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Oil prices rose on Thursday, Brent and WTI up about $1, as investors fretted about escalating Middle East tensions after armed men boarded an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, adding to ongoing conflicts in the region. The oil market also braced for the CPI release amid persistent market volatility. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations authority received a report on Thursday that a vessel about 50 nautical miles east of Oman’s coast was boarded by four to five armed individuals, Reuters reported. This comes a day after Houthis mounted their largest attack yet on commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Israeli strikes in southern and central Gaza also intensified.
Both WTI and Brent settled lower on Wednesday after a surprise jump in U.S. crude stockpiles raised concerns over demand in the world’s largest oil market.
Meanwhile in the precious metals complex, gold along with silver rose against a softer dollar as traders positioned the consumer price index numbers, which is projected to have risen 0.2% in the final month of 2023, or 3.2% for the full year. There is a wide gap between what the Fed has indicated in terms of rate cuts and what the market is expecting. The Federal Reserve is predicting a lower Fed funds rate path in 2024. Spot gold (XAUUSD:CUR) was up +0.41% tat $$2,031.67 an ounce by 6 am ET.
On the other hand, prices of base metals largely moved higher, with support from a pullback in the dollar and China’s move to support the yuan boosted the purchasing power of buyers in the world’s top metals consumer. A softer dollar also makes greenback-priced metals cheaper for holders of other currencies.
Meanwhile, access to the world’s largest lithium deposit at Chile’s Atacama salt flat was blocked Wednesday by several hundred protestors, disrupting operations by SQM (SQM) while Albemarle (ALB) said its operations “continue as usual.”
Elsewhere among agriculture commodities, soybean, cocoa and wheat futures ticked up, as investors looked ahead to Friday’s U.S. Department of Agriculture’s WASDE report with another review of corn and soybean production estimates for 2023. Traders will likely be most interested in USDA’s estimates of South American corn and soybean production. As per Karen Braun, a market analyst for Reuters, the data dump from the USDA often sets the tone for grain and oilseed markets through the first part of the year, though the sheer volume of data can make it hard to decipher what truly moves the market on that day.
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