Commodity prices mostly rose over the week thanks to strong support won on Friday after an EU summit delivered an unexpected deal aimed at further tackling the eurozone debt crisis.
A surprise agreement to save the euro wrenched after an all-night summit of leaders of the 17 eurozone nations brought immediate relief to crisis-hit Italy and Spain and sent the single currency soaring on Friday.
OIL: World oil prices surged at the end of a volatile trading week, with crude futures supported by the surprise EU summit deal and strike action by energy sector workers in Norway, traders said.
Prices rocketed more than US$4 a barrel on Friday, as traders lauded a US$150 billion growth pact pushed through by the EU after Italy and Spain lifted their opposition to it, analysts said.
“The optimistic news from the EU summit spread bullish signs across the oil market as crude oil prices rebounded strongly from recent losses,” Sucden Financial Research analyst Myrto Sokou said.
Despite the crude price rally, things were still looking grim in the eurozone, said Justin Harper, market strategist for IG Markets Singapore.
“I think it’s a short-term rally; it could fizzle out because people have seen that there’s still a lot of infighting between all the different member states,” he said.
Iran was also in focus, with an EU embargo on Iranian crude due to come fully into effect today, on the heels of further US sanctions.
By late Friday on London’s Intercontinental Exchange, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in August rocketed to US$95.43 a barrel from US$90.62 a week earlier.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) or light sweet crude for August rallied to US$82.20 a barrel from US$79.39.
PRECIOUS METALS: Prices won strong support on Friday in the wake of the EU summit deal.
“Gold and the other precious metals are making a strong recovery ... doubtless on the back of a much weaker US dollar in the wake of the EU summit,” Commerzbank analysts said in a note
By late Friday on the London Bullion Market, gold climbed to US$1,598.50 an ounce from US$1,565.50 a week earlier.
Silver rose to US$27.08 an ounce from US$26.81.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum decreased to US$1,428 an ounce from US$1,435.
Palladium dropped to US$578 an ounce from US$608 an ounce.
BASE METALS: Base metals prices rose across the board after a sharp rally on Friday. Aluminum hit a two-year low at US$1,832.25 on Wednesday.
By late Friday on the London Metal Exchange, copper for delivery in three months jumped to US$7,684 a tonne from US$7,339 a week earlier.
Three-month aluminum rose to US$1,905 a tonne from US$1,878.
Three-month lead increased to US$1,842 a tonne from US$1,820.
Three-month tin was up at US$18,910 a tonne from US$18,410.
Three-month zinc rose to US$1,860 a tonne from US$1,813.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts