Commodities

Crude-oil prices extended gains midway through August, with analysts viewing this as a positive sign that prices could firm in the near future. The optimistic outlook comes against the backdrop of an expected surge in demand for gasoline amid the driving season in the United States

Industrial production in Germany fell by a bigger-than-expected 1.5 percent month-on-month in June 2019, after the escalating trade war between the United States and China triggered a negative impact on the country’s exports.

Gold prices are advancing amid a slump in global equities and on the back of expectations that the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) will cut interest rates at least twice this year, beginning in July. The price of the precious metal rose to a more than 13-month high on Friday, June 7, after unexpectedly weak US jobs data raised hopes that it would provide the necessary trigger for the Fed to ease rates.

The ongoing US-China trade conflict took an ugly turn in May after the United States imposed sanctions on the world’s biggest supplier of telecom equipment and smartphones, China’s Huawei Technologies, cutting the company off from all of its trading partners in the US and barring US companies from supplying components without government approval.

Spot gold rallied to more than a 10-month high in January after oscillating in a broad $1,180-1,235 range for a major portion of the second half of 2018.

Brazil’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $0.82 billion in December 2018 from $2.07 billion a year earlier on the back of a widening trade surplus in goods, even as the country’s services industry recorded an annual deficit.

Coffee futures for December 2018 delivery were trading around 120 cents per pound (2.2 pounds equals 1 kilogram) in the last week of October on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

When Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi failed to exit from his country’s embassy in Istanbul on October 2, 2018—after he entered it to complete required paperwork—the most powerful country in the Middle East was poorly prepared for the global repercussions that would eventually follow.

Gold prices continued to edge up in the second half of September, even as markets digested the news of the latest tit-for-tat trade tariffs between the United States and China.

In the United States, commercial crude-oil, gasoline and distillate-fuel inventories fell more than expected in the week ending August 24, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) weekly inventory report.