Oil prices begin to claw back lost ground

Despite the re-introduction of lockdown measures in some US states, industrial commodities prices continued to rise this week on the back of ongoing hopes of a vaccine-induced economic boom next year. Nevertheless, we think that the risks to most of our commodity price forecasts – at least in the first quarter – lie to the downside, in part because much of the recent price rally has been driven by investor speculation rather than an increase in net demand.