Among the major global commodities, silver, crude oil and nickel futures on the MCX platform on the week ended on Friday recovered its previous losses and gained some fresh ground on some fresh buying support while gold was trading in a tight range.
Crude oil prices were highly volatile in the last week. During the initial part of the week, prices of oil had fallen after the US Federal Reserve issued a rare warning on the inflationary risk posed by a weak dollar, suggesting the central bank is not likely to cut interest rates further this year. Prices touched low of $121.60 per barrel, before bouncing back above $130per barrel towards the end of the week.
The active Nickel June contract was traded higher at Rs 983 per kg, up by 3% or Rs 26.5 over previous week on reports that some producers have been forced to trim their operations. Nickel eased $50 to $22,850 per tonne. The open interest was 1,057 tonne and volume was 920 tonne. The recorded LME inventories fell by 120 tonne to 47,592 tonne.
The active Silver July contract was traded higher 3%at Rs 24,043 per kg, down byRs 670 over the previous week. The open interest was 199 tonne and volume was 402 tonne.
The active August gold contract was 1% higher at Rs 12,239 per 10 gram, up by Rs 107 per 10 gram over previous week. Total volume was 18,562 kg. Open interest was 6,764 kg.
The June crude oil contracts were up and finally settled at Rs 5,530 per barrel, up by 3% or Rs 162 over previous week. Total volume was 28.95 lakh barrels while open interest was 14.13 lakh barrels. Long term tight demand supply fundamentals certainly indicate higher oil prices for coming days.
?We may test $150 per barrel by year end. For this week, MCX June contract is expected to face resistance at Rs 5,805 and support is seen at Rs 5,075 per barrel on the lower side,? an analyst with Angel Broking said.
The active copper June contract was traded higher at Rs 339.50 per kg, marginally up by Rs 2 over previous week. The open interest was 8,859 tonne and volume was 16,245 tonne.