Oil prices fell on Friday, snapping multiday winning streaks for Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate. A winning streak, in commodity futures, means a contract closed at a higher price than the prior session on consecutive trading days. Both benchmarks still posted sharp weekly gains, with rising tensions in the Middle East driving the advance.
The short version: one losing session at the end of the week did not undo what built before it. Brent and WTI, the two reference prices that anchor global crude markets, both finished the five-day period with sharp gains despite Friday's pullback.
When headlines quote oil prices, they are quoting the price of a futures contract. A futures contract is a binding agreement to buy or sell a fixed quantity of oil at a price set now, with the exchange happening on a specified future date. Physical barrels do not change hands at the moment of the trade; the transaction is the price commitment itself. Both Brent and WTI are traded this way, and the closing price of each contract is what the market watches daily.
A week shaped by the Middle East
Tensions in the Middle East climbed across the week, and oil futures prices responded. Brent and WTI each built consecutive sessions of higher closes, producing the multiday winning streaks that Friday's session finally ended. The weekly gain held for both contracts despite that late reversal.
A week that closes with sharp gains alongside a Friday decline is a week where buying dominated the earlier sessions. Friday's retreat arrived at the end of an already-strong run for both Brent and WTI.