,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha, Nebraska.

“Fundamentals and logic are almost thrown out the window because we are all wondering just how hawkish is the Fed, and then you look around this week and all these central banks around the globe hiked rates.” Detrick said that coordinated hikes by multiple central banks left investors wondering how hawkish they all will end up being.

Robert Pavlik, Senior Portfolio Manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut said he is looking at a worst case of 3,000 for the S&P as a support level.

“People are concerned about the Federal Reserve, the direction of interest rates, the health of the economy, and also the next couple of weeks with earnings season coming up and companies reporting lower-than-expected earnings.”

Analysts are still looking for signposts of investor capitulation that can show selling pressure is exhausted. But sell-offs this year have not contained all those ingredients — a sharp drop in prices, a day of unusually high volume and a jump in the CBOE Volatility index to 40 or above. So, many investors to conclude that selling has yet to be depleted.

“It goes down, you get some decent volume but you don’t necessarily have the classic signs of capitulation,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

“Maybe enough has changed over the years that some of those indicators aren’t going to be a very good guide for the future.”

That leaves investors looking for the next catalyst to help markets stabilize, or get cheap enough for to start buying again, such as signs the Fed’s actions may be starting to tame inflation, a weakening of the labor market, and what the upcoming corporate earnings season may bring about.

“On (October 7), you get the employment situation report and the following week you get the inflation report so we will be on pins and needles waiting to see what those numbers say, and then you have earnings,” said Jacobsen.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Ankika Biswas; Editing by Alden Bentley, Franklin Paul, Nick Zieminski, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

China prepares to tweak yuan fixing process to slow its fall – source

SHANGHAI, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Chinese monetary authorities are asking local banks to revive a yuan fixing tool it abandoned two years ago as they seek to steer and defend the rapidly weakening currency, a source said on Tuesday.

The source, who is familiar with the yuan rate-setting process, said monetary authorities were prodding banks to include the so-called counter-cyclical factor in their daily fixings for the tightly managed exchange rate.

It’s an adjustment that 14 banks make to their yuan quotes that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) uses to set the daily reference rate, effectively introducing a bias to the fixing rate. It was abandoned in 2020 when the yuan rose sharply, and authorities decided to let market forces dictate the rate around which the yuan is allowed to move.

The source said some banks that contribute the fixing quotes had been asked on Tuesday to start including the counter-cyclical factor, or X-factor as it is known locally, and that this tweak could happen in the coming days.

The 14 contributing banks are the key members of the China FX Market Self-Regulatory Framework, which serves as a market self-regulatory and coordinating mechanism.

The committee did not immediately respond to Reuters’ emailed request for comment outside of business hours.

The move aims to restore and strengthen the two-way floating nature of the yuan, said the source.

It follows other steps authorities have taken to put a floor under the yuan, which is down more than 11% against a US dollar boosted this year against most global currencies by surging US interest rates.

YUAN PRESSURED

A domestic economic slowdown and outflows of foreign portfolio flows have piled pressure on the local currency.

Its losses accelerated after the PBOC cut key interest rates in August, further widening its policy stance from other major economies that are raising rates aggressively to combat inflation.

Chinese authorities have made efforts to rein in yuan weakness, through persistently setting firmer-than-expected mid-point fixings, verbal warnings and holding off major monetary easing efforts.

Tuesday marked the 24th straight trading session that the actual official mid-point fixing had the yuan stronger than market projections, hence somewhat limiting the downside for the currency.

The PBOC has also rolled out policy measures this month, increasing the cost of shorting the currency by lowering the amount of foreign exchange financial institutions must hold as reserves and reinstating risk-reserve requirements on currencies purchased through forwards.

China first introduced the counter-cyclical factor in 2017 in what regulators said was an effort to better reflect market supply and demand, lessen possible “herd effects” in the market and help guide market participants to focus more on macroeconomic fundamentals.

It has adjusted its methodology a number of times to cope with market conditions and keep the currency stable, before phasing out the tool in October 2020, when the yuan rose sharply.

(Reporting by Shanghai newsroom; Editing by Vidya Ranganathan, Mark Potter and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Gold bounces from 2-1/2-year trough as dollar rally cools

Sept 27 (Reuters) – Gold prices rebounded from a 2-1/2-year low on Tuesday as a slight pause in the dollar rally helped restore greenback-priced bullion’s allure, although risks from looming rate hikes persisted.

Spot gold was 0.5% higher at USD 1,629.69 per ounce by 1:46 p.m. EDT (1746 GMT), after climbing over 1% to USD 1,642.29 earlier in the session.

US gold futures settled up 0.2% at USD 1,636.20.

“Today is just a little bit of a recovery after some of the extreme weakness seen over recent days … but I don’t think there’s really any fundamental change taking place in the gold market,” said Ryan McKay, commodity strategist at TD Securities.

The dollar had retreated from two-decade highs, prompting investors to turn to gold, which had fallen to its lowest since April 2020 at USD 1,620.20 in the previous session. A weaker dollar makes gold attractive for overseas buyers.

Gold prices also benefited from “corrective price rebounds from recent selling pressure and on short covering from the shorter-term futures traders,” Jim Wyckoff, senior analyst at Kitco Metals, said in a note.

However, gold faces pressure from aggressive interest rate hikes that tend to raise the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion.

The US central bank will need to raise rates by at least another percentage point this year, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said on Tuesday.

“We’re still essentially in a pretty weak environment for gold with an aggressive Fed and some Fed speakers throughout the week likely to hammer home the point that rates are going to be higher for longer,” McKay added.

“We could see prices fall below the USD 1,600 level.”

Meanwhile, spot silver gained 0.3% to USD 18.39 per ounce.

“With the global electronics sector struggling and the more general global economic backdrop deteriorating, we think the silver price will remain under pressure over the rest of this year,” Capital Economics wrote in a note.

Platinum shed 0.6% to USD 846.53, while palladium advanced 1% to USD 2,066.67.

(Reporting by Kavya Guduru in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Maju Samuel)

Oil prices claw back some losses as focus turns to possible supply cuts

Sept 27 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Tuesday, after plunging to nine-month lows a day earlier, on indications that producer alliance OPEC+ may enact output cuts to avoid a further collapse in prices.

Brent crude futures for November settlement rose 65 cents, or 0.77%, to USD 84.71 per barrel by 0502 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for November delivery were up 64 cents at USD 77.35 per barrel.

In the previous two trading sessions, Brent plunged 7.1% while WTI slumped 8.1% under the dual pressure of a surging dollar that makes greenback-denominated crude more expensive for buyer using other currencies and mounting concerns that rising interest rates will trigger a recession that will curtail fuel demand.

On Tuesday, an easing greenback provided some relief to the oil market. The dollar index was off a bit from the 20-year high touched on the previous day.

Officials from major producers reacted to the past days of declines by indicating they may take action to keep price stability.

Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar on Monday said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia, known as OPEC+, were monitoring the oil price situation, wanting to maintain balance in the markets.

“We don’t want a sharp increase in oil prices or a collapse,” he said in an interview on Iraqi state TV.

Analysts said further sell offs in oil markets could see OPEC+ intervene to support prices by collectively reducing their output.

“If we are to see cuts, they will need to be quite a bit larger than the 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) agreed at the last meeting in order to have a meaningful impact on the market,” analysts at ING Economics said in a note.

OPEC+ boosted output this year after record cuts put in place in 2020 because of demand destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the organization has failed in recent months to meet its planned output increases, undermining the effectiveness of any announced output reductions.

Disruptions from the Russia-Ukraine war are adding to a jittery market amid a lack of clarity over a planned European Union price cap on Russian oil exports that is expected to start in December.

“Cyprus and Hungary are among countries that have expressed opposition to the proposal. There were expectations of a deal being reached this week but that now looks unlikely,” ANZ Research said in a note.

The expected arrival of Hurricane Ian caused BP Plc (BP) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) to shut in production on Monday at offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, the top US offshore production region.

The category 2 storm was in the Caribbean and forecast to become a major hurricane within two days.

(Reporting by Mohi Narayan in New Delhi, Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Christian Schmollinger)

Whipsawed forex traders say currency moves ‘remarkable’, resemble casino

NEW YORK/LONDON, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Trading in tumultuous foreign exchange markets is akin to being in a casino right now, according to some traders navigating markets that have been whipsawed as central banks and governments try to right their economies.

In the last week, sleep-deprived traders have worked flat-out advising clients on the markets’ extraordinary moves: the crash of Britain’s pound to an all-time low, the Japanese monetary intervention to prop up the falling yen, and the euro’s deeper plunge below dollar parity.

Towering above all is the mighty US dollar which is trading at a two-decade peak. Some see no end to the wrenching volatility.

“It really is like a casino right now,” said John Doyle, vice president of dealing and trading at Monex USA, who said he is being more hands-on in talking to clients and extra cautious about risk.

“We have had to be extra vigilant of our internal trading policies to ensure we are not taking any undue risks,” said Doyle. “Discipline has been key.”

Deutsche Bank’s Currency Volatility Index .DBCVIX – the historical volatility index of the major G7 currencies – jumped to a two-and-a-half year high of 13.55 on Monday.

The British pound fell about 5% against the dollar over the last two sessions, its worst 2-session drop since March 2020, drawing comparisons with the typically more volatile emerging market currencies.

The yen remains near a 24-year low against the greenback, despite Japanese monetary authorities last week intervening in the foreign exchange markets to boost the battered currency for the first time since 1998.

While Sterling and the yen have fared extremely poorly against the dollar, the greenback’s meteoric rise has spared no major currency. Every G10 currency has slipped against the dollar this year, for an average fall of about 16%.

“It’s been a hectic few days for sure, and sleep has been sorely lacking,” said Michael Brown, head of market intelligence at payments firm Caxton in London. “I’ll blame sterling rather than my coffee habit for that, but heading to bed at 11:30 and waking at around 3:30 to cable (the US-Sterling rate) hitting record lows certainly wasn’t much fun.”

Moves have surprised long-time currency traders and investors.

Akshay Kamboj, co-chief investment officer at Crawford Ventures, a hedge fund trading currencies said while he had been expecting a deep correction in sterling “this deep was not anticipated.”

“Our team is working around the clock from multiple global locations,” said Kamboj, adding he is not trading sterling because the pound’s direction now depends entirely on how the Bank of England reacts.

VOLATILITY HERE TO STAY

The volatility is unlikely to stop.

“It does feel like the groundwork is still there for more disorderly moves,” said Bipan Rai, North American head of FX strategy at CIBC Capital Markets, who added the driver would be dollar strength which is dependent on how hawkish the US Federal Reserve is in raising rates.

The US dollar has dominated due to soaring US interest rates, a comparatively strong American economy and demand for a haven as global financial markets have turned more turbulent this year.

That has exacerbated problems around the world.

With the yen weighed down by the ever-widening gap between the yields on US and Japanese government debt, the euro hurt by worries over an energy crisis and its impact on the economy, and the pound slammed by concerns the new government’s economic plan will stretch Britain’s finances to the limit, dollar bulls have been quick to press their advantage.

While FX traders are no stranger to volatility, the confluence of various risks makes this moment stand out.

Unlike March 2020, the last period of heightened volatility, where policymakers were united and had largely similar responses to the pandemic, traders now are faced with central banks reacting in their own different ways as they deal with soaring inflation and currency weakness.

“In previous times it’s been a macro economic story, but this is very much a central bank story with them all jostling over rate hikes,” said Chris Huddleston, CEO at FXD Capital, who has been former FX and bonds trader for the past 20 years.

Meanwhile the dollar’s continued strength bodes ill for global financial markets analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note on Monday.

“Such U.S. dollar strength has historically led to some kind of financial/economic crisis … If there was ever a time to be on the lookout for something to break, this would be it,” the analysts said.

(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed, Carolina Mandl, John McCrank in New York and Dhara Ranasinghe in London, writing by Megan Davies; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Gold firms on dollar pullback, but hinges on rate-hike fears

Sept 27 (Reuters) – Gold prices rose on Tuesday as the dollar slipped, although the metal languished near a 2-1/2-year low as prospects of further aggressive rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve kept some investors on the sidelines.

Spot gold was up 0.6% at USD 1,631.39 per ounce, as of 0512 GMT, after hitting its lowest since April 2020 at USD 1,620.20 on Monday. US gold futures edged 0.3% higher to USD 1,638.70.

The dollar index dipped 0.1%, easing off a two-decade peak scaled in the previous session. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield was also slightly off a 12-year peak marked on Monday.

Slightly lower US yields and dollar may have provided some room for gold prices to stabilise after its recent sell-off, said IG market strategist Yeap Jun Rong.

“The prevailing upside risk to inflation and, hence, monetary policy tightening, still remains a key obstacle limiting gold’s upside,” he said.

Fed officials on Monday sloughed off rising volatility in global markets and said their priority remained controlling inflation.

Gold prices have declined more than 20% since rising above the key USD 2,000 level in March, as rapid US rate hikes made the non-yielding bullion less attractive and also pushed the dollar to multi-year highs.

“Its (gold’s) status as a haven asset in times of economic distress has failed to stem the flow of selling,” analysts at ANZ said in a note.

Indicative of investor sentiment, holdings of SPDR Gold Trust GLD, the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell to 30,333,443 ounces on Monday, its lowest since March 2020.

Spot gold may bounce further to USD 1,639 per ounce, as a wave 3 may have completed around a support of USD 1,619, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.

Spot silver rose 1% to USD 18.51 per ounce, platinum climbed 0.2% to USD 853.89 and palladium was up 0.2% at USD 2,049.10.

(Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich, Subhranshu Sahu and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

Contrarian Chinese yuan bets may start to make sense

Sept 27 (Reuters) – China’s not trying too hard to correct the yuan’s depreciation versus the U.S. dollar, perhaps knowing it’s a losing battle due to external and domestic factors. Nonetheless, bullish bets on the yuan might soon make sense.

China on Monday announced a return of a 20% reserve requirement ratio on FX forwards, making it more expensive to short the yuan. The effect was barely noticeable as USD/CNY ripped back up after a brief dip. The pair is now close to notching a new 27-month high above 7.1690.

The People’s Bank of China has been consistently guiding the daily yuan midpoint stronger than most estimates, but it hasn’t managed to shift bearish sentiment, which might explain the reinstating of the FX RRR. Tuesday’s USD/CNY fix was again below forecasts but not as low as some adjusted estimates; the PBOC also injected the most short-term liquidity since February .

But that doesn’t alter the outlook for the renminbi; maybe nothing will, except a change in Beijing’s zero-COVID policy.

The World Bank on Tuesday slashed its 2022 forecast for China’s economic growth to 2.8% from its April estimate of 5.0%, and sees the behemoth burdening the region .

As economic data signals further slowing and youth unemployment threatens to sow social unrest , reopening China’s borders to revive consumption and the services sector would make sense. If this happens before the scheduled F1 race in Shanghai in April, yuan bears might be forced to reconsider.

(Ewen Chew is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own. Editing by Sonali Desai)

BOJ steps in to curb rising yields with special buying operation

TOKYO, Sept 27 (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan said it would conduct a special purchase operation of Japanese government bonds on Tuesday, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year note brushing against the 0.25% policy ceiling for the first time in the past fortnight.

The BOJ will purchase debt with 10- to 25-year maturities worth 100 billion yen (USD 692.28 million), and securities with 5- to 10-year maturities worth 150 billion yen.

The 10-year JGB yield was up 0.5 basis point at 0.25%, as of 0225 GMT, a level not seen since Sept. 16. The central bank pins the yield at +/- 25 basis points around zero under its yield curve control policy.

Japanese yields are under pressure amid a broad climb in global yields as major central banks including the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank race to hike interest rates to rein in superheated inflation.

The BOJ stood alone among developed markets in keeping the short-term policy rate negative, in addition to the zero long-term yield, as tepid wage inflation and relatively benign core inflation keep Japanese policymakers cautious amid a fragile economic recovery.

Japan’s central bank maintained its stance last week, despite growing policy divergence pushing the yen to 24-year lows. Japanese authorities intervened in the foreign exchange market for the first time since 1998 to shore up the battered currency.

“The BOJ is trying to calm down speculation that it could be forced to change policy,” said Masayuki Kichikawa, chief macro strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo.

“It makes very clear that it has no intention to change monetary policy for the foreseeable future.”

Benchmark 10-year JGB futures fell 0.29 point to 147.71, and earlier touched a three-month low of 147.62.

The yield on the 30-year rose 6 bps to 1.435% for the first time since September 2015, and the 20-year yield advanced 4 bps to 1.03% for the first time since December 2015.

The five-year yield added 1 bp to 0.08%, a three-month high.

Two-year notes were yet to trade.

(USD 1 = 144.4500 yen)

(Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

Runaway dollar pauses for breath as bears stalk stocks

HONG KONG, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Asian markets attempted to stabilise on Tuesday after a wild few days of stumbling stocks, crumbling bonds, a plunging pound and soaring dollar, with the dollar easing a bit and stocks flat.

Sterling, which collapsed to a record low USD 1.0327 on Monday, recovered to USD 1.0742. S&P 500 futures rose 0.7%, and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.1%. Japan’s Nikkei .N225 rose 0.7%.

Analysts were doubtful about the outlook, however, as markets – already jittery at the prospect of US interest rates staying higher for longer – have been further unnerved by an upheaval in British assets in response to government spending plans.

Britain plans tax cuts on top of huge energy subsidies, and a lack of confidence in the strategy and its funding hammered gilts and the pound on Friday and again on Monday.

The yield on five-year gilts is up a stunning 100 basis points in two trading days.

“(It) is definitely something that’s unfolding…probably we’re only at a certain initial stage of seeing how the market digests that kind of information,” said Yuting Shao, macro strategist at State Street Global Markets.

“Of course the tax cut plan itself was really aimed to stimulate growth, reduce household burdens, but it does raise the question of what the implications are in terms of the monetary policies.”

After the pound’s plunge, the Bank of England said it would not hesitate to change interest rates and was monitoring markets “very closely”.

Spillover to US markets drove Wall Street deeper into a bear market, lifted benchmark 10-year Treasury yields more than 20 bps to a 12-year high of 3.933%, and has kept the greenback bid.

After two weeks of mostly steady losses on the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI confirmed on Monday that it was in a bear market, tracing its start to declines in early January.

The S&P 500 index .SPX confirmed in June it was in a bear market, and on Monday it ended the session below its mid-June closing low, extending this year’s overall selloff.

State Street’s Shao said uncertainty is rippling through the market and weighing on investor sentiment.

“We are already entering a bit of a slowing down when it comes to global recovery. And the continual tightening of central banks will of course bring more pain in terms of their domestic economic recovery,” she said.

The dollar index on Tuesday eased 0.1% to 113.8, after earlier touching 114.58, its strongest against a basket of peer currencies since May 2002.

The European single currency was up 0.3% on the day at USD 0.9634 after hitting a 20-year low a day ago.

Oil and gold nursed losses. Gold, which hit a 2-1/2 year low on Monday rose 0.5% to USD 1,629 an ounce. Oil lifted slightly from its lowest levels since January.

US crude ticked up 0.66% to USD 77.22 a barrel. Brent crude rose to USD 84.71 per barrel.

(Reporting by Xie Yu; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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