Commodities: Oil, base metal futures resume upticks

Oil and base metal futures resumed upticks on Wednesday, after the previous rally came to an abrupt end overnight following disappointing data from China.

At 1728 GMT, the Brent front month futures contract rose 3.13% or $1.24 to $40.89 per barrel having risen to $41 intraday, before retreating. Concurrently, WTI futures rose 3.86% or $1.41 to $37.91 per barrel.

US government data showed the country’s crude stockpiles rose in line with analysts’ expectations. Stocks increased 3.9m barrels to a total 521.9m barrels in the week to 4 March, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Total motor gasoline stockpiles fell 4.5m barrels and distillate fuel stocks dropped 1.1m barrels. Production figures were broadly unchanged.

IG’s senior market analyst Chris Beauchamp said, “Oil inventories were up again, while production flatlined, but markets opted to just look at the drawdown in gasoline stockpiles. Cherry picking of data has long been a theme in stock markets, but now commodities appear to be playing along too.”

Away from oil markets, precious metals headed lower. The COMEX gold April futures contract fell 0.67% or $8.50 to $1254.40 an ounce, while spot gold was down 0.52% or $6.51 to $1,254.93 an ounce.

COMEX silver fell 0.10% or a cent to $15.38 an ounce, while spot platinum also slid 0.17% or $1.67 to $981.51 an ounce, retreating below the psychological $1,000 an ounce level that it breached on Monday for the first time since October 2015.

However, headline base metal futures headed higher across the London Metal Exchange board. At 1635 GMT, three-month futures contracts of primary aluminium (+0.5%), nickel (+1.1%), lead (+1.5%), tin (+0.9%), zinc (+1.8%) and copper (+1.7%) were all on positive turf.

Liz Grant, senior account executive at Sucden Financial, said, "LME base metals made a broad recovery alongside the major equity indices and crude oil. Ahead of the ECB meeting tomorrow, expectations of additional central bank stimulus are rife and on the LME, some analysts are beginning to suggest we may have already seen the lows for 2016.

“Turnover for three-month contract trades was moderate and there were no major changes in the carry rates as metals specific news as also thin on the ground.”

Finally, agricultural commodity futures were firmly in negative territory. CBOT corn (-0.83%), wheat (-0.64%), CME live cattle (-0.31%) and ICE cotton (-0.91%) futures slipped in early trading calls stateside.