Commodities tumble on the Nymex

25/03/2009

It has been a morning of bearish trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) today, with crude, heating oil, gasoline and precious metals all taking a hit.

By 06:07 Eastern Time, the headline May delivery crude contract had dropped to $52.66 (£36.06) a barrel, down $1.32 on its opening price.

The slump came after a day of low gains yesterday which finished with the Nymex near-term crude contract up 18 cents.

Today's falls come despite a poll from Bloomberg which estimates that US crude stockpiles fell by 650,000 barrels last week, indicating that demand for the commodity and associated products such as heating oil is beginning to pick up.

Mike Sander, an investment adviser at Sander Capital Advisors, attributed the drop to pressure following on from the 115-point fall in the Dow Jones yesterday.

Commodities traders will be awaiting data from the Energy Information Administration to establish whether demand for crude and heating oil did pick up last week.