Gold and silver prc retreated as crude declined

CNBC Awaz's, Commidity Editor, manisha Gupta : I think that it would be around that but the important point is that after 6 days of record highs in the market yesterday, we saw one day of profit taking and a good one at that. It did touch a high of USD126.40/bbl on the higher side and it has nearly come down USD 3 and more since then, and markets are looking at good support at USD 121/bbl on the lower side.

Couple of factors, which have led a bit of pressure, is that the US dollar has rebounded a bit. If you look at April China imports those also have declined after record imports in the month of March and also the China earthquake that happened yesterday, may lead to some slowdown in the imports or some demand from that area, it is also putting some pressure on the prices. For the near-term we might have peaked up and may not see much more gains happen here. The supply concerns, geopolitical tensions all of that is in the markets and that has been much factored into the prices. The summer demand season from the US and those hurricane season would give more highs in the time to come. So coming 3-6 months can of course give you much more highs in crude prices but for the time being it’s inventory data that the markets would be watching tomorrow and the near-term range of USD121/bbl on the lower side to USD126/bbl on the higher side is the level to watch out for.

Gold and silver prices also retreated a bit as crude declined from record highs and we saw US dollar to come up a bit but despite or inspite the record highs in case of crude prices, gold has not been able to perform quite well. It is still trading 14% below those all time highs and it did touch a high of USD 889/ounce in the markets yesterday, but it is trading quite lower from that and the Asian markets are looking at some more selling from those prices, USD 845/ounce is what the markets are talking about.

Base metals is actually quite a mixed picture. China earthquake has led to a bit of pressure or support in most of those metals here. We saw zinc gain quite a bit in the markets yesterday because nearly 2 lakh tonne of zinc is refined, where the earthquake epicenter was and that has led to some support in those prices unchanged at this point in time.

We saw Tin make record highs in the markets yesterday London Metal Exchange (LME) Steel was trading at record highs and the kind of power shortage reports are coming in aluminum has also seen some good gains in the last couple of days in the markets, a bit of profit taking is coming at this point of time. Copper has seen a bit of support in the recent days but USD 8,400/tonne on the higher side continues to be a very stiff resistance on that one. We have seen inventories jump up, there has been decline in demand form China and Europe and that is what is putting pressure and the kind of data one would get from US this week is what would give you direction.