Sector movers: Miners buried under by rising US dollar

Miners sank to the bottom of the pile on Wednesday continued more hawkish Fedspeak weighed on commodity prices amid lower than usual trading volumes ahead of Easter.

Bloomberg's Commodity index had retreating 1.81% to 160.85 as of 18:18GMT, while the US dollar spot index moved cautiously higher by 0.41% to 96.036.

Shares in Anglo American (-5.39%), Glencore (-3.97%) and Antofagasta (-3.11%) were all to be found near the bottom of the leaderboard on Wednesday.

Precious metals miner Fresnillo also got the wind taken out of it sails by the rising dollar, which April 2016 gold futures lower by 1.98% to $1,223.90 per ounce, while silver fell 3.84% to $15.28 on COMEX.

In remarks to Bloomberg TV, US Federal Reserve bank of St.Louis chief James Bullard chimed in with recent warnings from his colleagues at the Atlanta and San Francisco Fed banks, saying that the possibility of an interest rate hike in April should be on the table.

That saw the likes of three-month LME-traded copper futures fall 1.8% to $4,964.50 per metric tonne.

Also weighing on commodity prices, some analysts continued to sound a cautious note on some of the fundamental underpinnings of the recent rise in prices.

"In metals, the flush of Chinese liquidity has spilled into the property market. However the underlying problems of high private sector indebtedness and property inventory remain," analysts at Deutsche Bank said in a research report e-mailed to clients.

Oil prices were also lower as investors reacted to a large jump in the headline figure for weekly US crude oil inventories.

US commercial crude oil stockpiles rocketed by 9.4m barrels in the week ending on 18 March, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

However, that came amid large drops in gasoline and distillate inventories and a hefty rise in crude oil imports.

Notwithstanding the above, front month Brent crude futures were 2.48% lower at $40.78 per barrel on the ICE, alongside West Texas Intermediate down 3.34% to $40.11 per barrel.