Copper

The top pre-market NASDAQ stock market gainers are: VisionChina Media, Qiao Xing Universal Resources, Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings, XOMA, Akorn, Ossen Innovation, ASML Holding, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Aixtron, and DryShips.

The top after-market NASDAQ stock market gainers are: Qiao Xing Universal Resources, Ossen Innovation, Rediff.com India, AgFeed Industries, Ener1, Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Nanosphere, iGo, Sify Technologies, and East West Bancorp.

A federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has convicted three members and the national president of a violent motorcycle gang known as the American Outlaw Association (Outlaws) of running a highly organized criminal enterprise, participating in racketeering activities and conspiring to commit violence in aid of racketeering.

China intends to boost its economic ties with Africa, which is already worth about $100 billion, according to a report by the government.

The Gold Price touched a 4-session high at $1390 per ounce in early London trade on Tuesday, rising for Euro and UK investors as world stock markets hit new two-year highs.

China has been on a commodity price-control overdrive in the past few months in a bid to tame inflation, allay fears of shortages and crack down on hoarding and price-gouging. However, the Chinese commodity boom may not last forever and the prices could likely fall, an analyst has said.

Edward Yardeni thinks copper prices can double in 2011 because there will be a shortage of it.

Outside the US and UK - where today's no change decision from the Bank of England left interest rates near 33-year lows beneath inflation - emerging economies are also flirting with sub-zero real rates of interest, Japanese investment bank Nomura's London office notes.

Having just touched an all-time high in price, demand for copper is expected to be very strong in the coming years, driven primarily by China’s insatiable hunger for commodities of all kinds to support its relentless program of mass urbanization.

The top pre-market NASDAQ stock market gainers are: Verigy, Radware, Rambus, Nova Measuring Instruments, ASM International, VIVUS, optionsXpress Holdings, Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Geron, and DryShips.

IBM unveiled a technology that uses pulses of light instead of electrical signals to transfer data between chips, advancing its plans to create a supercomputer capable of one million trillion calculations per second.

The financialization of commodities threatens to divert capital from economically useful purposes and use it instead to drive up the cost of essential commodities for end users.

Continued uncertainty at Chile's Collahuasi, the world's third largest copper mine, is likely to render positives to copper prices on Monday, or maybe well into this week, offsetting the negatives due to an expected China rate move.

Caterpillar Inc.'s (CAT) $7.6 billion-acquisition of rival Bucyrus International is likely to trigger a consolidation of the attractive mining equipment industry.

Commodities slid across the board on Wednesday on fresh signals from China that it will soon raise rates with lingering Euro area debt woes also helping keep investors away from risky assets. Gold and silver traded near their 2-week lows while copper and platinum fell to their lowest since late September. Also, December and January crude fell to its lowest since Oct. 29.

India's annual rate of inflation, based on monthly wholesale price index (WPI), marginally declined to 8.58 percent for the month of October 2010 as compared to 8.62 percent for the previous month and 1.48 percent during the corresponding month of the previous year, according to a government statement on Monday.

Commodities dropped on Friday as higher-than-expected Chinese inflation triggered rate hike worries in the world's second largest economy pushing gold, copper and platinum to 1-week lows and cutting December crude by more than $2 on the day.

Futures on major U.S. indices point to a lower opening on Thursday as weaker-than-expected sales and revenue forecast from Cisco Systems weighed on the sentiment.

Futures on major U.S. indices point to a lower opening on Thursday. Futures on the S&P 500 are down 0.38 percent, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average are down 0.27 percent and Nasdaq100 futures are down 0.66 percent.

India's annual wholesale price index (WPI) for food articles declined to 12.85 percent for the week ended October 23, 2010, according to a government release on Thursday.