Commodities: Oil tumbles, metal futures see further upticks

Metal futures saw further upticks on Wednesday, over a less volatile session despite unconvincing macroeconomic data but oil benchmarks continued to slide further.

At 1758 GMT, the Brent front month futures contract was down 1.02% or 34 cents at $39.85 per barrel, while the WTI was down 0.72% or 27 cents at $37.17 per barrel.

Kash Kamal, senior analyst at Sucden Financial, said, “Investors are still reeling over the effects of last week’s OPEC meeting together with weaker than expected Chinese trade data [overnight] exerted significant downward pressure on the crude oil market.

“Prices for the global benchmark lost over 6% yesterday as the fallout from OPEC’s indecision to come to an agreement exposed the oil market to further weakness."

Away from the oil market, most metal futures saw upticks during late afternoon trading in Europe. At 1635 GMT, three-month delivery contracts of primary aluminium (up 0.5%), tin (up 0.6%), lead (up 1.5%) and zinc (up 0.9%) were trading higher on the London Metal Exchange.

The copper contract, still at historic lows, remained under pressure up 0.1% to $4,592.50 per metric tonne.

Precious metals complex remained under pressure as well with many traders pricing in a US interest rate hike. COMEX gold futures contract was down a further 0.14% or $1.50 to $1,073.90 an ounce, while spot gold was 0.17% or $1.84 higher at $1,076.80 an ounce. COMEX silver was up 0.21% or three cents to $14.15 an ounce, while spot platinum was up 1.83% or $15.50 to $863.53 an ounce.

Finally, agricultural commodity futures were on a mixed patch in early trading stateside. CBOT corn (down 0.27%), ICE cotton (down 0.22%) and CME live cattle (down 2.22%) futures were trading lower. However, CBOT wheat (up 1.30%) and ICE cocoa (up 1.78%) futures posted decent upticks.