Commodities & Futures

Ahead of next month’s climate-change summit in Glasgow, a growing coal crunch is laying bare the challenges in weaning the planet off its most polluting fossil fuel.

Silver is sliding at its fastest pace in years. Prices just wrapped up their worst four-month stretch since November 2014, dragged down by expectations for higher interest rates and a slowdown in manufacturing activity.

Cotton futures are trading at their highest price in about a decade, with growing Chinese demand being met in part by rising U.S. exports to China, a curiosity of Trump-era trade-war policies.

Exxon says it is closer to its goal of fueling planes and trucks with oil distilled from algae. With government subsidies, it says it is on pace to make algae biofuel commercially viable by the end of the decade.

Lumber futures are up almost 40% since late August, in a sign of how some of this year’s surge in the price of raw materials is lingering.

A shortfall in global energy supplies have pushed oil to its highest in three years, with record gas prices exacerbating the market’s already tight supply-and-demand balance.

It has been a banner year for fossil-fuel, metals and agricultural markets. For many commodity traders, surging prices have caused a credit crunch that is reshaping the industry in favor of the largest players.

After two years of soaring pork prices, China now faces the opposite problem: a depressed market for the staple.

Hedge funds and other speculative investors are turning cautious on the metal used in in emission filters for gasoline engines.

Wagers on environmentally driven supply shortages are pushing up everything from natural gas to aluminum, increasing costs for consumers and businesses.

The jump in prices is prompting worries about winter shortages and forecasts for the most expensive fuel since frackers flooded the market.

The recent surge in Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia has throttled ports and locked down plantations and processors, sparking extended disruptions of raw materials such as palm oil, coffee and tin.

Rapidly increasing metal costs are pushing manufacturers to take what steel they can get and hire more people to seek out available supplies.

Aluminum prices rose to their highest level in 10 years after a military coup in mineral-rich Guinea threatened to snarl the lightweight metal’s supply chain.

Sugar prices shot to four-year highs after a frost in Brazil cut the size of the cane crop in the world’s biggest producer, and hedge funds are adding to the market’s momentum.

Investors recently pushed bullish wagers on copper prices to their lowest level in more than a year, a sign that traders are worried that higher supply will cool down this year’s rally.

OPEC and a group of Russia-led producers resist, for the time being, recent U.S. pressure to open the alliance’s spigots wider.

The storm disrupted fuel supplies, and the speed of the recovery will depend on how long it takes for refineries to come online amid flooding and power outages.

Prices of the metal are reaching 10-year highs, as buyers far from storage centers in Asia compete to line up shipments for use in beverage cans, airplanes and construction.

A government-ordered drop in steel output handed Beijing a global showcase for advancing climate goals and controlling commodity markets. But a brewing economic slowdown is testing its will to sustain the cuts.