Oil plunges below $47 on rising dollar, investor jitters

Updated

In the post-leveraging bubble era, the price of oil has basically moved lock-step with U.S. stock market sentiment and the outlook for the U.S. economy: rising when sentiment favors the bulls, falling when the bears regain the upper hand.

But that's not to say that factors outside economic sentiment haven't affected oil, chief among these being the dollar. A rising dollar helped send oil well below the psychologically-significant $50 level early Monday, down -$3.46 to $46.87 per barrel.

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