• Oil prices rise on supply cut expectations
  • Asian shares retreat on trade tensions
  • Saudi Arabia’s index rose on Monday, boosted by higher oil prices
  • Dollar drops, gold firms

Oil prices

Oil prices extended gains in early trading on Tuesday as investors expect a supply cut from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in its meeting later in the week.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $53.35 per barrel at 0137 GMT, up 40 cents, or 0.8 percent, from their last close.

International Brent crude oil futures were up 40 cents, or 0.7 percent, at $62.09 per barrel.

“We expect OPEC to follow suit and agree to a production cut in Vienna this coming Thursday,” U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients, according to a Reuters report.

“A cut in OPEC and Russia production of 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) will be required to reverse the ongoing counter-seasonally large increase in inventories,” the bank said.

Global markets

Asian shares dropped on Tuesday, weighed down by trade tensions between the United States and China.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged down 0.2 percent.

Overnight on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 1.13 percent higher, the S&P 500 gained 1.09 percent and the Nasdaq Composite added 1.51 percent.

“The fear across global markets is that this is just a short term relief rally and we will find ourselves back where we were a few weeks ago and staring down the barrel of a long term global growth slow down,” Nick Twidale, Sydney-based analyst at Rakuten Securities Australia said in a note, according to a Reuters report.

“In the short term it seems we may find investors once again back to trading sentiment fluctuations as news hits the markets piecemeal on trade agreement progress.”

Middle East markets

Saudi Arabia’s stock market index rose on Monday as a surge in oil prices boosted banking and petrochemical stocks.

Saudi Basic Industries added 1.2 percent and Samba Financial Group increased 2.3 percent.

Saudi Arabian Mining jumped 6 percent after saying it had commenced commercial production of Diammonium Phosphate.

Stock markets in the United Arab Emirates were closed for a national holiday.

The Qatari index rose 1.3 percent. Qatar National Bank climbed 1.8 percent, while Industries Qatar added 1.9 percent after HSBC raised the price target on the stock to 125 riyals from 110 riyals.

The Egyptian blue-chip index dropped 1.6 percent, with the country's biggest lender Commercial International Bank losing 4.4 percent, its lowest in nearly two years.

Elsewhere in the region, Kuwait’s index edged up 0.2 percent, Bahrain’s index fell 0.5 percent and Oman’s index rose 0.7 percent.

Currencies

The dollar dropped in early trading on Tuesday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, edged 0.2 percent lower on Tuesday.

Precious metals

Gold prices firmed on a lower dollar.

Spot gold was flat, trading at $1,231.11 per ounce.

(Reporting by Gerard Aoun; Editing by Mily Chakrabarty)

(gerard.aoun@refinitiv.com) 

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