Commodities Rise on Speculation Europe’s Debt Crisis May Ease
Commodities Drop to 10-Month Low as Silver Slumps
Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg
Silver for immediate delivery slumped 12 percent to $27.3475 an ounce.
Silver for immediate delivery slumped 12 percent to $27.3475 an ounce. Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg
Commodities rose from the lowest since December as European officials considered plans to curb the region’s sovereign-debt woes.
The Standard & Poor’s GSCI index of 24 raw materials climbed 0.2 percent to settle at 600.37 at 3:46 p.m. in New York, snapping a three-session slump. Earlier, the gauge slumped as much as 2.6 percent to the lowest since Dec. 1.
Next week, European Central Bank policy makers may discuss restarting covered-bond purchases and other measures to ease monetary conditions. The S&P 500 Index of equities climbed as much as 2.4 percent. Cattle, natural gas and coffee led the commodity rebound.
“It’s a recovery in risk assets,” Nic Johnson, who helps manage about $30 billion in commodities at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said in a telephone interview. “Deleveraging is starting to slow on reduced concerns about the events in Europe, and as it does, there’s some incremental consumer buying that’s starting to move higher.”
The GSCI has dropped 21 percent from a 32-month high in April. Money managers cut the combined net-long position in 18 commodity futures and options by 20 percent in the week ended Sept. 20, the most since February 2010, government data showed.
Today, coffee futures in New York had the biggest gain in five weeks. Cattle jumped the most allowed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and natural gas climbed 2.2 percent, ending a four-session slide.
Prices rose because of “old-fashioned selling exhaustion,” James Dailey, who manages $215 million at TEAM Financial Management LLC in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Campbell in Chicago at ecampbell14@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.
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