Without much news or data, crude oil traded narrowly Monday. Investors' focus this week is on the Fed's FOMC meeting Wednesday. As recent economic data in the US have shown impressive improvement, the market anticipates the Fed will change its stance on monetary policies, probably from easing bias in previous meetings to neutral bias. This is the main reason for USD to rebound late last week.

As USD rebounded and stock markets retreated, WTI crude oil slid -0.5% to close at 70.6 Monday. On the other hand, oil products climbed with gasoline and heating oil gaining +1% and +0.8% to 2.03 and 1.93, respectively.

The dollar Index continued to rebound after making a -10 month low. Against major currencies, the greenback snapped losses made last week. For instance, USD soared for 3 straight against the euro and closed at 1.414, +1.5% from the 8-month low of 1.4447 made last week. Against the pound, USD settled at 1.648 yesterday. +3.3% from the 10-month low of 1.704 made last week.

Both US and European stocks fell yesterday as valuations have been stretched after strong rallied in recent weeks. After making a 10-month high last Friday, S&P 500 Index dropped -0.33% to 1007.1. Dow Jones Industrial Average also plunged -0.34% to 9338. In Europe, while UK's FTSDE 100 Index added -0.68% to 4722, both Germany's DAX and France's CAC 40 Index slipped, by -0.75% and -0.47%, to 5418 and 3505, respectively.

Today in Asia, stock movements are mixed with major indices such as Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fluctuating between gains and losses. The Bank of Japan ended its August meeting and left policy rate unchanged at 0.1%. While the central bank mentioned that the economy has stopped worsening, it viewed the outlook as highly uncertain and any improvement we have seen so far might not be able to translate into a sustainable recovery.

Gold price plunged -1.35 to close at 946.9 as USD strengthened. Other precious metals also fell in tandem. Silver price slid -2.1% to 14.36, platinum dropped -1.4% to 1250.9 while palladium slid -0.9% to 276.6.

Another reason for PGM prices to soften was the ease in tensions between labors and Eskom, the South Africa's state-owned power company. The parties will probably agree on the +10.5% pay rise with revisions in house subsidies. This helps avoid potential strike which will cause power shortage in the region.