http://ping.fm/ueTEV
A summary of trading in key commodities markets overseas:
ENERGY
World oil prices fell Friday as investors took profits from bumper gains made during a week that saw the promise of a comprehensive plan to rescue the eurozone.
Advertisement: Story continues below
New York’s main oil contract, light sweet crude for delivery in December, slipped 64 US cents to $US93.32 a barrel.
Brent North Sea crude for December lost $US2.17 to $US109.91.
The New York price was still well above the $US86.31 close of a week before, after encouraging news on growth in China and the United States, and Thursday’s EU pact, fed expectations of firm demand.
Brent though was only slightly higher than the previous Friday’s $US109.54 as the gap between the two benchmarks appeared to be narrowing.
Prices continued to benefit from the stronger euro, which rebounded sharply against the dollar this week with the news of the eurozone deal.
PRECIOUS METALS
Gold edged lower on profit taking a day after a deal to contain the euro zone debt crisis triggered a broad rise in equities and commodities, but gold posted its biggest weekly rise since January 2009.
Spot gold finished at $US1,743.10 per ounce, almost even with where it ended the previous session at $US1,743.95. It retreated from a one-month high of $US1,751.99 to spend most of the session modestly lower.
For the week, bullion climbed about 6.5 per cent, the biggest weekly gain since January 2009. according to Reuters graphics.
US December gold futures lost around 50 US cents, or 0.3 per cent, to end at $US1,747.20, but recorded its sharpest weekly gain in six weeks.
Holdings of the largest gold-backed exchange-traded-fund (ETF), New York’s SPDR Gold Trust fell 0.05 per cent from Wednesday to Thursday, while that of the largest silver-backed ETF, New York’s iShares Silver Trust SLV, remained unchanged for the same period.
Spot silver moved up to $US35.29 an ounce in late trade from $US35.05 an ounce on Thursday. It posted its biggestweekly rise of around 13 per cent in more than three years.
The gold-silver ratio, used to measure how many ounces of silver is needed to buy an ounce of gold, fell to a one-month low below 50, indicating the extent of gold’s outperformance over silver.
Platinum was higher at $US1,642.24 an ounce, having earlier hit a one-month high at $US1,658 an ounce.
Palladium rose to $663.50 an ounce from $662.65.
BASE METALS
Copper wrapped up its biggest weekly rally in more than 30 years on a quiet note on Friday, with traders putting a 14-per cent rally on pause to see whether macro pressures will reemerge in the coming week.
Fed by investor optimism toward Europe’s initiatives taken this week to tackle its regional debt crisis, signs of Chinese purchases, and escalating supply threats at the world’s No. 2 mine, copper prices surged over $US1,000 a tonne this week — the metal’s biggest weekly charge in almost 32 years.
London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month copper peaked at a five-week high at $US8,280 per tonne, before ending the day with a $US30 gain at $US8,175.
In New York, the benchmark December COMEX contract rose 1.40 US cents to settle at $US3.7060 per lb, near the upper end of its $US3.6155 to $3.75 session range.
Copper has been one of the more volatile markets since the start of the month and quarter: sinking to its lowest in more than a year at $US6,635 in London and below $US3 in New York on October 3, before staging a more than 20-per cent reversal in the weeks since.
Volumes slowed down as the volatile trading week came to a close.
A little more than 51,000 lots were traded late in New York, nearly 20 per cent below the 30-day norm, according to Thomson Reuters preliminary data.
No comments:
Post a Comment