Higher input costs generally accompany broad economic growth, allowing companies to pass along added expenses and fatten margins.
Commodities & Futures
The move represents another far-reaching attempt to monetize Saudi Arabia’s prodigious oil assets—once considered so strategic that even a minority stake sale seemed far-fetched.
Allowing lithium to trade freely on an exchange could help shed more light on historically opaque prices for the metal, a key ingredient in rechargeable batteries for smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles.
Copper could benefit from President Biden’s infrastructure plan, but some traders say any boost to demand has already been baked into prices.
Producers have raised prices for corrugated cardboard, adding to supply-chain woes as the economy reopens.
The higher demand expected for gasoline additive ethanol could boost corn prices that already have reached lofty levels on strong demand from China.
Nearly a yearlong bull run among industrial metals is faltering as the unwinding of a stimulus in China slows demand, underscoring the increasingly pivotal role its state-led economy plays in global commodity booms.
The world’s thirst for gasoline isn’t likely to return to pre-pandemic levels, the International Energy Agency forecast, calling a peak for the fuel that has powered personal transportation for more than a century.
Prices are surging for construction materials, and builders are passing the costs to home buyers as demand remains high.
A new outbreak of African swine fever is putting new strain on China’s efforts to rebuild its pig herds—a threat to U.S. farmers’ hopes to sell more soybeans there this year.
Some investors are betting commodity prices will surge over a long period, but history suggests the conditions aren’t right.
The multibillion-dollar market for poultry and meat could soon join the electronic revolution that shifted financial markets from crowded pits of traders onto stacks of humming servers.
Beijing’s quest to run the world’s second-largest economy on cleaner energy is reshaping global trade in the fossil fuel.
Though the climb in gas prices was short lived, producers and analysts say that enough gas was burned during the cold snap to likely keep prices from crashing when furnaces are shut off in spring.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that farmers will plant 182 million acres of corn and soybeans in 2021, an all-time high.
Frozen oil and gas wells and pipeline infrastructure have reduced the fuel available to power plants as companies seek to restore electricity to millions this week.
Ocean freight rates began to soar last summer and haven’t let up, partly because consumers have splashed out on goods that move by sea.
The precious metal is trading at its highest level in six years, and prices have more than doubled since hitting a low last March.
Diamond prices have rebounded from a coronavirus-driven slump thanks to the reopening of some economies in Asia and strong jewelry sales around the world over the holiday period.
Demand is rising for premium napkins and toilet paper, with more people staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic.