Oil and metals prices climb to end week

September contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude were up 23 cents to $67.39 per barrel at midday on the New York Mercantile Exchange after going lower earlier as an index of consumer sentiment is lower in July than it was in June, while at last report Brent crude had added 10 cents to $69.35 per barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.

Gains came on optimism after a series of positive quarterly reports, but Microsoft (NAS: MSFT) and some other recent reports were below expectations, calling the hopes for a rapid economic recovery into some doubt.

Nymex August gasoline futures were even at $1.91 per gallon but have added 28 cents in less than two weeks, while September heating oil had added a cent to $1.80 per gallon in late morning trade.

The retail price of a gallon of gas was up half a cent overnight to $2.47 per gallon on average across the United States.

Copper prices were up in London Friday after an Ifo survey showed that German business sentiment was up to 87.3 in July, from 85.9 in June and on better news from the service and manufacturing sectors in the Eurozone.

Three-month copper was up $25 to $5,555 per tonne in London even though London Metal Exchange inventories of the metal were up by 2,225 tonnes to 273,950 tonnes during the session on a positive survey on business sentiment in Germany, but weaker consumer sentiment in the United States held September copper to little changed from Thursday’s levels at $2.52 per pound in midday trade in New York.

Aluminium added $28 to $1,813 per tonne while zinc added 0.1 percent to $1,700 per tonne while lead was up 1.2 percent to $1,765 per tonne, nickel was 1.4 percent higher to $16,630 per tonne and tin gained 1.5 percent to $14,700 per tonne.

Among precious metals, August gold was up $2 to $952.80 per troy ounce in afternoon trade in New York while September silver had added 7 cents to $13.84 per troy ounce.

Midday trade in Chicago found grains prices mixed as August soybeans added a cent to $10.25 per bushel, but September corn was down 9 cents to $3.17 per bushel and September wheat had dropped 12 cents to $5.19 per bushel.

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