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Commodity trading has been fairly volatile over the past few weeks following an announcement from Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Commodity trading has been fairly volatile over the past few weeks following an announcement from Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke stated that the central bank plans to reel back its stimulus package as soon as this year because of how well the US economy is performing. In fact, quantitative easing may be completely eliminated by 2014.
June 28 marks the final day of trading for the second quarter of 2013, and the volatility has persisted. For instance, while the Fed’s bond buying caused gold‘s value to surge earlier in the year, the precious metal has been on a serious downward spike since Bernanke’s announcement. It fell to $1,180.71 an ounce on June 28, marking a three-year low. Thus, although gold has steadied somewhat, this recent data suggests it will see its worst quarterly report in over 50 years, according to Reuters.
Silver similarly moved closer to a three-year low June 28 at $18.19 an ounce, but it ended up rising $0.80 to $19.23 an ounce. The metal struggled throughout the entire week, as its largest ETF posted a loss of 192 metric tons on June 24.
Additionally, copper has been negatively affected by the concerns over stimulus cutbacks but is holding modest gains. The most actively traded contract rose $0.65 to $3.066 a pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Throughout the week, the metal managed to steady itself on the market.
In contrast to most of the commodities, crude oil performed well this week. Its futures rose $0.11 June 28 to reach $97.16 a barrel in electronic trade. The commodity’s current improvements suggest it could post its best monthly report since March, according to Marketwatch.
“The combination of improving macro numbers with relatively tight physical oil markets is pushing prices up,” said strategists at Credit Suisse.