May was a very mixed month for commodities. Iron ore took a hammering in May, gold edged higher, oil eased, as did copper, sugar and lead weakened, while cocoa prices rose.
For Australian investors, the iron ore price is the most important and fell close to 20% to $US57.02 on Wednesday, according to the Metal Bulletin.
Iron ore fell 7.6% last week and the drop this week took it to close to 20%. That was after a 16.5% slide in April.
The S&P GSCI Total Return index, which tracks 24 commodities (but not iron ore) fell 0.2% in May for the third month in a row, although the May drop was smaller than the 2.1% in April and 3.9% in March. Year to date, the index has lost 7.3%.
The index skews to US traded commodities and cocoa, lean pigs (pork) and unleaded gasoline were the big gainers for May, while sugar, lead and natural gas saw the biggest falls.
Sugar and lead fell by close to 6.8% each, US natural gas lost 6.4%, but cocoa rices jumped 10.7% (but that was after a 34% plunge over all of 2016).
Lean hogs rose more than 9% last month, but gold prices could only manage a small rise of 0.6%.
That was due to the $US9.70, or 0.8% rise on the last day of the month, to settle at $US1,275.40 an ounce for the session on Comex.
Comex July silver futures fell 2.1 cents, or 0.1%, to $US17.406 an ounce, up about 0.8% for the month.
Comex July copper futures ended at $US2.58 a pound, up 1.6 cents, or 0.6%— for a monthly loss of less than 3 cents.
And oil futures settled sharply lower Wednesday to notch up a third-straight monthly loss.
After last Thursday’s plunge in the wake of the decision by OPEC and other non-cartel producers, like Russia to extend their production cap until March, 2018, oil prices have failed to reclaim the $50-a-barrel level.
July West Texas Intermediate crude futures dropped $US1.34, or 2.7%, to settle at $US48.32 a barrel in New York.
For the month, prices declined by around 2.1%, based on the $US49.33 finish for the most-active June contract on April 28. Oil futures edged higher back over $US48 a barrel in early Asian trading on hopes of another fall in US oil stocks.
In London July Brent futures exchange slid $US1.53, or 3%, to $US50.31 a barrel, with the contract down about 3.4% for the month. August Brent futures ended at $US50.76, down $1.48, or 2.8%.
