- A torrid week on world equity markets and a fragile dollar
pushed nervous investors back towards gold this week, with silver following
the yellow metal higher.
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- Gold, which had been afflicted by profit taking towards
the end of June, was back up to $316.70 a troy ounce at London's afternoon
fixing on Friday, compared with last Friday's $311.30 an ounce.
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- Silver, which had hit a five week high of $5.10 an ounce
on Thursday, fixed at $5.06 an ounce.
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- Cocoa's rally took the Liffe September contract to the
latest in a string of 15 ? year highs this week, with the contract touching
£1,414 a tonne on Thursday.
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- But the market, which analysts had been calling overbought
for some time, faltered on Friday, dropping to a one-week low of £1,350
a tonne. Traders said there had been support from speculative and industry
buying at the £1,350 a tonne level, but there was increased wariness
about possible further falls.
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- Still, after two years of world production deficit and
uncertainty about the 2002-03 crop, the fundamentals remained supportive.
Liffe September settled at £1,366 a tonne compared with the previous
Friday's £1,378 a tonne.
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- Crude oil futures received a mid-week boost from US inventory
figures showing an unexpectedly hefty fall in crude and gasoline inventories.
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- The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday
that it expected world oil demand to return to brisk growth in 2003 driven
by an economic recovery, after falling short of expectations this year.
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- In its monthly oil report the agency projected world
oil demand rising 1.1m barrels per day (bpd) to 77.3m bpd in 2003. But
on a less bullish note, the IEA said total OECD industry oil stocks had
risen by 1.2m bpd in May.
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- Late in London August Brent was $26.32 a barrel compared
with a close of $25.73 the previous week. By early afternoon in New York
Nymex crude was $27.28 a barrel, compared with $26.80 before the Independence
Day long weekend.
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- http://news.ft.com
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