Commodities Daily - May 22, 2019

> Gold prices remain under pressure. With the minutes to the most recent Fed meeting due for release and Mario Draghi set to speak, what emerges today could largely set the tone for the leading central banks for the next while. Meanwhile, comments from key central bank officials earlier this week failed to support gold prices. In fact, the gold market did not even react to Monday's speech by Jerome Powell. Today, we expect the downtrend in gold to continue - we see it heading toward the $1,270/oz mark. > Base metal prices entirely at the mercy of US-China trade war. Quotes on the entire range of traded base metals have remained under pressure. Copper has fallen below the psychologically important $6,000/tonne mark, while nickel is trading below $12,000/tonne. Aluminum, zinc and lead all opened lower today. We do not expect these trends to change at least until tomorrow's publication of Chinese trade statistics, which will include figures for imports and exports of metallurgical output.