Commodities: Silver futures top $21/oz. for first time since 2014

Commodities registered broad gains with silver futures in focus as they topped the $21/oz. mark for the first time in two years.

Silver jumped by as much as 7.0% at one point in the session to reach $21.14/oz. in London trading.

"Silver is a metal that most people don't really think about when they think about precious metals, but it does have this dual property towards both an industrial metal and a precious metal. So many of the reasons that investors chose to invest in gold, silver has many of those properties, at the same time as having a lot of demand coming from industrials," PureFunds CEO Andrew Chanin told CNBC last week.

Three-month copper futures gave back early gains to trade just 0.2% higher as of 15:30 BST at $4,897 per metric tonne on the LME.

Bulk metals were generally higher with the exception of similarly-dated zinc futures, which retreated 1.7% to $2,113 per metric tonne.

Market commentary highlighted the prospect of further central bank easing as a key driver of the gains in metals prices on Monday.

Energy futures also gave back early gains, with front month Brent crude futures closing down by 0.159% to $50.27 per barrel on the ICE.

Helping to lift crude oil futures, on Sunday militant group Niger Delta Avengers claimed responsbility for attacks against two Chevron oil wells as well as three Nigerian Petroleum Development Company and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation trunk lines.

To take note of, also on Sunday Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih reportedly said the global oil market was heading toward a balance and that prices were starting to settle.

Over on Euronext LIFFE, corn futures drifted down by 0.2% to €169.50 per tonne as cocoa futures gained 0.5% to see the day out 2,417 pounds per tonne.