Commodities: Crude oil futures at highest since 2014, slip after US inventory data
Commodity futures were trading on the back foot on Tuesday afternoon, but only after crude oil briefly hit its highest mark since late 2014.
As of 1855 BST, the Bloomberg commodity index was edging higher by 0.15% to 85.86, alongside a dip of 0.26% for the US dollar spot index to 94.6260.
In parallel, front month Brent crude oil futures were up by 0.04% at $77.33 a barrel on the ICE, having reached an intra-day high of $80.07 per barrel.
Undercutting prices, according to an update from Genscape cited by Bloomberg, during the latest week US oil stockpiles on the Gulf Coast of Texas had actually built by 431,000.
Yet on longer time frames, analysts were bullish, with Morgan Stanley having raised its forecast for Brent through the third quarter of 2019 to $85 a barrel.
Against that backdrop, all eyes were on the American Petroleum Institute's weekly update on US oil inventories due out later on Tuesday, which would be followed on Thursday by the US Department of Energy's oil stockpile numbers for the latest week.
There was also some 'market chatter' to be heard on Tuesday regarding traders closing 'longs' ahead of 4 July and the risk that the White House might be tempted to tap the country's strategic reserves.
Base metals futures on the LME were mostly lower, with three-month copper slipping from $6,566 per tonne at the open to $6,491 by the end of trading.
"LME prices were a little firmer through the am sessions but upside momentum remained limited with copper struggling to regain territory above 6600 as CTA's appear to keep a lid on the market generally," traders at Sucden Financial said.
Nevertheless, there was an element of stability apparent in markets, Sucden added, as the major equity benchmarks recovered and the Chinese yuan registered a small bounce versus the Greenback.
Bouncing alongside was August gold on COMEX, which was 1.06% higher to $1,254.80/oz., while September wheat was adding 2.24% to $4.91 a bushel in CBoT trading.