Commodities: Range-bound crude drifts higher as gold nudges north

Crude-oil futures are marginally higher on Monday afternoon, caught in range-bound trade with prices unlikely to break materially lower, while at the same time safe-haven gold is nudging north.

At about 15:28 GMT, Nymex-priced West Texas Intermediate crude was up 0.26% to $53.47 a barrel, and Intercontinental Exchange-traded Brent was up 0.47% to $56.16 a barrel.

Accendo Markets analysts Mike van Dulken and Henry Croft said earlier in the session that sentiment had been hampered by the US dollar finding support overnight following a late Friday sell-off.

SwissQuote added that the WTI-class of the black liquid was overall contained in sideways range, unable to mount a serious challenge to resistance at about $55.24.

"We rule out for the moment any correction towards $49.61. Expected to see deeper buying pressures," said SwissQuote.

Jochen Hitzfeld, vice president - commodity strategist at UniCredit Research, kept his price target for Brent in 2017 at $56.5 a barrel, and for 2018 at $62.0 a barrel.

"A consolidation of the oil price in the second quarter seems therefore quite likely," he commented, adding Opec was likely to extend its production deal at its next meet in May.

"Together with rising demand, we expect a supply deficit of about 1mn b/d in the second half of the year," said Hitzfeld.

Meantime, on Comex, gold was up 0.28% to 1229.9 an ounce, with silver up 0.68% to $17.86 an ounce and copper down 1.5% to 265.60 cents a pound.

"Gold continues to trade in a tight $1222-1237 falling channel after Thursday's double support breakdown, further exacerbated as the chances of a Fed rate hike in March top 95%," said van Dulken and Croft.

SwissQuote added that the yellow metal's pricing trend was clearly positive, indicating "potential to retest $1263 (an ounce) resistance."

Three-month industrial metals on London Metals Exchange were mostly lower. Zinc was down 0.25%, aluminum was down 0.99%, copper was down 0.22% and tin was up 0.78%.

Among agriculturals, Chicago Board of Trade-priced corn was down 0.26% to 379.75 cents a bushel, with wheat up 1.65% to 461 cents a bushel.

On ICE, cocoa was down 0.1% to $1953 a MT, with cotton No.2 up 1.68% to $79.30 cents a pound. Live cattle fell 0.11% to 115.85 cents a pound.