Oil and gold had mixed weeks and months. Gold lost ground, but oil prices rose and had their first positive month since the current slide started eight months ago.
And in the oil sector, Brent crude and US futures also had very different outcomes in February.
Brent crude soared 18.1%, the biggest gain since May 2009, while futures prices for US West Texas style crude were up just 3.2% for the month, with all that gain coming on Friday, the final day of the month.
Brent crude settled at $US62.58 a barrel in London, with prices up 4.2%, or $US2.53 a barrel on Friday.
In New York, April crude futures added $US1.59, or 3.3%, to close the week on $US49.76 a barrel.
Oil futures were helped higher by the weekly report on drilling rig use from Baker Hughes Inc which showed a fall of 33 last week, the lowest since the start of the year.
Traders took the number of rigs idled as a positive, not the fact that the fall in rigs in use has slowed for two weeks and now less than half it was a month ago.
Some analysts say this tells us the US shale oil sector has cut rig use by about as much as it wants to for the moment and will now sit and wait to see what prices do. This could see production continue to rise for longer than expected.
The slowing decline in rig numbers through January and February has helped oil prices to steady, and now post their first monthly rise since June of last week when they started their 50% slide.
The US has lost more than a third of its oil rigs in use over the past four months. That has helped maintain prices around the current level of $US50 to $US60 a barrel, but that remains well down on the $US109 peak it was trading at last June.
A total of 589 rigs have been idled across the US in three months, but that hasn’t put a lid on US oil production which continues to rise. The US Energy Information Administration says oil output will rise to to climb to 9.3 million barrels a day this year in the US, the highest since 1972.
Output rose 5,000 barrels a day in the week ended February 20 to reach 9.29 million, the highest rate in weekly EIA data going back to 1983.
And stocks of crude rose 8.43 million barrels to a record 434.1 million over the same period.
In New York, Comex gold futures rose on Friday, but fell for the month of February.
After an 8% price climb in January, gold lost 5% for February after settling up 0.3% on Friday at $US1,213.10 an ounce on Comex.
Copper futures jumped 7.9% last month to close at $US2.69.15 after the big sell-off in January.
