WTI rises to $17.50 as Kuwait cuts output

WTI jumps 5% in Asia, having found bids below $16.00 during the overnight trade.
Kuwait has voluntarily cut output in response to the current market conditions.
The recently signed OPEC+ deal will take effect on May 1.

Omkar Godbole FXStreet Contributor

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is flashing green on Friday with OPEC's number four producer reducing oil output in response to market conditions.

At press time, a barrel of WTI oil is changing hands at $17.25 per barrel, up 5% on the day, having bounced up from $15.80 to $17.56 during the overnight trade. Prices, however, are still trading below $18.26 during Thursday's North American trading hours. Meanwhile, Brent oil is trading near $22, representing a 1% gain on the day.

While the recently agreed OPEC+ deal to cut output by 9.7 million barrels per day is set to take effect on May 1, OPEC's fourth-largest producer, Kuwait, has already started to reduce supply to markets. "Kuwait has cut output voluntarily sensing a responsibility responding to market conditions," Kuwait’s Oil Minister Khaled Al-Fadhel told the official state Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on Thursday.

Most analysts, however, are of the opinion that the OPEC+ output cuts won't be enough to compensate for the coronavirus-led demand destruction and the rise in inventory levels. Nevertheless, output cuts may put a floor under prices and slow down its descent.

From a technical analysis standpoint, WTI's bounce from lows seen earlier this week has taken the shape of a rising wedge pattern, a bearish reversal pattern. A breakdown, if confirmed, would imply an end of the corrective rally and shift risk in favor of a drop to levels below $10.

Author

Omkar Godbole

FXStreet Contributor

Omkar Godbole, editor and analyst, joined FXStreet after four years as a research analyst at several Indian brokerage companies.

GBP/USD remains offered; bears target 1.3600

GBP/USD now leaves behind part of its recent recovery and revisits the low 1.3600s at the beginning of the week. Indeed, Cable trades with a mild downward bias amid decent gains in the Greenback as investors remain wary of upcoming US data releases and the Jackson Hole event.

EUR/USD remains sidelined above 1.1650

EUR/USD trades on the defensive following the closing bell on Wall Street on Monday, hovering around the 1.1660 region and adding to Friday’s small decline. The pair’s pullback comes in response to an acceptable rebound in the US Dollar in a context of generalised caution ahead of key US data releases and Chair Warsh’s speech in Jackson Hole.

Gold poised to extend its bullish run

Gold surrenders part of its initial advance, although it keeps its bullish pace well and sound above the $4,600 mark per troy ounce on Monday. The precious metal’s move higher comes despite slight gains in the US Dollar and a modest pullback in US Treasury yields across the curve.

XRP surged 72%, but is the rally really about XRP?

Ripple (XRP) surged more than 72% in less than a week, its strongest rally since July 2025, as cryptocurrency prices broadly broke out. But the move has a problem: it may have little to do with XRP itself. The token's near-term rally appears to have been driven largely by a broader liquidity shift after the US Treasury expanded long-end bond buybacks, pulling yields lower and lifting risk assets.

Convulsion in credit markets

The United States government just posted a $432.3 billion deficit for July, the largest monthly shortfall since March of 2021. That single burst of red ink pushed the yeartodate deficit to $1.8 trillion, with two months still remaining in fiscal 2026. At this pace, Washington will soon wax nostalgic for the “good old days” when annual deficits were only $2 trillion.

$20 billion offered, $2 billion taken: Why Treasury doubled its buyback cap

The US Treasury moved off its own calendar on Wednesday, and that is the part worth sitting with. At 12:32 GMT, the department said it would at least double the size of liquidity support buyback operations in the 10-year to 20-year and 20-year to 30-year sectors, lifting the maximum from $2 billion per operation to at least $4 billion, effective September 9 and running to November 4.