Commodities Daily - June 18, 2019

> Oil slides as OPEC+ still struggling to set date for key Vienna meeting. Brent is sliding toward $60.5/bbl this morning amid negative stock market momentum in Asia and an unexpectedly weak Empire State manufacturing PMI released yesterday. Investors appear to be unfazed by official reports overnight that the US is to deploy around 1,000 more troops to the Middle East, citing concerns over Iran. Today the market will digest US housing starts data for May ahead of tomorrow's Fed decision. We do not think the current negative momentum is strong enough for Brent to hold below the major support level of $59.7/bbl (the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level from Brent's December rally) and see it settling near $61/bbl later in the day today.> Gold rebounds on news of US troop deployment to Middle East. Gold's performance yesterday was more or less neutral despite a drop in the dollar following the publication of weak US macro data. Today's data calendar is fairly sparse, with US housing starts being among the highlights, but the ECB summit in Portugal could prove market-moving, as it will see speeches from key central bank figures including ECB President Mario Draghi, BoE Governor Mark Carney and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen.