Commodity Blog

Several reports from China were released on Saturday, and all of them were rather disappointing. This led to a drop of growth-related commodities, like crude oil and copper, due to concerns that slowing economic growth will result in declining demand for raw materials from the world’s second largest economy. China is the biggest consumer of copper and the second-largest user of crude oil.

China’s industrial production grew 6.9 percent in August on an annual basis, slower than the July’s growth of 9.0 percent and the forecast 8.8 percent. Fixed asset investment increased 16.5 percent last month, year-over-year, while analysts expected it to increase at the previous month’s pace of 17.0 percent. Retail sales rose 11.9 percent in August from a year ago, trailing market expectations of 12.1 percent.

October futures for delivery of WTI crude oil fell 0.77 percent to $91.56 per barrel as of 10:01 GMT on NYMEX today. Contract for Brent crude lost 0.18 percent to $96.94 per barrel on ICE. December copper declined 0.77 percent to $3.0825 per pound on COMEX.

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