Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao.

REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

• Shortly after jittery investors withdrew over $1 billion from Binance on Tuesday, its CEO sent a memo to staffers.
• Changpeng “CZ” Zhao seemed to try to assuage market fears amid the implosion of crypto peer FTX.
• In the memo, CZ wrote Binance expects “the next several months to be bumpy.” 

On Tuesday, jittery investors withdrew more than $1 billion from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Hours later, the company’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, sent a memo to staffers where he seemed to try to assuage market fears in the aftermath of the implosion of crypto peer FTX.

“Binance will survive any crypto winter,” CZ wrote in the memo.

Tuesday’s withdrawals marked the biggest single-day withdrawal the exchange had seen since June, per blockchain research group Nansen.

Insider’s Phil Rosen reported on Wednesday that Binance has seen about $3.66 billion in net outflows in the seven days preceding December 13, also citing data compiled by Nansen.

Publicly, CZ appeared to shrug off concerns about customers withdrawing funds, tweeting on Tuesday: “We saw some withdrawals today (net $1.14b ish). We have seen this before. Some days we have net withdrawals; some days we have net deposits. Business as usual for us.”

—CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 13, 2022

 

But in the memo to staff, CZ wrote that Binance expects “the next several months to be bumpy.” He added that the company will “get past this challenging period.”

In the memo, CZ also seemingly referred to the troubles plaguing crypto peer FTX and its founder and ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried — who was arrested in the Bahamas Monday — writing: “With all that is going on, we know that we are at a historic moment in crypto. Rest assured, this organization was built to last.”

Binance declined Insider’s request for comment for this story. 

Read the full memo Changpeng “CZ” Zhao sent to staff on Tuesday. 

“Team: 

You may have seen some of the latest news regarding Binance. The fallout from the FTX implosion has brought with it a lot of extra scrutiny and tough questions. The good news is that, even though the news stories don’t always reflect it, we can answer the tough questions thrown at our business. 

For example, despite today’s news regarding withdrawals, we are in a strong financial position. We often process more than $1b in deposits or withdrawals on a daily basis. So, it’s nothing unusual today.  User assets at Binance are all backed 1:1 and Binance’s capital structure is debt free. We maintain hot wallet balances to ensure that we always have more than enough funds to fulfill withdrawal requests and we top up hot wallet balances accordingly. 

With regard to questions on the temporary halt of withdrawals of USDC, because we auto convert USDC to BUSD in order to retain large liquidity pools, we generally retain USDC deposits for future withdrawals. In today’s case, many people deposited BUSD or USDT to withdraw USDC. When this happens, we need to convert. Our current conversion channels are clunky. We have to go through a bank in NY in USD, which is slow. We will improve this going forward.

With all that is going on, we know that we are at a historic moment in crypto. Rest assured, this organization was built to last. As long as we continue to offer users the best product, user experience, and frictionless trading environment – Binance will survive any crypto winter.

 While we expect the next several months to be bumpy, we will get past this challenging period – and we’ll be stronger for having been through it. As always, I’m grateful to each of you for your incredible dedication and hard work and I’m proud of the incredible business we’ve built together.  

CZ”

Rachel Mendelson/Insider

• Last quarter saw the fastest drop in home flipping profits since the Great Recession.
• Flips on more expensive properties pulled overall returns down for the industry.
• Warm and sunny places like Honolulu saw the lowest returns and cities like Buffalo saw the highest.

It’s the worst time to make money as a home flipper since the Great Recession. 

While people were flipping homes last quarter at the third fastest rate of the past decade, profits from the typical flip plunged by $14,000 — or 18.4% — to $62,000 from the previous period, according to real estate data provider Attom. It was the sector’s fastest quarterly rate of decline since the US was falling into recession in early 2009, and signals trouble for the coming year, Attom said in a report on Thursday.

Though the gross profit was not even at a three-year low, margins crumbled to 25% last quarter, the lowest since 2009 and less than half the 53.1% seen at the top of the market in 2016, the data show.

The sliding fortunes for home flippers may be the fault of the house flipping business model itself: sell as quickly as possible, even if that means not making as much as anticipated, or even taking a loss, Rick Sharga, head of market intelligence at Attom, told Insider.

“If you’re a flipper, time is your enemy,” Sharga said. Though flippers are facing a rapidly deteriorating housing market, “you don’t want to buy a property and then have to wait to sell it because that time costs you money —  financing, taxes, insurance, maintenance,” he said.

What’s more, no one is sure what tomorrow will bring, Sharga continued. The market could keep moving against flippers and force even bigger setbacks, he said.

It was that sentiment that led Houston flipper John Ziomek to sell a project in July for $50,000 less than he anticipated, at a price he said represented no margin, as Insider reported in October. Ziomek was happy to take the profits he made in previous flips over the past decade, and move to the sidelines.

It’s harder to profit on high end properties

Not all flippers are suffering, though.

Anecdotally, it appears that higher-priced properties are dragging the overall numbers lower, according to Sharga. Homes that sell for $750,000 to $1.5 million in some of the most expensive areas of the country are seeing the biggest slump in demand, so flippers of those properties are feeling the pain, he said. 

“The high end market has basically vaporized, there’s nothing there, ” Sharga said, repeating the words of a flipper he knows. “He was, as he put it, ‘writing checks’ to get a couple properties off of his books.” 

Lower-tier home flips are just as robust as they were a year ago, Sharga said. Those flippers have healthy profit margins even if the overall dollar amounts aren’t as high as with luxury homes, he said. 

Some of 2021’s hottest places to move are seeing the biggest dropoff

As is the case with most of the national real estate market — every local market is different. In this case, places that boasted all the qualities of popular pandemic moving spots were among the worst places to flip a home last quarter, the data show.

Home flippers in warm and sunny places like Honolulu and Jackson, Mississippi, didn’t even make a 1% profit or lost money on their renovation projects, according to the data. Meanwhile, flippers in cities with harsh winters like Pittsburgh — where the typical flipper made a 116.9% profit — and Buffalo, New York, had the largest returns. 

Some investors believe an expected recession will force the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy next year, even as the central bank projects it will raise rates higher than it previously anticipated and keep them there longer as it fights to crush inflation.

The dynamic came into stark focus after the Fed’s monetary policy meeting on Wednesday, when it delivered a widely expected 50 basis point rate increase and projected borrowing costs will rise by an additional 75 basis points by the end of 2023 – half a percentage point higher than officials forecast in September.

Such a move would take the fed funds rate to around 5.1%, according to the median estimate in the Fed’s quarterly summary of economic projections – a level not seen since 2007. The fed funds rate currently stands in the 4.25%-4.50% range.

Rates futures markets told a different story, however, with investors late Wednesday betting the Fed would continue raising rates in the first half of 2023 before cutting them back to around 4.4% by year end.

“The Fed is struggling to convince markets to move in their direction,” said Ed Al-Hussainy, senior global rates strategist at Columbia Threadneedle, who is betting that 10-year Treasuries will continue a recent rebound. “There’s … lack of belief in the Fed’s ability to move rates significantly above 5 percent.”

How much higher borrowing costs will rise and whether restrictive monetary policy will plunge the economy into recession are questions that have consumed investors for months, as the Fed embarks on its most aggressive rate increases since the 1980s to defeat surging inflation.

While Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that the Fed’s projections don’t necessarily mean the economy will fall into a recession, he suggested the risk is worth it and that policymakers have no plans to cushion the blow by cutting rates – echoing a message he has delivered on previous occasions.

Nonetheless, hopes that inflation will peak and allow the Fed to stop raising rates sooner have reverberated throughout markets in recent weeks, sparking a rally in the S&P from its recent lows, toppling the U.S. dollar from a two-decade high and fueling a sharp rebound in battered Treasuries.

Yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which move inversely to prices, recently stood around 3.5%, compared with over 4.2% earlier this year. The S&P 500 has risen by 11.4% in the fourth quarter but remains down some 16% for the year. U.S. consumer prices rose less than expected for a second straight month in November, data showed Tuesday.

“The market moves really describe the challenges that they are facing, which is not so much inflation-fighting credibility, but credibility on being hawkish and sticking to their guns,” said Sonal Desai, CIO of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, referring to the Fed.

A BofA Global Research survey of fund managers published this week showed 42% expect short-term yields to fall, the highest proportion since March 2020.

Among those forecasting lower rates are fund manager Vanguard, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America, with the last two forecasting a recession next year and predicting that the Fed will start cutting rates by December 2023.

“The markets believe that the Fed is going to have to ease by the end of next year and nothing from the Chairman today disabused them of that notion,” said RJ Gallo, a portfolio manager at Federated Hermes. He is currently overweight U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities.

Christopher Alwine, head of the global credit team in Vanguard Fixed Income Group, believes the economy will fall into a shallow recession in the second half of next year, prompting the Fed to cut rates by the fourth quarter of 2023.

“We don’t feel the market is that far off on pricing, but a little bit ahead of itself on the easing cycle,” he said.

Plenty of investors believe the Fed will stick to its guns, even if the economy wobbles. The Fed’s economic projections showed rates dropping to 4.1% in 2024, higher than estimated three months ago.

“(The Fed’s) statement and economic projections tell a simple, but persuasive story: This Fed isn’t prepared to ‘pivot’ in any meaningful way until it sees sustained and conclusive evidence of a reversal in inflationary pressures,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay.

Desai, of Franklin Templeton, is taking Powell at his word. She is expecting the gyrations that rocked bonds this year to continue, driven in part by investors second-guessing the Fed’s commitment to keeping monetary policy tight.

“The market truly is conditioned to expect that the Fed is going to jump in,” she said. “We have a generation of traders that has never seen the Fed not bail it out when push comes to shove.”

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The Biden administration could change the nation’s biofuel blending law next year to offer lucrative credits to electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla, a major rewrite that the oil industry criticizes as subsidizing the EV industry.

The Renewable Fuel Standard, enacted in the mid-2000s, mandates the amount of biofuels like landfill or agricultural methane that oil refiners must blend into the nation’s fuel mix, or buy tradable credits – known as RINs – from those that do.

The standard has long served as a battleground between the powerful oil and corn lobbies. The Biden administration’s November proposal would make it possible for electric vehicles charged using power generated by biofuels to receive credits. The proposal would boost benefits for electric vehicle manufacturers such as Tesla (TSLA.O).

Adding the electric vehicle industry to the standard will introduce a new set of stakeholders into an already unwieldy situation. The United States has been using biofuel credits to reduce carbon emissions for years, but its effect has been unclear.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which administers the program, will sort through stakeholder comments in 2023 to finalize a rule. They must finalize the proposed obligations by mid-June. It is unclear if the EPA will change the proposal.

The transportation sector accounts for about a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gases, and the biofuel blending proposal comes at a time when President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing for lower-polluting energy sources.

“(The EPA) must also hold true to the legacy of RFS as a liquid fuels program — not an electric vehicle program — by rejecting yet another massive regulatory subsidy for electric vehicle manufacturers,” Geoff Moody, an executive at the refinery trade group the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said last month.

The oil industry thinks the RFS mandates are expensive and threaten to put oil refineries, and its blue-collar workers, out of business. Corn and biofuel groups like the mandates, as it increases demand for their products.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an automobile manufacturers trade group, said it supports an “e-RINs” program.

The American Biogas Council also lauded the proposal, saying it will help decarbonize transportation and increase organic materials recycling, especially from small towns, farms and food processors.

Germany is bleeding cash to keep the lights on. Almost half a trillion dollars, and counting, since the Ukraine war jolted it into an energy crisis nine months ago.

That’s the cumulative scale of the bailouts and schemes the Berlin government has launched to prop up the country’s energy system since prices rocketed and it lost access to gas from main supplier Russia, according to Reuters calculations.

And it may not be enough.

“How severe this crisis will be and how long it will last greatly depends on how the energy crisis will develop,” said Michael Groemling at the German Economic Institute (IW).

“The national economy as a whole is facing a huge loss of wealth.”

The money set aside stands at up to 440 billion euros ($465 billion), according to the calculations, which provide the first combined tally of all of Germany’s drives aimed at avoiding running out of power and securing new sources of energy.

That equates to about 1.5 billion euros a day since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Or around 12% of national economic output. Or about 5,400 euros for each person in Germany.

Europe’s preeminent economy, long a byword for prudent planning, now finds itself at the mercy of the weather. Energy rationing is a risk in the event of a long cold spell this winter, Germany’s first in half a century without Russian gas.

The country has turned to the pricier spot, or cash, energy market to replace some of the lost Russian supplies, helping drive inflation into double-digits. There’s no security in sight either, with the push to build up of two alternatives to Russian fuel – liquefied natural gas (LNG) and renewables – years away from targeted levels.

“The German economy is now in a very critical phase because the future of energy supply is more uncertain than ever,” said Stefan Kooths, vice president and research director business cycles and growth at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

“Where does the German economy stand? If we look at price inflation, it has a high fever.”

Asked about the Reuters tally of money set aside, the German finance ministry referred to data on its website. The economy ministry, which is in charge of energy security, said it continued to work on diversifying supply, adding that LNG and the terminals needed to import it were a critical part of this.

The more costly power will be painful indeed for an economy already forecast to shrink the most among G7 nations next year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Germany’s energy import bill will grow by a combined 124 billion euros this year and next, up from growth of 7 billion for 2020 and 2021, according to data provided by the Kiel Institute, presenting a major challenge for the country’s energy-intense industries.

The country’s chemicals sector, the most exposed to rising power costs, expects production to fall by 8.5% in 2022, according to industry association VCI, which warns of “huge structural breaks in Germany’s industrial landscape”.

The 440 billion euros earmarked to fight the energy crisis is already near the roughly 480 billion euros that the IW says Germany has spent since 2020 to protect its economy from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The money includes four relief packages worth 295 billion euros, including the 51.5 billion euro bailout of power firm Uniper (UN01.DE) and a 14 billion rescue package for Sefe, formerly known as Gazprom Germania; up to 100 billion in liquidity for utilities to secure their sales against default; and around 10 billion on infrastructure to import LNG.

The sum also includes previously unreported commitments of 52.2 billion euros by state lender KfW (KFW.UL) to help utilities and traders fill up gas caverns, buy coal, replace sources of gas procurement and cover some margin calls, according to KfW data reviewed by Reuters.

Despite these efforts, there is little certainty over how the country can replace Russia; Germany imported around 58 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas from the country last year, according to data from Eurostat and German industry association BDEW, representing about 17% of its total energy consumption.

Germany wants renewables to account for at least 80% of electricity production by 2030, up from 42% in 2021. At recent rates of expansion, though, that remains a remote goal.

Germany installed just 5.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity and 1.7 GW of onshore wind capacity in 2021, the latest year on record.

To achieve the 80% goal, new onshore wind installations need to increase around six-fold to 10 GW annually, according to an October report by the federal government and Germany’s states. Solar installations must quadruple every year to 22 GW, it said.

Susi Dennison, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think-tank, said that while Germany had done a “good sticking plaster job” by replacing gas volumes with power from the spot market, it had lost its standing as a thought-leader in clean energy.

“To me what’s really absent in Germany’s strategy is a similar attention to a rapid scaling up of renewables, that now is the time to invest in the infrastructure of hydrogen and wind power, to replace gas.”

In March, Economy Minister Robert Habeck set a target of replacing Russian energy by mid-2024, although many economists and power industry players believe this is too ambitious.

For instance, Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, and Markus Krebber, CEO of Germany’s biggest power producer RWE (RWEG.DE), reckon it will happen no sooner than 2025, and only then if alternative sources were found or expanded rapidly.

On the LNG front, too, there’s a mountain to climb.

Germany has no LNG infrastructure of its own because its longstanding reliance on Russian gas, so is only now starting to build its LNG import capability.

For the time being, it plans to rely on six floating import terminals to help diversify gas supply, the first of which is due to arrive on Thursday. Three are meant to come online this winter, with the rest to be deployed at the end of 2023, bringing total capacity to at least 29.5 bcm a year.

RWE, Uniper and smaller peer EnBW (EBKG.DE) have pledged to come up with the volumes to make sure the terminals run at full capacity until the end of March 2024. Nonetheless, it remains unclear where the volumes will come from.

Germany has only struck two firm LNG deals since the complete halt of Russian gas supplies in the summer, modest short-term agreements for the next two winter seasons, according to data from the ECFR.

The first is a 1 bcm a year deal between Australia’s Woodside and Uniper, which has since become the subject of Germany’s largest ever corporate bailout. The second was struck between Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and RWE and covers a delivery of 137,000 cubic metres in December and unspecified further shipments in 2023.

Uniper and RWE said they would be able to ensure further supplies via its their LNG portfolio, without giving further details. EnBW said supply contracts were still being worked out and that it was looking for opportunities in the market.

The hectic travel schedule of Habeck and Chancellor Olaf Scholz point to the difficulties in securing major long-term deals that could wean Germany off pricey spot power. They have criss-crossed the globe this year to hunt for additional volumes, including trips to Canada, Qatar, and Norway.

“I think Germany has been doing whatever it can,” said Giovanni Sgaravatti, research analyst at the Bruegel think-tank. “In the LNG market Germany had to start from scratch, which isn’t easy.”

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U.S. oil refiner PBF Energy (PBF.N) is closing out one of the best financial years in its history, a wild bounce back from the brink in April 2020 when fuel demand and gasoline prices cratered during the pandemic and the company’s value swooned lower than what it had just paid to buy a California refinery.

PBF’s stock fell by so much that at one point the company was valued at less than the $1 billion it paid for the refinery. Now, the refining company is basically debt-free, and year-to-date its share price has soared 400% even during a bear market on Wall Street.

While the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended worldwide energy markets, the biggest U.S. refiners have emerged stronger and leaner than before the outbreak. Whether they can repeat that performance in 2023 is another story.

The three largest U.S. oil refiners – Valero (VLO.N), Marathon Petroleum (MPC.N) and Phillips 66 (PSX.N) – sport lower debt levels, are bringing in more cash than they were three years ago, when fuel demand was at a peak, according to a Reuters analysis of their financial performance.

Marathon, and Valero’s market valuations reached record highs in 2022; while Phillips 66 and PBF’s are near highs reached in 2019.

When the pandemic hit, big U.S. refiners closed numerous facilities that were less profitable than other operations.

In the United States, five refineries, with a combined capacity of 801,000 bpd, permanently shut in 2020. Gasoline consumption fell by 1.3 million bpd that year. One more refinery in the U.S. would close in 2021, bringing total closures to six and closed capacity over 1 million barrels per day.

Global refining fell by about 3.3 million barrels of daily capacity since the start of 2020, according to industry estimates. Processing capacity is expected to increase by 1 million bpd per day in 2022 and 1.6 million bpd in 2023, mostly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The decline in capacity boosted fuel costs for consumers, but it was a boon for U.S. refiners as profit margins for making diesel, gasoline and other products surged as economic activity rebounded.

U.S. refiners benefited from growing exports and a surge in European natural gas prices that gave U.S.-based refiners an advantage over their European counterparts, who cut runs to save on the higher cost of gas.

Gulf Coast gasoline margins skyrocketed to $40 a barrel from the 2017-2019 average of $11, while per-barrel margins for making diesel jumping to $55 from $13, according to energy consultancy Tudor Pickering Holt.

Fitch Ratings expects U.S. refiners’ margins to fall by 30% to 50% in 2023 and for profits to decline due to slowed worldwide economic activity, higher inventories and the addition of global refining capacity.

Refiners now have $12.6 billion more in working capital in the first three months to 2022 than in the same period in 2019, before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fitch noted that the companies are using profits to pad their cash balances, “presumably to preserve liquidity ahead of a likely decline in cash flows towards normalized levels,” it said in November.

U.S. refiners are not likely to restart idled facilities, however, and continue to shut plans that cannot make chemicals and plastics, which are considered a better investment for coming years.

Earlier this year, Phillips 66 laid off nearly all of its 450 employees at a shuttered oil refinery in Louisiana as it converted the hurricane-damaged plant to a products terminal.

The one exception would be the opening of Exxon Beaumont’s crude unit but Lyondell plans to shut its 263,776-barrel-per-day Houston plant by the end of 2023.

Asian stocks sagged on Thursday, tracking declines on Wall Street after the U.S. Federal Reserve projected higher interest rates would persist for a while.

U.S. Treasury yields remained depressed and the curve deeply inverted as traders continued to fret that tighter policy would trigger a recession. The U.S. dollar languished near a six-month low against major peers.

Rising COVID-19 infections and disappointing economic data in China also weighed on the mood. Crude oil shed some of Wednesday’s strong gains.

Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) eased 0.42%, while South Korea’s Kospi (.KS11) dropped 1.32% and Australia’s stock benchmark (.AXJO) fell 0.64%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (.HSI) tumbled 1.13% and mainland Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) declined 0.15%.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares (.MIAP00000PUS) slumped 0.94%, after climbing as high as 160.37 in the previous session for the first time since late August.

Overnight, the U.S. S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 0.61%, although e-Mini futures pointed to a slight 0.09% bounce for Thursday’s reopen.

Europe was headed for a lower open, with Dax futures indicating 0.37% weaker and FTSE futures slipping 0.09%.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that the central bank would deliver more rate increases next year even as the economy slips towards a possible recession, arguing that a higher cost would be paid if the U.S. central bank does not get a firmer grip on inflation.

The comments followed the Fed’s decision to raise the benchmark rate by an as-expected half a percentage point – down from recent 75 basis point increases – but projected a terminal rate above 5%, a level not seen since a steep economic downturn in 2007.

“This is a very hawkish signal from the Fed: a substantially higher terminal rate than back in September that also has a real upside risk attached to it,” TD Securities analysts wrote in a research note.

“The Fed essentially acknowledged at this meeting that inflation is likely to remain stickier than initially expected, necessitating a more restrictive policy stance, which will end up pushing the U.S. economy in a recession in 2023,” they added. “The weakening in risk assets and the flattening of the curve suggest that recession fears may be the dominant driver of market price action.”

The 10-year Treasury yield slipped to 3.49% in Tokyo trading, with the two-year yield also edging lower to 4.24%.

The spread between them widened slightly to negative 75.2 basis points. An inverted yield curve has been a reliable indicator of recessions in the past.

The dollar index – which measures the greenback against six top peers, including the euro and sterling – held close to the overnight low of 103.44, a level not seen since June 16. It last stood 0.16% stronger at 103.82.

Some analysts interpreted the reaction in rates and currency markets as a sign that traders doubt Powell’s policy narrative, retaining bets for an earlier easing of inflation and sooner Fed pivot.

“In essence, the market is still of the view that inflation heads towards target in 2023,” Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone, wrote in a client note. “The likely result in a potential standoff between the Fed and the markets is volatility.”

The euro eased 0.22% to $1.0659, but still near Wednesday’s more-than-six-month peak at $1.0695.

Sterling edged 0.28% lower to $1.2393, remaining not far from an overnight top at $1.2446, also the strongest in just over six months.

Investors’ eyes will now be trained on policy decisions from the European Central Bank and Bank of England later in the global day, as officials there also stood ready to hike rates again against the rising risks of fomenting recessions.

Crude oil gave back some of its gains from overnight, when it was cheered by projections from OPEC and the International Energy Agency of a rebound in demand next year, partly driven by China’s reopening.

China’s economy, however, lost more steam in November as factory output slowed and retail sales extended declines, hobbled by surging COVID-19 infections and widespread curbs on movement.

Brent crude futures fell 64 cents, or 0.8%, to $82.06 per barrel after closing Wednesday’s session up $2.02, while U.S. crude futures slid 74 cents, or 1.0%, to $76.54, following a $1.94 rise the previous session.

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