Oil prices continued to rally today, with prices jumping $1.56 a barrel to $86.43.

Today's jump in oil prices is a reaction to positive news today that indicated the economic recovery could be stronger than anticipated.

Oil is trading higher on the day, but prices have fallen a good bit from the high they hit immediately following this week's inventory report.

Prices rose as high as $83.03 a barrel, and are currently trading at $81.97, up $0.48.

The reason why prices spiked so much following the report was the initial reaction to the smaller than expected rise in crude reserves. Analysts had been looking to see a jump of 2.1 million barrels last week, but the report indicated that inventories rose by a much smaller 1.4 million barrels.

Oil stocks continue their impressive charge today with several of the big names trading up to hit new yearly highs. Oil has managed to trade up $0.70 to $72.89 and briefly was able to break through the $73 mark to hit a high on the day of $73.10.

According to a story today on CNNMoney.com a big reason for oil's recent surge can be attributed to large inflows of new money into the oil market. It cites a new report from Citigroup (NYSE: C) that estimates that roughly $10 of this year's upward move can be traced back to the influx of new money this year. "Financial players have now firmly moved ahead as the main near-term driver of oil prices," Citigroup said.

Another factor that is definitely involved, but rarely mentioned, is the impact that the weakening dollar is having on oil prices. The dollar has definitely been struggling lately, and just today it was announced that the Euro hit an all time high against the American currency. The Euro climbed to $1.37 today which is the highest in its history, and the British pound has been trading at around a 26 year high against the dollar for the past couple weeks.

Oil continues its bullish charge to head into the weekend, and on the way it has carried several oil stocks to new highs. Oil picked up right where it left off yesterday and has added another $0.92 to rise to $72.23.

Yesterday, traders reacted to a less than stellar report from the Energy Department on refinery production last week and that trend has carried over into today's action. All year there has been concern that refineries in the U.S. have been unable to maintain output capacity above the magical 90% mark, and analysts had been expecting to see production climb past the mark in this week's report, but unfortunately output was only able to rise 0.6% to sit exactly at 90%.

This, combined with renewed tensions in Nigeria, was all it took to keep the bullish oil market rolling. Towards the end of last month when prices were hovering around $68 a barrel, I stated that I thought we would see prices break through the psychological $70 barrier and move up closer to around $75 by the middle of this month, and for right now it is looking as though that is exactly what we are about to see.

We have been expecting to see this for a few days now, and today oil was finally able to close the session above the psychological $70 mark at $70.55, gaining $0.98 on the session. Earlier in the day prices were able to trade as high as $71.06 before settling down a bit to head into the weekend.

Today's close above $70 marks the first time in almost a year that prices have been at this level, with the last time oil was above $70 being back in August '06. The primary reasons behind the move today were more of the same that we have seen lately... concerns over gasoline surprises and political tensions around the globe.

American refineries have been the center of attention over the past couple of months with concerns over how well refineries are going to be able to keep up with the growing demand during the peak summer driving months. This week those concerns were once again brought to the surface after the weekly inventory numbers out of the Energy Department showed n unexpected decline in gasoline supplies. Analysts had been expecting to see a rise of 1.1 million barrels when in fact the numbers showed that gasoline stocks fell by 700,000 barrels.