Commodities: Crude futures slip lower, silver gains

Declines in energy and agricultural futures weighed on the commodities space, with a bounce in precious metals providing a partial offset.

As of 1758 GMT the US dollar spot index was off by 0.21% to 100.28 while Bloomberg's commodity index was slipping 0.28% to 87.78.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down 1.77% at $50.03 a barrel on NYMEX while Brent futures for delivery in February lost 1.37% to $53.19 per barrel.

RBOB gasoline was also lower, with futures retreating 1.24% to $1.5168 a gallon.

Among metals, silver was tacking on 2.62% to $17.25/oz. while gold futures for next month delivery on COMEX were gaining 0.63% to $1,177.30/oz..

Copper was off by 1.40% to $2.6425 a pound on COMEX.

Losses for the industrial metal came amid options declaration on the LME.

Earlier in the day, strategist at UniCredit had told clients that: "There has been much talk that call options might be acting as a magnet for LME prices [...] so it will be interesting to see if prices drift down to consolidate at lower levels now. That would be our base-case expectation for most markets given the scale of the price run-ups recently and that we have the FOMC meeting next week, at which a US interest rate rise is a virtual certainty."

Over on the Chicago Board of Trade, March 2017 corn futures surrendered 0.90% to $3.5725 a bushel while wheat was down 1.66% to $4.00 a bushel.