Commodities: Gasoline, cocoa futures pace gains

Commodities were trading little changed on Thursday, with energy futures conspicuously higher despite the release of data showing a bumper increase in US crude oil stockpiles.

According to the US Department of Energy, commercial US crude oil inventories rose by 5.0m barrels over the week ending on 9 March, roughly doubling analysts' forecasts.

However, contained in the same report were figures revealing outsized drops in product inventories.

Against that backdrop, as of 1926 GMT West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were 0.31% higher to $60.90 a barrel on the NYMEX - but off earlier highs.

Front month RBOB gasoline futures on the other hand jumped 1.91% to $1.9233 a gallon.

Most soft commodities were also trading in the green, with corn the exception as the May 2018 contract erased 0.775 to $3.8875 a bushel.

To take note of, cocoa futures were extending their recent climb higher alongside, hitting a fresh 52-week high of $2,581 per metric tonne after gaining 0.95% during the session.

Base metals were mixed despite stronger-than-expected readings on industrial production on fixed asset investment out of China for the first two months of 2018 released overnight.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, industrial output rose at a clip of 7.2% year-on-year over the first two months of 2018 (consensus: 6.2%), versus an increase of 6.2% in December.

On the back of that data, three-month LME copper ended the session at $6,988.5 per metric tonne, versus $6,939 per tonne on Tuesday.

From a bird's eye view, the Bloomberg commodity index was down by 0.23% to 87.67 as the US dollar spot index reversed losses from overnight to edge up by 0.07% to 89.726.