NEW YORK-Oil rose in ro­bust trad­ing yes­ter­day, with Brent fu­tures ris­ing a sixth ses­sion, af­ter the US Fed­er­al Re­serve launched an­oth­er stim­u­lus pro­gramme in which it will buy US$40 bil­lion of mort­gage debt per month un­til the out­look for jobs im­proves. Prices see­sawed af­ter the Fed state­ment, ini­tial­ly jump­ing US$1 per bar­rel and then swing­ing low­er be­fore climb­ing back in­to pos­i­tive ter­ri­to­ry on ex­pec­ta­tions the move would en­cour­age in­vestors to push mon­ey in­to riski­er as­sets in­clud­ing com­modi­ties and eq­ui­ties, as they have af­ter pre­vi­ous stim­u­lus ini­tia­tives.

The Thom­son Reuters-Jef­feries CRB .CRB com­mod­i­ty in­dex rose 0.55 per cent, a sixth straight gain, to touch the high­est lev­el since March, while eq­ui­ties mar­kets ex­tend­ed gains. Front-month Oc­to­ber Brent crude, which ex­pired yes­ter­day, rose 94 cents to set­tle at US$116.90 a bar­rel, mark­ing the sixth straight ses­sion the glob­al bench­mark has trad­ed high­er. Prices reached US$117.48 dur­ing the ses­sion, the high­est lev­el for Brent since the May 3 peak of US$118.45. The more ac­tive­ly trad­ed No­vem­ber con­tract gained 55 cents to set­tle at US$115.88 a bar­rel. (Reuters)