Commodity Capsule: Brent crude oil steady; gold hurtling past record-high

Commodity Capsule: Oil prices held steady and are largely rangebound on Thursday.

Crude oil is holding onto overnight gains after upbeat Chinese trade data and after US data showed a smaller-than-expected rise in crude inventories.

Brent crude futures hovers around $83 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate crude futures inched lower to $79/barrel.

China posted a 5.1 per cent rise in crude oil imports in the first two months of 2024 from a year earlier to about 10.74 million barrels per day (bpd)

China's January-February refined products exports dropped 30.6 per cent on year to 8.82 million tons, reducing supplies for global markets.

Upbeat trade data from China suggests global trade is turning a corner in an encouraging signal for policymakers as they try to shore up a stuttering economic recovery.

Gold prices are hurtling past record-high levels in global and domestic markets.

Global gold prices have surged past December 4 record high of $2152 an ounce.

Prices soared $130 in the past seven sessions.

MCX gold prices have soared Rs 4,000 since mid-February.

The yellow metal is buoyed by comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that the central bank will cut interest rates in 2024.

Yellow metal extended a strong rally from last week amid growing optimism over US interest rate cuts.

Traders are largely holding on to bets that the central bank will begin its rate-cutting cycle as soon as June.

Fed Chair said that the central bank needed more convincing that inflation was moving closer to its 2 per cent annual target.

Copper buoyed by positive Chinese data.

Drop in the dollar index and US treasury yields aided strength in metals

Shanghai Copper was seen hovering around a five-week high.

Among industrial metals, copper futures rose past $6500/Tonne, taking support chiefly from stronger-than-expected trade data from China.

China clocked a stronger-than-expected trade surplus for the first two months of 2024, on an outsized rise in exports.

Support for copper came from a bigger-than-expected increase in Chinese imports. 

Chinese imports of the red metal grew 2.6 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in the Jan-Feb period, pointing to sustained demand despite fairly muted business activity. 

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