Oil prices edged down Monday, extending last week’s decline, as traders returned from a long holiday weekend to a market with little improvement in supply-and-demand conditions. The benchmark U.S. contract fell 0.2% to $39.39 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while the Brent contract lost 0.4% to settle at $40.27 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. European trading was light due to the extended Easter weekend holiday there. Analysts said the 50% surge in crude prices since early February hasn’t been accompanied by a tandem improvement in market fundamentals, with some saying the market could be seeing the beginnings of a retreat from recent highs above $40 a barrel. The market suffered its fourth straight losing session, now off 5.1% from its 2016 high set a week ago. “Increasingly bearish fundamental balances are highly visible,” research consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note. Much of the […]