This tendency has been especially pronounced for oil. Although the recent price of light sweet crude oil is only a bit above the highs of last October, overall market prices of recent weeks, in fact, have been much more elevated. The prices of heavier, sour grades, which make up a significant part of the world production mix, are notably higher than in October.
To some degree, the composition of assets used as collateral in Eurosystem liquidity operations mirrors the state of the financial markets (see Chart 2).