Oil Price (WTI)

This chart plots the front-month NYMEX WTI crude futures settlement as a daily close over the last three years, from the source named under the chart. WTI is the US benchmark — the grade that prices most domestic production and ultimately the pump. The page refreshes hourly from the live data and shows the current reading with the trailing 90-day change, nothing cached or estimated.

Oil is the one input the US economy cannot substitute on short notice. A rising price is fuel and freight costs feeding into inflation within weeks, inflation pressuring the Federal Reserve on rates, and the rate path repricing every stock — rising oil is unambiguously a headwind for equities. A falling price is genuine relief for the inflation and rate outlook, but it has two authors: easing supply, or weakening demand. Only the first is good news.

WTI is the landlocked US grade; the seaborne benchmark is Brent, tracked on its own page here. The two usually move together, but the spread between them widens when US supply, pipelines or export capacity become the story — so a divergence is itself information about where the pressure sits.

The caveats: this is a futures price, not spot, and front-month settlements can jump around contract rolls. A daily close misses intraday spikes, which in oil can be several dollars. And the level matters less than the speed of the move — the economy absorbs $80 oil reached over two years far more easily than $80 reached in two months.