OIL PRODUCTS: Oil Products End of Day Summary: Cracks Slightly Higher

• Crude has declined following reports that Trump will push for a ceasefire in Friday’s meeting with Putin, adding to pressure from the IEA’s lower 2025 oil demand growth forecast.
• WTI Sep 25 is down by 0.9% at $62.6/bbl.
• The IEA has revised down its 2025 global oil demand growth forecasts for both 2025 and 2026, according to the August Oil Market Report. Growth this year is the weakest since 2019.
• With today’s move, WTI futures have pierced initial support at $62.77, a clear break of which would expose $58.17, the May 30 low.
• Meanwhile, gold is off the weekly low, with the yellow metal ticking up by 0.1% to $3,352/oz today. However, the bounce appears shallow at these levels, keeping price within the mid-point of the recent range.
• The phase of weakness into the end of July supported the view that short-term pullbacks are corrective - for now - and the bull cycle that started Jun 30 remains intact. Key near-term resistance is at $3,439.0, the Jul 23 high.
• However, the yellow metal has traded through support at $3,334.6, the 50-day EMA,  signalling scope for a deeper retracement and exposing the next key support at $3,248.7, the Jun 30 low.
• Elsewhere, silver has outperformed today, rising by 1.5% to $38.5/oz.
• Trend signals in silver remain bullish, with sights on $39.655 a Fibonacci projection.

• RES 4: 152.31 High Feb 19 
• RES 3: 151.62 61.8% retracement of the Jan 10 - Apr 22 bear leg 
• RES 2: 151.21 High Mar 28 
• RES 1: 150.92 High Aug 1 
• PRICE: 147.15 @ 15:51 BST Aug 13
• SUP 1: 146.79 50-day EMA
• SUP 2: 146.62 Low Aug 5
• SUP 3: 146.40 1.0% 10-dma envelope
• SUP 4: 145.86 Low Jul 24  

USDJPY consolidated for much of last week, holding the bulk of the NFP losses. Price has bounced, but recoveries are shallow at this stage. This has allowed a previously overbought condition to unwind, and keeps the downside argument in focus. Prices are trading either side of the 147.61 20-day EMA, and the inability to build a base here will be a concern. A clear break of this support zone would undermine the recent bull theme. A break of last week’s 150.92 high would resume the uptrend.     

Chicago Fed Pres Goolsbee (2025 FOMC voter) says in a Q&A that FOMC meetings in the fall are "going to be live" but he doesn't offer much in the way of overt support for a rate cut in September. Indeed he says he's "uneasy" about the idea that tariffs have only a one-off impact on prices, and that "the hardest thing that a central bank ever has to do is try to get the timing right when there are moments of transition."

• "I'm not speaking for them, but I see my colleagues on the FOMC grappling with the same thing I'm trying to figure out, which is: Are we still on the "golden path" where the economy's doing fine and inflation is going to come back down? Or are we getting into something where the costs are going to start rising again? And then we've got to be a little uneasy."
• He won't pre-commit to how he would approach policy at the September meeting but notes "we're still going to get some PPI readings on inflation and another CPI reading on inflation before the next meeting."
• That said, he sounds unenthusiastic about developments in the latest CPI report: "If we start getting more reports like the latest one, the latest CPI, though, where the overall is inching up. And if you look at the components, services, inflation was was bad. There's no other way to describe it. And services are not obviously tied to the tariffs. So everyone's hoping that's just a blip. You know there's noise in the data. If you start to get multiple months where the components suggest that the impact of tariff inflation is not staying in its lane, then that would be more of a concern."
• He says of the labor market: "I think the state of the labor market is pretty strong." On wage growth: "faster than inflation, but it's fully consistent with 2% inflation."
• He even implies that the Fed may be in a position where it is forced to hike rates: "one risk would be we get back into an environment where costs are rising. We've been above the 2% target for four and a half years now. I was still feeling okay about that, even though we've been above for four and a half years because it was coming down. If we get into an environment where it's not coming down, we're above four and a half years and it's going the wrong way, and that's looking persistent. That would be a that would be a problem. And in my opinion, the Fed will have to act. And on the other side, if we  have a more traditional slowing of the economy and there are some warning signs in the labor market, that would no longer be the soft 
  landing, we would have we would have had the hard landing. And so I kind of think both sides of that, we've got to keep an eye on."