Crude oil futures rebounded Friday, settling up 51 cents at $49.93 a barrel.

Crude's Friday gains snapped a five-day losing streak; crude has fallen 14.80% in the last five days of trading thanks to mounting fears of a global recession and a continued sell off in the equity markets. Thursday's settlement at $49.62, a loss of 7.46% or $4.00 a barrel, marked a low not seen since May 23, 2005. 

Fadel Gheit, senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., said that in the past year, that fundamentals have had very little to do with oil prices. He expects oil to continue to fluctuate between $40 a barrel on the low end and $60 a barrel on the high end, but would ultimately like to see the price stay close to $45 a barrel.

“My personal analysis and my team’s analysis reflect that the oil companies would do well with $45 oil,” Gheit said. “A few years ago the oil companies were making healthy profits with $45 oil, but they’ve gotten used to $100 oil…now the production costs are coming back down and $45 oil is good for the oil companies, it’s good for the global economy and it’s good for OPEC.

RBOB Gasoline settled up 5.73 cents to $1.0643 per gallon, ending five straight days of losses. The fuel fell 17.48 cents or 14.11% over the past week.  Natural gas also settled higher, gaining 16.4 cents or 2.60% to $6.480 per million British Thermal Units. Friday's gains end a two week losing streak.

Heating oil gained 2.37 cents or 1.41% today, settling at $1.6996 per gallon.  The fuel settled 13.22 cents, or 7.22% lower for the week and is 58.61% off its record close on July 3, of $4.1060.

Metals

Gold prices rose to $43.10 or 5.76% on Friday afternoon, settling at $791.80 an ounce, its highest level since Oct. 16. This is the third week in a row that gold has gained value.

Silver rose nearly 45.50 cents or 5.04% to $9.4800 an ounce. The metal was down by a penny, or 0.11%, per troy ounce on the week. Copper for November delivery rose 0.25 cents today, the metal's first gain in three days, but fell 13.05 cents for the week.