Crude oil is tanking, again.
In early trade on Tuesday morning, West Texas Intermediate crude oil dropped 2.4% continuing a slide that on Monday saw the American benchmark fall below $31 per barrel for the first time since at least December 2003, more than 13 years ago.
As of 7:20 a.m. GMT (2:20 a.m. ET) it is trading at $30.65, and could crash through the $30 mark on Tuesday. Here's how that looks:
Investing.com
Brent crude is also in the red, also slipping below $31 per barrel briefly, before recovering a little. It hasn't dropped below that mark in more than 12 years. It is now trading at around $31.10.
Investing.com
Tuesday's falls follow a Monday session which saw the US benchmark slide more than 6% in trade.
Oil has started off 2016 in the worst possible fashion and as Business Insider's Myles Udland pointed out on Monday evening, a 5% daily slide in the oil price is starting to become pretty standard.
The plunge has confounded pretty much all predictions, and yesterday led analysts at Morgan Stanley to admit that the worst case scenario they predicted for oil actually turned out to be too optimistic.
Tuesday's continued price slide in oil comes against a backdrop of a rare good day in the Chinese equity markets. Stocks in both the CSI 300, and the China A50, ended the day in positive territory.