Yesterday in the afternoon, the price of the front-month contract on Brent (ICE) breached 100 USD per barrel (USD/bbl) level. Thus, over last three sessions, Brent gained more than 10 percent. As for possible reasons, they remain more or less the same – the strike of Norwegian workers, renewed Iranian worries (although we believe that this reason might be generally overstated) and mounting bets on further round of monetary easing of major central banks.
Base Metals
Base metals complex posted significant gains on Tuesday. Interestingly, aluminium outperformed the rest of the complex and surged by more than 3.8 percent. Despite that, the price of the metal is seen below 2000 USD per ton (USD/t), i.e. the level which is usually cited as critical for many western producers. In the meantime, three month copper at LME breached 7800 USD/t and thus hit the highest price in nearly two months.