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Last-minute rush drives oil down
■ Four minutes of hectic high volume activity that sheered $4 off the price of oil late yesterday left traders, analysts and US regulators looking for the cause of one of the fastest and most furious energy market routs in recent years. In the absence of any major news that could have explained the drop, which hit both international benchmark Brent crude and US oil futures, traders and analysts speculated that the dramatic drop could have been caused by an incorrectly entered trade –a “fat finger error” – or a high frequency trading programme gone wrong. But CME Group, which runs the trading platform, said they had not experienced any technical failure and no trades would be cancelled.