On October 8th, the global benchmark oil price, Brent crude, fell below $80 per barrel, triggering market concerns and a 2.2% decline within the day, ending a five-day rally; West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil was trading around $76 per barrel, showing similarly weak performance.

In terms of news, after the conclusion of the National Day holiday, China failed to introduce significant fiscal support, disappointing investors.

Before the holiday, China's decision-making layer had just launched a major move on the monetary front, introducing a series of major support measures including interest rate cuts, reserve requirement ratio reductions, down payment reductions, and reductions in existing mortgage loan interest rates to support the economy's stabilization and stop the decline. However, at today's press conference, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) indicated that the focus of new measures will be to promote investment and expenditure, expand domestic demand, and support small and medium-sized enterprises that are at a disadvantage in operations, but these decisions are less forceful than the pre-holiday meeting, disappointing the market.

The NDRC stated that the government will first allocate 100 billion yuan from the 2025 government budget, together with the previously issued 100 billion yuan of special funds, to jointly invest in major construction projects, with the overall expenditure far below the trillion yuan level expected by the market.

China, the world's second-largest economy and the largest oil importer, saw its oil market affected by the unexpected policies, with both Brent and WTI crude oil prices falling.

Despite this, the deterioration of the situation in the Middle East remains a strong support for international oil prices. Last week, Brent and WTI oil prices soared due to concerns that conflicts in the Middle East could further escalate. Brent crude rose by more than 8%, and WTI crude rose by 9.1%, both recording the largest weekly increase since the beginning of 2023.

The reason for the rise in international oil prices was the missile attacks launched by Israel on Iran, with the market fearing a full-scale war between the two countries.

Currently, traders are watching for retaliatory actions by Israel against Iran. There are reports that Israel may attack Iran's oil facilities in retaliation, which has raised concerns about interruptions in oil exports from one of the world's most important energy-producing regions.

ANZ Bank stated that although the risk of direct damage to Iranian oil facilities is small, there could still be a broader supply disruption.

Regarding the future trend of oil prices, Haitong Futures stated that last week's rise in oil prices was mainly due to the injection of geopolitical risk premiums, and there has been no substantial impact on the supply side for the time being. This kind of rise in oil prices is usually a phased market trend, and the subsequent performance has a lot of uncertainty depending on the geopolitical situation.

In addition, the OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) meeting on October 2nd did not change the plan to gradually restore oil production before the end of the year. The JMMC meeting mainly focused on the issue of Iraq, Kazakhstan, and Russia failing to fulfill their production cut commitments. The Libyan Oil Minister once stated that Libya would resume oil production from October 3rd, which could potentially restore hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil to the global market every day.