Commodities - Copper ends
firm, oil and grains up
08:37 p.m Jul 15, 1999 Eastern
NEW YORK(Reuters) - Copper
prices closed higher on Thursday as
speculators who follow price charts
piled into the market and pushed the
market near 11-month highs.
At the COMEX, copper for
September delivery closed 2.20
cents higher at 79.90 cents a pound.
The heavy buying followed a similar
move in the London copper market
as sentiment continued to grow that
copper production cutbacks by
miners were improving the long-term
price outlook.
''We haven't cleared the 80.30 high
from July 8 but this is certainly the
strongest close for the move,'' said
Tim Evans, an analyst with Pegasus
Econometric Group.
Recent production cutbacks by
Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd.'s
U.S. operations, Phelps Dodge
Corp. and Asarco Inc pushed the
market to 11-month highs last week
in New York before the market
retraced to its current range.
A strike at Falconbridge's Kidd
Creek copper operations has also
gave prices a temporary boost.
News that Asarco would merge with
Cyprus Amax Minerals (CYM.N) to
form the world's largest publicly
traded copper company came too
late in the day on Thursday to affect
trading, but the consolidation of the
two giants might also point the way
to more supply constraints helping
prices.
The new company, Asarco Cyprus
Inc, will produce about two billion
pounds of copper a year, second
only in size to Chile's
government-owned producer,
Codelco.
Oil prices also closed higher, led by
strength in gasoline prices after
reports that a gasoline-making unit at
Chevron Corp's refinery near San
Francisco will shut for at least a
month for repairs, a
longer-than-expected outage that
could tighten gasoline supplies on the
West Coast.
That news followed a weekly report
from the American Petroleum
Institute, an industry group, showing
a 1.9-million-barrel drawdown in
U.S. gasoline stocks last week.
Traders had expected the report to
show a rise of one million barrels.
At the New York Mercantile
Exchange, gasoline for August
delivery closed 2.18 cents higher at
61.70 cents a gallon. August heating
oil was up 1.00 cent at 51.73 cents a
gallon and August crude oil up 24
cents at $20.16 a gallon, near the
20-month high set earlier in the
week.
At the Chicago Board of Trade, corn
and soybeans continued to edge
higher after weather forecasts that
indicated a spell of hot, dry weather
may be heading for the Midwest. An
extended period of heat could trim
yields of corn, now in its key growth
stage, and even soybeans, which will
reach a similar stage next month.
Corn for September delivery closed
3-3/4 cents a bushel higher at
$1.93-3/4 and August soybeans rose
5-1/4 cents a bushel at $4.28-1/2.
Prospects for slow demand and large
supplies continue to bedevil the
markets, however.
Wheat prices also rose but the gains
was restrained by sales of newly
harvested winter wheat in the
Midwest that continue to fill the
commercial pipeline. September
wheat closed one cent higher at
$2.45-1/4 cents a bushel.
Coffee prices eased ahead of the
monthly estimate by the Green
Coffee Association of New York of
coffee stockpiles in U.S.
warehouses. The GCA said U.S.
stocks rose 78,000 bags in the
month ending June 30 , a figure on
the low end of trader expectations. A
total of 2.75 million 132-pound bags
were on hand.
At the New York Board of Trade,
coffee for September delivery closed
1.75 cents a pound lower at 94.15
cents before the release of the
estimate.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited |
