Commodities: Oil gains as caps to production agreed by JMMC

After suffering heavy losses at the end of last week, oil received a push higher on Monday on the back of talks in Russia between OPEC and non-OPEC countries regarding global output and price stability.

The Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed with non-members led by Russia to cut oil output by a combined 1.8m bpd (barrels per day) until the end of March 2018.

Nigeria and Libya were exempted from these limits to give their oil industries a chance to recover to levels seen before years of unrest gripped both nations.

These inflationary measures saw September contracts for both WTI and Brent up on 1.3% and 1.1% on the day, respectively.

Spot gold saw some safe haven buying on Monday, opening at $1254.64 and hitting a day's high of $1259.04 by 1300 BST before dropping back to trade at $1256 by 1700 BST. This one-month high for the precious metal saw a continuation of the trend higher from the month low of $1204.

Gold traders may be looking for further clues as to the direction of US interest rates when the two-day FOMC meetings conclude on Wednesday, before getting more heavily involved.

Meanwhile, silver was rangebound for the day and seemed to take a breather after rallying from month lows of $15.12 to hit a day high of $16.60.

Copper had a slight move higher from the day's low of $5,995 to trade at $6,030 by 1700 BST. The base metal currently sits at a five month high and has managed to break the psychological $6,000 mark for the first time since February. Growth in China and relative weakness in the dollar have been cited as the key drivers.