Oil Prices Jump 7.3% In One Day

Hope? Change? Wouldn't be nice if we had a little domestic oil exploration going on?

Benchmark crude for March delivery was up $6.27 a barrel, or 7.3 percent, at $92.47 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"The Middle East will remain the market's focus today with moves in the oil price probably the best single indicator of the market's assessment of the wider implications of events there," said Adrian Foster, an analyst at Rabobank International.

With the oil price rising at such a rapid rate, stocks are inevitably under severe pressure.

Rising crude prices are a particular worry for investors as they reinforce fears of inflation and raw materials costs. They also stoke worries of a big drop in global demand levels, as experienced in previous oil price shocks in 1973-4, 1979 and 2008.