The Energy Information Administration reported today that the US crude inventories rose 600K barrels to 493 million barrels during the past week, while analysts forecasts a drop by 4 million barrels.

Gasoline stocks rose 100K barrels to 235 million barrels, and the distillate stocks rose 1.1 million barrels to 142.4 million barrels.

While the American Petroleum Institute reported yesterday in preliminary data that the US crude inventories rose 436K barrels during the same period.

US stock indices opened higher on Wednesday, as investors focused on the quarterly business results for the first quarter.

Netflix revealed yesterday its quarterly business results, and reported higher-than-expected profits and revenues, but the number of new subscribers was less than expected during the three months ending on March 31.

This comes amid anticipation of the results of major companies, led by Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet.

Efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic are continuing by distributing millions of vaccines.

As for stocks, Dow Jones rose 0.4% or 173 points to 33,956 as of 14:09 GMT, Nasdaq rose 0.1% or 13 points to 13,799, and S&P 500 rose 0.2% or 10 points to 4,145.

Gold prices rose on Wednesday, and hit a 2-month high while on the cusp of the second daily gain, thanks to strong safe haven demand, but today's gains remain curbed after the US T-bond yields rebounded.

Gold prices rose 0.5% to $1,788.44 an ounce, after opening at $1,778.80, and hit a low of $1,776.11.

Gold closed higher by 0.3% yesterday, and hit a 2-month high at $1,790.01 an ounce.

Most global stocks fell broadly on Tuesday, led by US stocks on Wall Street, due to profit-taking and a broad sell-off, after a strong wave of gains and new records.

10-year US treasury yields rose 1.3% today, which lowers gold attractiveness.

Gold stocks at the SPDR ETF remained unchanged yesterday, with a total at the lowest level since April 14, 2020 at 1,019.66 metric tonnes.

Oil prices fell on Wednesday, to head for the second straight daily loss, and pulled back from a 5-week high on profit-taking, amid demand concerns in India and Japan, in addition to unexpected build in the US crude inventories.

US crude fell more than 1.1% to $61.67 a barrel, after opening at $62.39, and hit a high at $62.54, and Brent crude fell 1.0% to $65.54 a barrel, after opening at $66.22, and hit a high of $66.50.

US crude lost 1.7% after hitting a 5-week high at $64.36 yesterday, and Brent crude futures fell 1.4% after hitting the highest level since March 18 at $68.04.

India announced that the total umber of infections rose to over 15 million, which makes India second only to the US in terms of the worst countries affected by pandemic.

The Indian health authorities announced on Tuesday the highest daily death toll from Covid-19, amid a huge crisis of oxygen shortage.

To mitigate these developments, the Indian authorities may resort to tightening the lockdown, which would weigh down on fuel consumption in the third largest oil consumer in Asia, which forced refiners to reduce operations.

Reuters reported that many Japanese companies believe that the Japanese economy will suffer a fourth wave of infections, which would deal another blow to businesses in the country.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) revealed yesterday in preliminary data that the US crude inventories rose 0.4 million barrels during the week ending April 16, missing forecasts of a drop by 4.4 million barrels.

While the US Energy Information Administration's official data will be released later today, amid forecasts for inventories to drop by 3.7 million barrels.