Oil Falls to $77, Many Reasons Why

Oil’s in full retreat today, with futures for light sweet crude for delivery in December falling $2.36 to $77.22 a barrel on the Nymex. The reason is either a) President Obama’s allusion to a double-dip recession yesterday, according to the Financial Times; b) today’s initial jobless claims data, which at 505,000 for last week, are unchanged but higher than economists expected, according to the Wall Street Journal; c) the massive downgraded of chipmakers by Merrill Lynch this morning, and the dollar’s fall to $1.48 against the Euro, according to Bloomberg; or d) simply that oil is a very crowded trade, according to a note this morning from Gluskin Sheff’s David Rosenberg, who writes that “we can confirm that when it comes to the net speculative long positions on at least Spiders and oil, not to mention non-U.S. currencies, the specs are hugely long.” ExxonMobil (XOM) has followed the barrel’s decline, but to a lesser extent than other majors, falling just 76 cents, or 1%, to $74.52,