By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com – Buy the rumor, and Sell the fact Wall Street has begun to learn more from the oil markets. 

Big Oil followed Big Tech’s renewed tumble on Wednesday as U.S. economic growth concerns, coupled with profit-taking on last week’s rally in energy, took crude prices down despite bullish consumption and stockpiles data released by the government.

New York’s WTI traded slipped $2.81 or 2.5% to $109.59. After rising by 14.5% over four sessions, the U.S. crude benchmark fell 4% in two trading days. It had risen to $114.90 Monday.

London-traded settlements were down 2.5% at $109.11. 

Global crude oil benchmark lost 4.5% after climbing about 12% during four previous sessions.

Oil’s selloff deepened on Wednesday despite mostly positive inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which reported a surprise drawdown in crude stockpiles and larger-than-expected consumption in gasoline balances for last week.

“It’s what you’d call a ‘buy-the-rumor, sell-the-fact’ day,” said John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital. 

“Bulls in the market had been betting on some solid drawdown numbers for crude and gasoline even as the bears had expected otherwise, and some saw it fit to take the money they made off the table today,” said Kilduff. “Also, there’s incessant noise on the U.S. economy and fears of recession. All that’s weighing on stocks and markets in general.”

Wall Street stock markets fell on Wednesday. Technology sector was down more than 4 percent, and the equity market in the US continued its slide on growth fears. The decline came after some relief from recent selloffs. For the whole of May, Nasdaq is down 7%. However, it’s down 26% year-over-year. 

“There are gloomy forecasts from central banks, with even the Fed now targeting a softish landing which feels very much like the stage before a mild recession,” said Craig Erlam, analyst at online trading platform OANDA. “It may be time to buckle up and prepare for a very bumpy year.”

The Fed, or Federal Reserve, will raise interest rates non-stop and even slow the U.S. economy if needed to bring inflation down from current 40-year highs, the central bank’s chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday. Rising fuel costs, including gasoline prices at more than $4.50 at certain U.S. pump stations and diesel prices at nearly $6 per gallon, are accelerating inflation. They could also lead to increased demand for energy, as it becomes increasingly difficult to pay these prices.  

U.S. economic growth for this year is likely to come in at 2.4%, some 0.8% lower than the Fed’s estimate, as the Ukraine war causes more global negative shocks than expected, S&P Global said in an outlook on Wednesday.

EIA data shows that EIA oil inventories fell by 3.39million barrels over the week of May 13. This is in contrast to 1.38 million barrels increase forecasted by analysts at Investing.com. There was an 8.49million barrel increase in the week prior to May 6.

Among , there was a drop of 4.78 million barrels, against analysts’ consensus for a draw of 1.33 million barrels. In the prior week,  there was a decline of 3.61 million barrels.

With the, there were 1.24 million barrels more than expected. There was an increase of 1.24 million barrels in the previous week.