Commodities: Oil retreats from overnight highs, copper and lead claw back losses

At 07:25 BST, the Brent front month futures contract was down 16 cents or 0.24% at $66.38 per barrel while the WTI was trading down 13 cents or 0.21% at $60.59. Overnight, the WTI rose by as much as $1 while Brent gained $1.50 on bets of the oil supply glut easing.

Switching to precious metals, gold continued in positive territory with the possibility of an imminent interest cut by US Federal Reserve having receded. COMEX gold was trading at $1,207.80 an ounce up $3.70 or 0.31% while spot gold was up $4.63 or 0.38% at $1,209.49. COMEX silver was trading $17.19 an ounce, up 5 cents or 0.31%.

Commenting on the direction of trading, Alastair McCaig, market analyst at IG, said: “Gold continues to suffer from its inability earlier in the week to close above $1224. It has once again dropped back into the middle of its well-worn range, oscillating around the $1200 level.”

“The fluctuations in the US dollar continue to cause havoc for oil traders, who are already juggling a multitude of supply and demand issues while gauging the direction of oil. Regardless of the current oversupply and limited demand balance, both US light and crude continue to edge higher.”

Meanwhile, the picture in the base metals market remains mixed. Copper recovered from a three-week low on the London Metal Exchange to end Thursday trading up 0.6% at $6,260 per tonne, bouncing back from $6,194 on Wednesday, its weakest settlement price since 30 April. Nickel was up 1.6% at $13,187.50 per tonne.

Lead saw the biggest gains in the market settling up 2.2% at $1,972 per tonne. However, zinc (down 0.1%), aluminium (down 0.3%) and tin (down 1.2%) were all in the red.

The agricultural commodities market saw widespread gains on a weaker dollar, which edged up buying of US products by non-US traders. CBOT corn (up 0.14%) and wheat (up 0.86%), ICE cocoa (up 1.22%) and cotton (up 63.93), and CME live cattle (up 0.78%) were all in positive territory.