Commodities: Trade concerns, weak data weigh on complex

Commodities finished the week on the back foot amid continuing trade tensions with China and on the heels of a weaker-than-expected reading on the US jobs market for March.

Against that backdrop, by the close of trade on Friday, the Bloomberg commodity index was down by 0.27% to 86.9381, despite a 0.39% fall for the US dollar spot index to 90.108.

In agriculture, live cattle and cocoa were faring worst trading down by 2.59% and 1.61% each to trade at $1.0233 per pound and $2,498 per metric tonne, respectively.

On Friday evening, both the White House's economic adviser, Robert Kudlow, and the Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, said talks were ongoing with China - contrary to remarks from a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman earlier in the session.

The latter also indicated there was a "level of risk" of a trade war.

Further dampening investor sentiment, according to some market commentary, were remarks from US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, in the afternoon, in favour of a continued gradual tightening in monetary policy.

Soon afterwards, San Francisco Fed chief, John Williams said US rate-setters' projections for three or four interest rate hikes in 2018 were "the right direction for monetary policy".

Their comments followed data revealing that US non-farm payrolls increased by just 93,000 in March, well below the 189,000 gains economists had penciled-in.

Energy futures were also generally weaker, retreating by 2.33% to $62.06 a barrel on the NYMEX.

Copper futures on COMEX also finished lower, losing 0.52% to $3.0585 a pound.