Precious metals lose shine, pulses stay firm

Prices of foodgrains, pulses, oil and oilseed and sugar firmed up while spices, precious metal, hard metal and energy eased on the spot and futures commodity market last week.

Urad firmed up 17 per cent, guar gum and guar seed firmed up around 9 per cent each, wheat up around 3.5 per cent, ground nut and ground nut oil around three per cent and sugar was up around 1-1.5 per cent last week.

The prices of chana, tur and rice were marginally up between 0.5-2 per cent while Jeera, maize, masoor, soybean, mustard seed slipped around one and two per cent each.

Precious metals eased in line with international price trend with gold slipping 5.63 per cent to close at Rs 8582.70 per 10 gram in Mumbai. Silver followed gold with silver Delhi declining by 5.06 per cent to Rs 17,186 per kg. Black matpe or urad was back in action with desi Jalgaon variety moving up 17 per cent on spot market at Rs 4,004 per quintal on Friday from the last week close of Rs 3,423.

The firming up of urad was attributed to declining of stocks at the warehouses after rains interrupted supply in Maharashtra.

On the futures market, urad hardened by 15.31 per cent on NCDEX with weekly open interest up by 5,800 MT to 58,860 MT and daily average turnover was up 40 per cent from Rs 398 crore to Rs 553 crore.

Wheat remained firm on spot markets with Delhi wheat firming up 3.39 per cent to close at RS 1028.75.

However the prices of wheat futures on NCDEX remained more or less steady at Rs 971 last week after witnessing a low of 963.50 on October 5. The daily volume remained around Rs 20 crore while open interest decline marginally by around 3000 tonne as traders were not ready to take any open position.

Jeera (cumin seed) futures on NCDEX traded sharply down by around 10 per cent on weekend on selling pressure. The bearish sentiment has been persisted in the futures with traders engaging in speculative selling with daily volume falling from Rs 225 crore to Rs 228 crore last week.

Open interest in Jeer was down by 1000 tonne, reflecting the traders' lack of interest in this commodity.

Prices of non-ferrous metals slipped last week with aluminium at London metal exchange falling 3.58 per cent while prices of copper wire bar declined 4.61 per cent.

At the MCX, aluminium closed 1.94 per cent lower at Rs 116.30 per kg with open interest was down by 291 tonne to 823 tonne.

Copper was down 3.77 per cent to Rs 339.60 per kg with open interest falling to 889 tonne at close from 13,296 tonne at the beginning of the weak.