Commodities: Russia does not see need to extend supply cuts at next OPEC meeting

Commodities were mostly lower again on Wednesday amid a continued 'risk-off' tone to trading as optimism regarding the prospect for US tax reforms continued to ebb.

"Following the weakness seen across the markets yesterday, the risk button remained in the 'off' position today with major equity indices continuing to head south," wrote analysts at Sucden Financial.

Against that backdrop, front month West Texas Intermediate finished 0.77% lower at $55.27 a barrel on NYMEX, alongside a 1.43% drop to $1.7361 per gallon for RBOB gasoline.

Weighing on black gold too, overnight Bloomberg reported that Moscow was not yet on board in terms of the need to flag a continuation of oil output curbs at the next OPEC meeting, on 30 November.

To take note of as well, on Wednesday afternoon the DoE reported an unexpected 1.9m barrel build in US oil stockpiles over the week ending on 10 November.

Most base metals were also lacking much a bid, although three-month copper futures reversed early weakness to trading higher, closing at $6,773 per metric tonne, up from the previous day's close of $6,759.

However, aside from a small gain for aluminium other metals contracts ended lower, including those for lead, nickel, tin and zinc.

Precious metals were also softer with the December gold contract on COMEX erasing 0.38% to $1,278/oz..

The tone to markets was a bit better in the soft commodities space, with the February 2018 CME live cattle contract rising 0.48% to $1.2575 a pound.

Nevertheless, March 2018 CBoT wheat traded down 1.68% to $4.3775 a bushel and ICE cocoa lost 1.21% to $2,129 a metric tonne.