Today in early trading, Brent erases yesterday’s losses and the front-month contract is trading at 97.80 USD per barrel (USD/bbl).
Apart from ongoing strike of Norwegian oil workers, the news that Iran parliament considers issuing a bill calling for closure of Straits of Hormuz bolsters the price of oil. Despite the fact that the situation in the market remains rather comfortable, Brent forward curve (ICE) flipped into backwardation.
Base Metals
Base metals saw a mixed trading on Monday. LME copper underperformed its peers and its price fell by about 0.75 percent.
In the meantime, however, spot-3M spread remained positive and the stock of the metal is still seen well below mid term average. At the same time, the cancelled warrants ratio is above 10 percent which is also higher than in the most of 2011.
Therefore, one cannot exclude short-term spikes in the price of copper although the broader macro picture remains gloomy.
Precious Metals
Today in early trading, gold breached 1600 USD per troy ounce (USD/toz) and is therefore seen at the highest level in nearly two weeks. Quite interestingly, although the price of the yellow metal was hovering around 1600 USD/toz in June, Reuters’ data showed a significant inflow into gold ETFs over the same month (the highest since November 2011).