World oil prices dived to multi-month lows this week, weighed down by abundant stockpiles in top consumer the US, dealers said, while coffee futures slumped to their lowest levels in four-and-a-half years as traders eyed the prospect of bumper harvests from top producers Brazil and Vietnam.
On the upside, precious metals won some support as the greenback hit a two-year low against the euro, with poor non-farm payrolls data raising expectations that the US Federal Reserve would keep its stimulus program in place.
However, base metals were pushed lower as nervous traders eyed strains in China’s interbank market that could hurt demand.
OIL: The crude oil market hit a series of low points as rising US reserves stoked demand worries.
New York crude plunged on Thursday, striking a low of US$95.95 per barrel last seen on June 28, while London Brent oil sank on Friday to US$106.52 a barrel, touching a level last recorded on Aug. 9.
“Prices came under pressure from growing US oil stockpiles,” Inenco analyst Lucy Sidebotham said.
The US Department of Energy on Monday said that US crude reserves had soared by 5.2 million barrels in the week ending on Oct. 18.
By Friday on London’s Intercontinental Exchange, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in December slid to US$106.62 per barrel from US$109.60.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate, or light sweet crude, for December slid to US$97.54 a barrel from US$101.02 for this month’s contract a week earlier.
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold hit a one-month peak of US$1,352.05 per ounce on Thursday, dragging sister metal silver to a five-week pinnacle at US$22.88 per ounce.
By late on Friday on the London Bullion Market, the price of gold rallied to US$1,347.75 an ounce from US$1,316.50 a week earlier, while silver advanced to US$22.35 an ounce from US$21.87.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum gained to US$1,440 an ounce from US$1,438 and palladium eased to US$733 an ounce from US$737.
COFFEE: Arabica fell on Thursday to US$0.10950 per pound (0.45kg) the lowest level since March 2009, while Robusta hit US$1,562, which was last touched in June 2010.
By Friday on the ICE Futures US exchange in New York, Arabica for delivery in December had dipped to US$0.11060 a pound from US$0.11460 a week earlier.
On LIFFE, London’s futures exchange, Robusta for January sank to US$1,582 a tonne from US$1,638 a week earlier.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
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