Commodities: Russia does not expect output freeze before June OPEC meeting

Commodities were wanted as the US dollar came under pressure ahead of the Federal reserve and Bank of Japan´s next policy meetings.

Bloomberg´s commodity index jumped 1.16% to 169.11 thanks to buoyant trading in the energy patch and in the soft commodities space.

The US dollar spot index meanwhile was off by 0.27% to 94.86.

As of 20:07 BST front month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were rising by 3.03% to $43.93 per barrel, amid similar gains in NYMEX-traded contracts for gasoline and heating oil.

Speaking on Tuesday, Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said: "I don’t expect anything. Over the past week no one has contacted us".

He was referring to the possibility of fresh attempts to convince as many of the world´s major producers to 'freeze' their output at January´s levels before OPEC´s next meeting in June.

Natural gas was the outlier within energy, with the May 2016 future down by 1.36% to $2.04/MMBtu on NYMEX.

Three-month copper futures finished the session with losses of 1.1% to $4,943.00 per metric tonne on the LME by the close of trading.

In parallel, similarly-dated zinc and nickel futures were rising by 0.1% and 0.3%.

Agricultural commodities had a strong tone to them on Tuesday, with CBOT corn futures up by 0.9% to $3.80 per bushel and white sugar futures higher by 1.0% to $464.80 per metric tonne on LIFFE.