Sugar fell to a one month low in Tuesday’s session. ICE raw sugar futures dropped 3 percent to 18.49 cents a pound, after touching 18.39 cents intraday, and London white sugar fell 1.6 percent to 501.30 dollars a tonne, as investment funds reduced long positions and supply prospects from Brazil and India improved. The item is single-sourced to one market summary in this run and ships at grade C.
Indonesia has directed natural resource exporters to send cargoes directly to destination countries rather than through neighbouring transit states. Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia gave the instruction at the Minerba convention in Jakarta on November 2, extending it to coal and to LNG exports to Japan and Korea, and PT Freeport Indonesia president director Tony Wenas said on November 4 that the company’s copper already ships straight to buyers, with pricing on the London Metal Exchange benchmark at 99.99 percent purity. The reporting is single-sourced in this run and graded C.
Tanker freight eased sharply in the site market tables, falling 8.5 percent to 835 dollars and down 6.81 percent on the week, while dry bulk freight rose 0.34 percent to 12.40 dollars. The tanker fall runs against the week’s Hormuz headlines, including the Revolutionary Guard claim, carried in today’s developing file, that four tankers struck mines south of the strait, a claim with no independent confirmation.
Base metals had their weakest London session of the autumn on Tuesday, detailed in the updated copper story: London Metal Exchange copper fell 2.1 percent to about 14,036 dollars a tonne and tin fell 4.3 percent, while total copper stocks in the exchange warehouse system rose to 309,650 tonnes, their highest in four months. That inventory rise, against the tight physical premiums reported earlier this week, is the divergence to watch into the next session.