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- Oil prices rise on lower supplies
- Asian shares track a drop in global markets
- Gulf markets retreat again on Sunday
- Dollar rebounds, gold prices edge lower
Oil prices
Oil prices rose early on Monday, supported by tightening supplies.
Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih said that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was unlikely to change its output policy in April and if required would make adjustments in June.
OPEC issued a list of oil production cuts by its members and other major producers for six months starting January 1, to boost confidence in its oil supply reduction pact.
Oil prices have also been boosted by lower supply from Venezuela, as the U.S. introduced petroleum export sanctions against state-owned Venezuelan energy firm PDVSA.
Global markets
Asian shares remained weak in early trading on Monday on weak jobs data from the United States and weak Chinese export data, both announced at the end of last week.
U.S. employment growth almost stalled in February, with the economy creating only 20,000 jobs, adding to signs of a sharp slowdown in economic activity in the first quarter. The payroll gains reported by the Labor Department were the weakest since September 2017.
China data also showed that exports shrank 20.7 percent in February from a year earlier while imports fell 5.2 percent.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was little changed from Friday’s three-week low, with broad weakness offset by small gains in Chinese shares.
On Friday, Wall Street’s Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.99 points, or 0.09 percent, to 25,450.24, the S&P 500 lost 5.86 points, or 0.21 percent, to 2,743.07 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 13.32 points, or 0.18 percent, to 7,408.14.
Middle East markets
Gulf stock markets dropped again on Sunday, following Thursday’s retreat.
Abu Dhabi’s index fell 0.9 percent, dragged lower mainly by banking shares, with First Abu Dhabi Bank dropping 1.6 percent.
Dubai’s index dropped 0.6 percent weighed down by Emaar Properties , which was down 0.8 percent and Dubai Islamic Bank, down 0.8 percent.
Saudi Arabia's main index was down 0.2 percent, hit by a weak performance among banking stocks. Banque Saudi Fransi was down 1.4 percent, while Samba Financial Group was down 0.7 percent.
Qatar's index lost 0.1 percent, weighed down by Qatar National Bank, and Qatar International Islamic Bank, which were down 0.7 percent and 2.5 percent respectively.
Egypt's blue-chip index EGX30 was the only gainer in the region adding 0.5 percent.
Currencies
The dollar bounced back early on Monday, following a drop on Friday.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, gained 0.1 percent to 97.426 in early Asian trading.
Precious metals
Gold prices retreated on a strengthening dollar.
As of 0115 GMT, spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,296.73 per ounce, after briefly breaching the $1,300 ceiling in the previous session.
U.S. gold futures were also down 0.1 percent at $1,298.10 an ounce.
(Reporting by Gerard Aoun; Editing by Mily Chakrabarty)
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