Commodity prices diverged this week, with markets impacted by superstorm Sandy and strong Chinese and US economic data ahead of the US presidential election on Tuesday.
US markets shut for two days at the start of the week as Sandy bore down on the US east coast, leaving parts of New York flooded and millions without power.
In better news for the world’s biggest economy, the US on Friday said it had added 171,000 jobs last month, far more than expected, while the unemployment rate edged up to 7.9 percent.
OIL: Oil prices fell as a stronger US dollar caused by the positive US jobs data offset disruptions to energy supplies caused by Sandy and a surprising drop in US crude inventories, traders said.
In the US, the world’s largest consumer of oil, the US Department of Energy on Thursday said that crude inventories fell by 2 million barrels last week; analysts had forecast a rise.
US energy stockpiles could drop further owing to severe refinery disruption caused by Sandy.
“Reports that a couple of refineries in the US will remain closed and expectations that European manufacturing will remain muted signals weak demand” for oil, IG trading group analyst Jason Hughes said on Friday.
By Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) or light sweet crude for December dipped to US$85.32 a barrel from US$85.81 a week earlier.
On London’s Intercontinental Exchange, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in December slid to US$106.49 a barrel from US$108.81 a week earlier.
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold prices retreated under US$1,700 an ounce, with the safe haven yellow metal losing some shine on the back of positive economic data.
“Capital continues to rotate out of the traditional safe haven play as US economic data continues to point to some form of recovery, albeit a weak one,” said Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets trading group.
By late Friday on the London Bullion Market, gold dropped to US$1,685 an ounce from US$1,716 a week earlier.
Silver rose to US$31.92 an ounce from US$31.67.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum dipped to US$1,552 an ounce from US$1,572. Palladium rose to US$608 an ounce from US$605.
BASE METALS: Base or industrial metals mostly rose in a volatile week’s trading, having fallen early on before rebounding late in the week on positive Chinese and US economic data.
By late Friday on the London Metal Exchange, copper for delivery in three months dropped to US$7,687.50 a tonne from US$7,817 a week earlier.
Three-month aluminum increased to US$1,938 a tonne from US$1,936; three-month lead grew to US$2,099 a tonne from US$2,012; and three-month tin increased to US$20,200 a tonne from US$19,990.
Three-month nickel slipped to US$15,972 a tonne from US$16,180, while three-month zinc increased to US$1,873.75 a tonne from US$1,839.
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