Commodities: Brent futures pace losses as US dollar climbs

Commodities weakened further on Thursday with losses in Brent crude oil futures pacing losses as the Greenback gained altitude.

As of 2031 GMT, the US dollar spot index was higher by 0.51% to 96.54, alongside 0.54% fall in the Bloomberg commodity index.

Energy futures were the weakest segment of the market, with front month Brent crude oil futures down by 1.75% to $70.81 a barrel on the ICE and similarly-dated NYMEX heating oil retreating by 2.85% to change hands at $2.1733 per gallon.

In parallel, West Texas Intermediate futures were down by 1.715% to $60.63 a barrel, sending the contract into a 'bear market' following its greater than 20% drop since its early-October highs.

As an aside, citing Dow Jones Newswires, CNBC reported that a think-tank with links to Saudi had commissioned a report on the impact that a hypothetical break-up of OPEC might have.

That was despite stronger-than-expected Chinese foreign trade data released overnight, which analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics said had revealed a month-on-month bounce in the Asian giant's purchases of crude after a flat reading for the month before.

Those trade numbers did help the base metals space however, with all of the main three-month contracts higher in LME trading, although copper was a laggard.

Three-month copper futures rose from $6,152 per metric tonne at the open to $6,155 by the end of trading.

"The copper part [of the Chinese trade data] was weak after a great September. Copper imports fell 19 % on the previous month so copper was weak trading down to 6084, we need sustained trading sub 6090 to warrant a look towards 6," traders at Sucden Financial told clients.

As is sometimes the case, agricultural futures outperformed, at least outside of cocoa, which was falling by 4.46% to $2,292 per metric tonne.