• Oil rose to the highest in about two months as US inventories, Chinese stimulus and an attack on a Russian refinery ignited a rush of trend-following algorithmic buying.
• West Texas Intermediate climbed 3% to top $77 a barrel, breaking out of the narrow range it has been trading in for months. Commodity-trading algorithms helped extend the rally after WTI passed $76.20. The US benchmark’s next resistance level is its 200-day moving average, which is about 30 cents above today’s close.
• A slew of bullish factors propelled crude higher on Thursday. US crude inventories fell by more than 9 million barrels last week to the lowest level since October. Meanwhile, a drone attack caused a fire that damaged a major refinery on Russia’s Black Sea coast on Thursday. That followed another strike that endangered Russian crude flows earlier this week.