With Russian aggression in Ukraine entering a second week, commodity markets continued their bull run in early Thursday trade.
Aluminium, coal and palm oil all hit new records in Asian trading. Meanwhile, crude oil and wheat all hit multi-year highs with Gold and Silver climbing too. Predictably, Natural Gas also made strong overnight gains and is up 2.28% at the time of writing.
Russia is one of the world’s leading suppliers of oil, gas, metals and grain. The unprecedented harsh ecomomic sanctions applied to Russia have caused a major disruption to global supply chains.
Russia is the world’s third largest oil producer and following events in Ukraine, Brent crude oil rose above $118 a barrel for the first time since February 2013.
Sam Reynolds, an energy finance analyst with the Institute for Energy economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA), said about oil, in a note:
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spells further turmoil for global energy markets already reeling from extreme price volatility over the past two years,”
Elsewhere in the commodity markets, LME aluminium jumped 2.3% to an all-time high of $3,650 a tonne. Another industrial metal, nickel, soared more than 4% to $26,935 a tonne.
Chicago wheat futures are up 40% over the past month, and at $11.34 a bushel, are now at a 14-year high. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Russia and Ukraine were projected to account for 28.5% of global wheat exports last year.
Gains were also seen in corn and with Russia and Ukraine accounting for 19% of all global corn exports.
Meanwhile, in the precious metals markte there were more modest gains. Gold is up 0.45% at the time of the writing, whilst Silver is up 1.27%.
