Corn Continues Rally, Gold Slips

Ivaylo
03 May, 2007
New York City

On the Chicago Board of Trade corn futures continued their rally Wednesday, helped by forecasts of wetter weather late next week and into the following week. Gold declined, having been on correction mode since the June futures stalled just shy of the $700-an-ounce level on April 20 and 23. In energy stocks, crude oil fell, as did heating oil and gasoline, while natural gas bucked the trend and climbed.

[R]5:00AM Corn gains on Wednesday, while gold, silver, energy stocks decline.[/R]
May corn gained 4.50 cents to end at $3.72 per bushel, while July settled 4.50 cents higher at $3.82, and December gained 1.75 cents to $3.8025. The front-month July soybeans settled 7.75 cents lower at $7.4850, and November soybeans ended 6.50 cents lower at $7.77. July wheat closed7.50 cents lower at $4.9350 a bushel.

June gold lost $2.20 to settle at $675.10 a troy ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while July silver shed 3.5 cents to $13.335. July platinum lost $1.80 to $1,299.10 an ounce, while June palladium recorded an 80-cent gain to $374.95 an ounce. The most-active July copper contract advanced 1 cent to settle at $3.6445 per pound.

The June crude oil contract declined 725 cents at $63.68 a barrel after reaching $65.50 a barrel. The June heating oil contract dipped 3.03 cents to close at $1.8526 a gallon and June gasoline slipped 1.21 cents to finish at $2.2326 a gallon. June natural gas settled up 1.2 cents at $7.730 per million British thermal units.

On the New York Board of Trade, Arabica coffee futures for May delivery settled down 0.15 cent at $1.0170 a pound, with July off 0.15 cent at $1.0470. Most-active July cocoa added $21 to end at $1,855 a metric ton. Futures on raw sugar in foreign ports for July settled unchanged at 9.14 cents a pound, with October off 0.01 cent at 9.43 cents.