Oil prices down 3 percent in Friday late trading, global stocks slide

Crude oil prices fell and global stocks slid hard on late Friday trading after reports cast doubt on the US economy’s recovery and questions about Citigroup Inc sparked a sell off in US financial shares. US crude oil futures for December delivery fell $2.87 to settle at $77.00. London Brent crude lost $2.84 to settle down $75.20 on the ICE Futures Exchange.

Havens like US Treasuries and the US dollar shot higher while assets seen as riskier trades, such as stocks and oil, plunged. The sell off on Wall Street erased Thursday’s rally, the best one day gain by US equities in three months, after a better than expected report on US gross domestic product.

The 2.5 percent drop in the Dow was its worst one day percentage loss since July, while the Nasdaq racked up its worst weekly percentage decline of 5.1 percent since March. For the month, the Dow was unchanged, the S&P 500 fell 2 percent and the Nasdaq slipped 3.6 percent. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq snapped seven straight months of gains.

“Confidence still strikes me as shockingly low,” said Jeff Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial in Boston. “Consumers are still very pessimistic, and that is evident in individual investors’ hesitancy to embrace this rally.”

US consumers cut spending last month while sentiment turned gloomier in October, data showed. Another report showed factory activity in the US Midwest expanded for the first time in more than a year, but employment conditions worsened.

Tags:  global stocks, oil prices