US Gulf Coast spot toluene was talked Monday at 359 cents/gallon FOB USG for August, down 18 cents/gallon from Friday's Platts assessment of 377 cents/gallon on a much weaker NYMEX energy complex, according to market sources.
One trader said that the "market is like 350's".
There were reports of August trades after the market-on-close assessment window Friday at 361 cents/gallon DDP USG for nitration-grade toluene and 365 cents/gallon DDP Corpus Christi for low-dioxane toluene. Confirmation for the deals was not immediately available.
The only market activity seen by Monday afternoon were August offers for low-dioxane toluene at 378 cents/gallon DDP USG. There were no bids or trades reported.
Toluene's weakness was said to be on the continued slide of the NYMEX energy complex. September NYMEX crude futures settled down $5.57/barrel to $81.31/barrel while September NYMEX RBOB futures settled down 11.36 cents/gallon to 269.16 cents/gallon.
The losses in the NYMEX energy complex were said by sources to be on a broad-based selloff across oil futures that was spurred by a decline of over 500 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Specifically, Monday's renewed selloff was triggered by Standard and Poor's downgrade of the US to AA+ from AAA late Friday, analysts said.
