Speculation turned to the commodity market on Monday, driving silver up almost 10 percent, over $30 an ounce. However, on Tuesday, after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) dramatically increased the cash guarantees needed to trade to $16,500 per contract from $14,000 previously, the Comex-listed March silver futures contract dropped 10.3 percent to $26.40 an ounce (up 18 percent ).
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Gold, which on Monday had gained 0.7 percent, fell again as well. On Tuesday, the April futures contract for the yellow metal lost 1.6% to $1,833.40 an ounce.
The oil keeps moving further, with investors focusing on a return to growth in demand in 2021, and recognizing Opep’s discipline, which has successfully hit its production targets. On Tuesday, the March futures contract for WTI crude oil rose another 2.3 percent to $54.76 on the Nymex, returning to its highest level in a year (after 2.6 percent on Monday).
At $57.46, Brent crude was up 2 percent. For the past two days, a Goldman Sachs note projecting a world oil market with a production gap in 2021 has also been boosting markets. The cost of the two oil varieties has already risen by more than 7.5 percent in January.
The United States continues to scale up its vaccination program on the front line of the health crisis. Symbolically, more than 26 million people (and 32 million doses administered) have already received a vaccine injection, a figure larger than the number of people who developed the virus in the last year. At the same time, 47 of the 50 US states continue to experience a decrease in the number of new cases of Covid identified (-32% on average compared to the average of the previous two weeks), while experts are worried that the more infectious variants may spread in the coming weeks. The rate of deaths per day has slipped below 2,000, down from 4,000 two weeks earlier on average.
The European Union seems to be on track to resolve its delivery delays elsewhere in the world. Eventually, the EU won new assurances from Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson-Johnson, and one distanced himself from AstraZeneca, which refused to meet its promises of delivery. President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission said on Tuesday that she was aiming at immunizing 70% of Europe’s adult population by the end of summer, facing challenges in producing vaccines due to laboratory manufacturing issues.
