By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com – The invincible oil market can fall, too, as Monday’s trade showed. It is now up to you whether it will stay low or rebound substantially at the close.

Crude futures fell 3% during the most recent session. This was in addition to stock market meltdowns resulting from fears that Fed Reserve may be more aggressive than expected when it releases its first policy statement Wednesday regarding a rate increase following the Covid epidemic.

After a more than $2 trillion stimulus provided by central banks via bond and asset purchases, the Fed’s tightening of balance sheets and impending rate rise coincide with soft fourth quarter earnings reports for U.S. businesses. The resultant effect has creamed Wall Street’s highly-prized Big Tech sector, with the that used to be the darling of investors hitting near bear market territory with a loss of 19% at one point Monday.

The benchmark oil price for U.S. crude fell by $1.88 or 2.2% to $83.26 per barrel at 1:00 ET (18:00 GMT) 

The London-traded was the international benchmark for oil and fell $1.71 or 2% to $85.37 per barrel. Brent fell earlier to $84.22.

WTI suffered a similar oil dump on Friday. WTI fell as high as 5% at its session low. However, it rebounded to less than 1%.

“It’s been a remarkable rally and there’s nothing to suggest that prices are peaking,” Craig Erlam, analyst at online trading platform OANDA, said, referring to the near 20% gain accumulated by crude markets over the past five weeks. “It’s just come a long way in a short period of time but the fundamentals continue to look bullish.”

Aside from OPEC+ data pointing to under-investments in production that are hurting output by the 23-nation oil exporters’ alliance, crude prices are also supported by the geopolitics revolving around the potential war in Ukraine.