Commodity prices traded mixed this week as dealers reacted to US stimulus expectations amid weaker growth worries across the globe.
Raw material futures, which had been falling early in the week, recovered some lost ground after US Federal Reserve chief nominee Janet Yellen defended the US central bank’s US$85 billion-a-month bond-buying program and rejected suggestions that it had generated fresh bubbles in property or stock markets.
The comments on Thursday at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee “spurred expectations that any form of [stimulus] tapering would not occur anytime soon”, said Vanessa Tan, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore.
OIL: Crude futures diverged, with New York prices hitting five-month lows amid strong supplies in the US, while Brent was supported by unrest in Libya, traders said.
By Friday on London’s Intercontinental Exchange, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in January stood at US$107.88 a barrel compared with US$104.47 for the expired December contract a week earlier.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate or light sweet crude for December fell to US$93.83 a barrel from US$94.44.
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold prices ended the week higher overall in the wake of Yellen’s remarks regarding US stimulus.
“The ‘Yellen’ effect has managed to push gold... higher as her dovish overtones put any ideas of near-term tapering on the back-burner,” Triland Metals said.
By late Friday on the London Bullion Market, the price of gold edged up to US$1,287.25 an ounce from US$1,285.50 a week earlier.
Silver slipped to US$20.63 an ounce from US$21.70.
On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum fell to US$1,438 an ounce from US$1,446.
Palladium dropped to US$729 an ounce from US$757.
BASE METALS: Industrial metals retreated across the board amid speculation that China could revise down its growth forecast for next year.
A Triland Metals broker said that “leaks from China’s high political meeting regarding future growth targets have haunted the markets.”
However, China on Friday pledged ambitious reforms to loosen the communist authorities’ grip on the world’s second-largest economy, as leaders chart the way forward for the next decade.
The ruling party issued a document detailing economic reforms following a key meeting, known as the Third Plenum, which ended earlier this week.
Meanwhile, official data on Thursday showed that a weak eurozone recovery slowed to a “snail’s pace” in the third quarter, with powerhouse Germany off its stride and France hit by a surprise contraction.
The 17-nation eurozone economy grew just 0.1 percent in the three months to September after a gain of 0.3 percent in the previous quarter, the Eurostat statistics agency said.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, eked out growth of 0.3 percent, down from 0.7 percent in the second quarter, while France slipped back, its economy shrinking 0.1 percent after a gain of 0.5 percent.
By Friday on the London Metal Exchange, copper for delivery in three months dropped to US$6,965.50 a tonne from US$7,115 a week earlier.
Three-month aluminum fell to US$1,784.50 a tonne from US$1,803.7, and three-month lead dropped to US$2,089 a tonne from US$2,128.
Three-month tin grew to US$22,900 a tonne from US$22,850, while three-month nickel declined to US$13,712 a tonne from US$13,912.
Three-month zinc slipped to US$1,885 a tonne from US$1,891.
SUGAR: Prices hit three-month lows in London at US$464.4 a tonne.
“Traders have noticed that the world still has plenty of sugar available and that the demand is not really strong,” Price Futures Group analyst Jack Scoville said.
By Friday on the ICE Futures US exchange, the price of unrefined sugar for delivery in March slid to US$0.1761 a pound (0.45kg) from US$0.1808 a week earlier.
On LIFFE, London’s futures exchange, the price of a tonne of white sugar for March tumbled to US$465.90 from US$481.50 a week earlier.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS