Commodities: Precious metals lead gains

Precious metals futures added to gains from earlier in the session as the US central bank announced its decision to keep its main policy levers at their current settings, albeit amid divisions between the top policymakers at the monetary authority.

As of 1909 BST the US dollar index was down by 0.49% to 95.54 following the US Federal Reserve's policy announcement, as the Bloomberg commodity index advanced 0.71% to 94.89.

Silver futures clocked in with the biggest rise, gaining 2.58% to trade at $19.78 an ounce, while spot platinum was up by 1.65% to $1,046.95 per ounce.

Industrial metals ended the session on a mixed note, with three-month LME-traded copper futures closing off by 0.4% to $4,764 per metric tonne.

To take note of, China's refined copper output grew by 12.4% year-on-year in August to reach 743,000kt, analysts at Macquarie pointed out.

The Australian broker also referenced the results of recent research of its own which pointed towards a clear shift in ownership of aluminium smelting towards China.

Over in the energy space, early gains in West Texas Intermediate had largely petered out by the early afternoon in New York, despite US Department of Energy figures showing an unexpected drop in commercial crude oil stockpiles during the latest reference week.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were edging higher by 0.32% to $43.44 per barrel, having hit an intra-day high at $43.95 in NYMEX trading.

According to the Energy Information Administration, fell by 6.2m barrels a day over the latest week to reach 504.6m barrels.

However, October 2016 gasoline and heating oil futures on NYMEX were seeing significant buying pressure, with the former advancing 2.49% to $1.3986 per gallon.

Agricultural futures were generally higher too, with the sole exception of just a 0.15% dip in December 2016 corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade.