Oil’s 2 % drop steadies risk tone before US CPI

WTI crude fell 1.97% to $91.91 during the European morning session on Oct. 13, investingLive’s market wrap said, helping risk sentiment recover before Wednesday’s U.S. CPI report.

The move mattered because the relief did not extend evenly across assets in the same Oct. 13 market wrap: the S&P 500 edged down 0.08% to 7,852, making crude’s percentage decline about 25 times larger, according to Atlas360 calculations.

Gold rose 0.30% to $4,183, and Bitcoin rose 2.17% to $83,481, according to the market wrap. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield fell 6 basis points to 5.18%.

In currencies, the New Zealand dollar led major peers and the U.S. dollar lagged, the publication said.

The source framed the oil retreat as a respite rather than a change in fundamentals. “There’s been an improvement in risk sentiment as oil prices eased, but the macro or geopolitical picture hasn’t changed one bit,” investingLive said in the wrap.

The same report said there was no clear catalyst for the fall in crude. It also said the Houthis continued to attack Saudi Arabia and that U.S.-Iran negotiations remained stalled. Atlas360 reported on Oct.

13 that both sides had reported further attacks around the Yemen-Saudi border, keeping Gulf security and energy-route risk in focus.

The next macro test is the U.S. consumer-price index report due Wednesday, according to the wrap. Core CPI excludes food and energy and is watched by Federal Reserve officials as a gauge of underlying inflation pressure.

InvestingLive said a higher-than-expected core inflation print could increase the perceived chance of an October rate increase, while softer data would support a pause. The wrap also cautioned that a benign CPI number would not remove the broader inflation pressure linked to higher energy prices.

European data gave little reason to shift that debate. Germany’s final September CPI was 3.3% from a year earlier, matching the preliminary estimate of 3.3%, according to the wrap.

The report also pointed to positioning and politics as possible constraints on risk-taking. It cited Bank of America’s Fund Manager Survey as showing that long global semiconductors remained the most crowded trade, followed by short U.S. Treasuries.

Bank of America’s survey also showed most investors expected a Democratic House and Republican Senate after the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections, while 31% expected a Democratic sweep, according to investingLive.

Under that sweep scenario, 32% expected bond yields to rise and equities to fall, while 22% expected both yields and stocks to decline.

Source: market wrap, investingLive/Forexlive, Oct. 13, 2026