Oil prices rallied and sugar futures struck 28-year highs this week amid light trading volumes, with markets winding down activities ahead of the Christmas and New Year festive season.
OIL: Oil prices jumped as a larger-than-expected drop in US energy stockpiles led to hopes of rising demand, traders said.
Data released by the US Department of Energy on Wednesday showed stockpiles of crude dropping by 4.9 million barrels to 327.5 million in the week ending Dec. 18, far above analyst expectations of a 1.1 million-barrel drawback.
Distillate inventories also slid 3.1 million barrels last week, against analyst forecasts of a 1.6 million barrel fall.
Data for distillates, which include heating oil, is in focus as winter starts to bite in the US and Europe.
Analysts cautioned however that despite the fall in stockpiles, inventory levels were still high.
“Crude oil stocks are still lingering near the upper end of the five-year range, thus creating doubt in our mind as to the underlying strength of the recent price rally,” MF Global analyst Tom Pawlicki said.
Oil prices have meanwhile risen for much of the week as traders bet on improving demand after OPEC decided against changing the cartel’s official crude output levels.
OPEC, as expected, held its crude output quotas unchanged at its meeting in Angola on Tuesday, warning of lingering weakness in the world economy.
Tuesday’s meeting capped a year of recovery for oil prices, which have more than doubled since the cartel set strict quota cuts in the depths of the economic crisis a year ago.
By Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), light, sweet crude for delivery in February jumped to US$77.02 from US$74.14 the previous Friday.
On London’s InterContinental Exchange (ICE), Brent North Sea crude for February delivery advanced to US$75.63 compared with US$74.50.
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold and silver prices steadied, while platinum and palladium rose.
Gold managed to stay above US$1,100 in the wake of recent profit-taking following its run-up to a record high of US$1,226.56 an ounce at the start of the month.
By Thursday on the London Bullion Market, gold stood at US$1,104.50 an ounce, unchanged from the previous Friday.
Silver edged up to US$17.32 an ounce from US$17.31.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum increased to US$1,456 an ounce Thursday from US$1,417 the previous Friday.
Palladium rose to US$377 an ounce from US$365.
BASE METALS: Base metals prices mostly extended recent gains, with zinc and tin enjoying multi-month highs on fund buying.
By Thursday on the London Metal Exchange, copper for delivery in three months jumped to US$7,070 a tonne from US$6,881 a week earlier.
Three-month aluminum fell to US$2,249 a tonne from US$2,256.
Three-month lead dipped to US$2,346 a tonne from US$2,356.
SUGAR: Sugar prices hit a fresh 28-year high on tight supplies, traders said. Unrefined sugar reached US$0.2698 a pound (US$0.5948 per kilogram) on Thursday — the highest point since 1981.
“Tight global supplies remain a supportive influence in sugar, and should limit the downside,” the Public Ledger commodities review said.
By Thursday on the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT), the price of unrefined sugar for March rose to US$0.2676 a pound from US$0.2627 the previous Friday.
On LIFFE, London’s futures exchange, the price of a tonne of white sugar for delivery in March climbed to £694.50 from £678.20.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
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