The euro stabilized on Tuesday after some significant losses on the previous days. In the evening, the common currency cost $1.0903, 0.5 percent more than the previous evening. The day before, the euro had fallen to its lowest level since May 2020. The Ukraine war had recently weighed heavily on the euro.
Fears of supply shortages kept commodity prices high on Tuesday.
Brent crude oil from the North Sea rose 4.1 percent to $128.37 a barrel (159 liters) after the US imposed an import ban on Russian oil. Russia, for its part, raised the issue of stopping gas deliveries. Against this background, the European natural gas price rose by 33 percent at times, but was around nine percent lower at 206.75 euros per megawatt hour late in the evening. At the same time, the price of nickel went wild. The metal required for steel production posted a record price jump of 111 percent at times and was more expensive than ever at $101,365 per ton. Commerzbank analyst Daniel Briesemann made a so-called short squeeze responsible for this in addition to speculation about delivery bottlenecks. Some investors who had bet on falling prices were apparently caught on the wrong foot by the Ukraine war. The metal exchange LME suspended trading in nickel for the time being. Palladium went on a rollercoaster ride. The precious metal used in autocatalysts was up 1.2 percent at $3,033 a troy ounce, hitting a new record high.
“Safe havens” like gold were in demand. The price of the precious metal rose 2.5 percent to $ 2,046 per troy ounce. The listing was getting closer and closer to its record high of August 2020 at $ 2075. For European investors, gold marked a record high for the third day in a row at EUR 1,902 per troy ounce.