Raw material prices won support this week from upbeat Chinese economic data, while cocoa futures hit 11-month high points on tight supply fears, analysts said.
OIL: Oil prices fell over the week despite a rally on Friday in the wake of strong Chinese industrial output data.
Oil prices had dropped the previous four days on improving global supplies and owing to weakness across equity markets caused by concerns that the US Federal Reserve could soon begin to withdraw its massive stimulus programme, traders said.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Friday trimmed its outlook for world oil demand growth over the next 18 months and highlighted threats to the dominance of producer cartel OPEC.
However, this was offset by official data showing that China’s industrial production growth accelerated last month to a five-month high of 9.7 percent year-on-year.
The IEA meanwhile said that new data on the difficulty the global economy is having in picking up speed meant that demand for oil would grow by slightly less than it had foreseen last month.
The agency said that it was trimming its forecast for growth of global oil demand this year by 30,000 barrels per day to 895,000 barrels per day because the IMF had lowered its forecast for growth of the global economy from 3.3 percent to 3.1 percent.
By late Friday on London’s Intercontinental Exchange, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in September fell to US$107.52 a barrel from US$108.92 a week earlier.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate or light sweet crude for September slipped to US$105.41 a barrel from US$106.81 a week earlier.
BASE METALS: Base or industrial metal prices rallied on Friday’s positive Chinese data as well as thanks to strong export figures out of China the previous day.
By Friday on the London Metal Exchange, copper for delivery in three months jumped to US$7,276 a tonne from US$7,063 a week earlier.
Three-month aluminum rose to US$1,865.75 a tonne from US$1,822, while three-month lead advanced to US$2,174 a tonne from US$2,123.
Three-month tin climbed to US$22,140 a tonne from US$21,030, while three-month nickel advanced to US$14,700 a tonne from US$13,982.
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold futures rallied on Friday to end steady over the week.
“The higher than expected import growth indicates a Chinese domestic demand recovery, which will bode well for gold demand,” brokers Sharps Pixley said.
By late Friday on the London Bullion Market, the price of gold stood at US$1,309 an ounce from US$1,309.25 a week earlier.
Silver climbed to US$20.31 an ounce from US$19.46.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum rose to US$1,492 an ounce from US$1,436.
Palladium gained to US$739 an ounce from US$730.
COCOA: Prices reached 11-month peaks in London and the highest levels for eight months in New York trading on dry weather in leading producer Ivory Coast.
London prices hit a peak at £1,671 a tonne and New York futures rose as high as US$2,525 a tonne on Thursday.
By Friday on LIFFE, cocoa for delivery in December stood at £1,638 a tonne compared with £1,569 for the expired September contract a week earlier.
On New York’s NYBOT-ICE exchange, cocoa for December traded at US$2,464 a tonne compared with US$2,294 for the expired September contract a week earlier.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by