Commodities: Brent futures slide as Trump tells OPEC to take it easy

Energy futures slid sharply lower at the start of the week after the US President took to social media to tell the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to "please relax and take it easy", adding that the "World cannot take a price hike - fragile!"

His intervention via Twitter saw Brent crude oil futures for April give back 3.56% to $64.73 a barrel on the ICE, alongside a 4.07% fall for RBOB gasoline to $1.5457 a gallon on NYMEX.

Meanwhile, the Bloomberg commodity index was trading lower by 1.01% to 81.29, even as the US dollar spot index was dipping by 0.10% to 96.4090.

In the background, at the weekend the US President judged that sufficient progress had been made in trade talks with China to allow for the postponement of the additional American tariffs that were set to go into effect on 2 March.

Analysts cheered the news, although some continued to caution that trade frictions were set to become a permanent fixture of the economic landscape.

Yet helping Trump perhaps, reports indicated that Russia was continuing to reduce its own output in February, in-line with its output commitments with OPEC, but still only gradually.

To take note of, the International Petroleum Week was set to kick-off the next day in London.

For their part, in a research note sent to clients on 25 February, analysts at Goldman Sachs told clients that a combination of Saudi cuts and shrinking production in Venezuela might soon push Brent towards the $70-$75 area, but not in a lasting manner, projecting that it would end the year at $60 a barrel.

According to Goldman's Jeffrey Currie, on top of Saudi guidance for a decline in its output in March to about 500,000 barrels a day less than what it had agreed to, in the absence of a political solution, Venezuelan exports might be set to decline by a further 100-200,000 b/d over the next few months, having already done so by at least 100,000 b/d.

Other big moves in the commodities space on Monday included a 3.86% fall in May wheat on CBoT to $4.7275 a barrel and a 4.31% jump in NYMEX natural gas to $2.83/MMBtu..