Champion will replace Maher Abu-Ghazaleh, who resigned after 12 years. Abu-Ghazaleh’s brothers Mohammed and Amir still work as directors.

Champion, an international management and trade consultant, worked as a managing director and senior vice president at JPMorgan Chase & Co. from 2004 to 2008.

Del Monte, a seller of prepared and fresh fruits and vegetables, said Tuesday its first-quarter net profit fell 45 percent to $34.9 million, or 55 cents per share, from $63.6 million, or $1 per share, a year earlier.

Del Monte shares dropped 36 cents, or 2.4 percent, to close at $14.52 on Thursday.

For the week ended April 24 crude inventories rose by 4.1 million barrels, or 1.1 percent, to 374.7 million barrels, which is 18 percent above year-ago levels, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts had expected a boost of 1.8 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill  Cos.

Gasoline inventories slipped by 4.7 million barrels, or 2.2 percent, to 212.6 million barrels, which is even with year-ago levels. Analysts expected stockpiles of the motor fuel to rise by 900,000 barrels.

Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended April 24 was 0.5 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging 9.1 million barrels a day.

At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 82.7 percent of total capacity on average, a drop of 0.7 percentage point from the prior week. Analysts expected capacity to rise to 83.7 percent.

Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 1.8 million barrels to 144.1 million barrels for the week ended April 24. Analysts expected distillate stocks to jump 1.3 million barrels.

Benchmark crude rose 98 cents to $50.90 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. -AP

With oil prices down 60.0% over the year, Big Oil is seeing a corresponding drop in profitability. Royal Dutch Shell announced on Wednesday a 61.6% slide in first-quarter profits, to $3.5 billion, only a day after BPsaid its own quarterly profits had fallen by 64.0% over the year. But like its rivals, Shell is building up its defensiveness and cutting costs–it just remains to be seen by how much.

Shell stuck to its previous guidance on capital expenditure for this year on Wednesday, or $31-$32 billion, which would only represent a slight decrease from last year’s figure of $32 billion. But incoming chief executive Peter Voser admitted that this “could change” over the course of 2009, and after BP cut spending forecasts for this year it seems likely that Shell will also tighten its belt to adapt to oil at $50 per barrel.

Shell’s upstream earnings fell 67.0% over the year. The company blamed militant attacks in Nigeria and quota restrictions from the OPEC oil-exporting cartel for its reported 7.0% drop in crude oil production. Project developments in the first quarter included the first exports of liquefied natural gas from the Sakhalin-II site in Russia, and an extension to its gas joint venture with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

In the downstream, Shell said oil trading and business-to-business sales helped earnings fall only 9.0% over the year, on a constant cost of supplies basis.

You receive an e-mail from a prospective customer – requesting information on your products, price etc. or placing order. Normally, you would like to find out more information about this customer before parting with requested information, especially if the information is of sensitive nature like price list, discount rate etc. There may be other occasions when you want to find out more information about e-mail sender – for example, to locate the identity of a spammer or someone whose identity is suspicious. How do you go about it?

I belong to a closed network of CEOs who share information with each other regarding international finance and trade deals worldwide and every month we share notes in our own blacklists as well as high level messages carrying “red flags”. Since I achingly encounter fraudsters (and lately some cyberbullies) on a weekly basis, I decided to write about one simple technique we do that I tell our employees worldwide in how we do business within MJS companies.

E-mail is perhaps the easiest thing to acquire in the Internet. Though Internet is anonymous – there are few tools with which you may dig out some information about your customer before entering into a negotiation. For example – if you receive an e-mail from a ‘customer’ with US postal address but discover that the e-mail has been sent from an African country – you´ll  know what to do with the help of these steps.

Analysis of Given Details

Every e-mail has at least three distinct elements:

From: (e.g. abcd@whyme1234.com)

To: (e.g. seller@products.com)

Subject (e.g. Want to buy Your products)

The simplest test is to put the tail of sender’s e-mail address (e.g. www.whyme1234.com for abcd@whyme1234.com) in your browser’s window and check if there is a web-site at this URL. 

If you find a valid and business like web-site at this URL – your job becomes easier. One can dig out significant details from web-site as also other sources. Please see Faida article – ‘How to evaluate a business web-site’ for details. 

However, if you can not find e-mail sender’s web-site at URL – do not jump to conclusion that the sender is phony. Lot’s of people use business e-mail address without web-site. In such cases, you need to determine if this guy is one of them or is using an anonymous web-based free e-mail, disguised as business e-mail. Your next task is to find out ownership details of the domain name.

Tracing Owner of Domain Name

Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the nodal agency that supervises registration of domain names. Information on ownership of domain names can be located from ICANN approved registrars, who maintain public access database (called whois) on ownership of domain names. 

Please visit such a whois (e.g. http://www.internic.net/whois.html) and check ownership of domain name. 

If the sender is using a business e-mail – the domain name should be registered in sender’s or his/her company’s name. 

When e-mail Sender Uses free web-based E-mail service

What happens when the e-mail sender uses a web-based free e-mail service (e.g. hotmail.com, yahoo.com, rediffmail.com etc.) ? 

Well, you can still find information about the sender by analyzing the e-mail header.

Unraveling Hidden information from e-mail header

Every e-mail has a visible set of information on sender (From:), recipient (To:), subject (Subject:), Organization of the sender (Orgn:) etc. However, there’s a great deal more hidden within, that can reveal significant information about the sender. 

A little scrutiny of this hidden information may help you locate sender’s country, genuineness of the e-mail used in ‘From:’ column, whether the sender tried to conceal his/her identity etc. 

A fake sender attempting to confuse identity usually means a fraudster trying to steal your money or a virus attack, a potential hazard in either case, that can cost you a lot in terms of financial loss, computer crash etc. A little time spent on analyzing suspicious looking e-mails is an insurance against such disasters. 

Those using Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or any such web-based e-mail service may think that their true identity and location are hidden. In reality – one may still find information about them by analyzing their e-mail headers.

What is E-mail Header

The part of an e-mail where such hidden information is stored is called ‘header’. Header of an e-mail stores various information on the path it has traversed while reaching your mailbox – right from sender’s computer. Normally, one doesn’t need this kind of information and mail clients (Eudora, Outlook, Netscape etc. ) do not display it. 

To see e-mail header in Netscape, open any e-mail and click 

View > Page Source 

For Outlook, right-click on the mail message that is still in your Inbox, select ‘Options…’ from the resulting popup menu Examine the ‘Internet Headers’ in the ‘Message Options’ dialog 

At first look – the header may look confusing and puzzling. This is more so for spam e-mails as spammers try their best to make the header misleading. Do not lose heart – I am going to explain how to pick up right information from it.

Examining a Typical Header

Let us examine following e-mail header:

1. Delivery-date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 23:59:47 -0600
2. Received: from bani by arjuna.banijya.com with local-bsmtp (Mann 4.43)
3.  id 1CPaev-00057o-Q4
 4.  for abcdxyz@banijya.com; Wed, 03 Nov 2004 23:59:47 -0600
5. Received: from [203.199.83.28] (helo=rediffmail.com)
6. by arjuna.banijya.com with smtp (Mann 4.43)
7. id 1CPaev-00057f-8T
 8.  for info@infobanc.com; Wed, 03 Nov 2004 23:59:45 -0600
9.  Received: (qmail 28471 invoked by uid 510); 4 Nov 2004 05:59:09 -0000
10. Date: 4 Nov 2004 05:59:09 -0000
11. Message-ID: <20041104055909.28468.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com>
12. Received: from unknown (61.3.251.11) by rediffmail.com 
13.  via HTTP; 04 nov 2004 05:59:08 -0000
14. MIME-Version: 1.0
15. From: “Raj International ” 
16. Reply-To: “Raj International “ 
17. To: “InfoBanc” 
18. Subject: Thanks for activation

Explanation of Header Elements

If you look carefully at e-mail header above, a pattern is clearly visible. The header is composed of several lines of text – each starting with header name (e.g. Delivery-date) , a colon (:), a space and finally header value. If a line starts with a tab or spaces (line nos. 2-4 and 5-8) – that line is a continuation of the previous header value line. So, the header name ‘Received:’ in line 2 has a header value that spans lines 2 to 4. 

Some of the header names are simple and self-explanatory, such as the ‘Delivery-date:’, ‘From:’, ‘Reply-To:, ‘Subject:’ etc. For example, sender’s e-mail address appears after header name ‘From:’ and the recipients e-mail address appears after the ‘To:’ header name. 

Please note – mail servers have no way to check if the sender is using his or her own e-mail address. This lack of verification is a weakness – that spammers and fraudsters use ruthlessly to confuse recipients. So, do not accept sender’s e-mail address at face value. A fraudster or spammer, in all likelihood, will never use his/her actual e-mail address. Instead, he/she may use a legitimate e-mail address (it could even be your own e-mail) as sender. 

We shall not discuss each and every header name – as many of these can be forged or a fake one inserted by spammer. What is most important for our purpose (and most difficult to forge) is the ‘Received:’ headers. Analysis of ‘Received:’ header names can reveal a great deal of information about the sender.

Locating Actual Sender from Header Analysis 

Every e-mail has a header that stores significant information about sender of the e-mail and the path it traversed before reaching your mailbox. In earlier issues – we have discussed how to read e-mail headers and various header elements. In this issue, we shall discuss how to locate actual sender of an e-mail and his/her geographical location. 

Considering anonymous nature of Internet – this a vital piece of information for every e-business. If you receive an e-mail from a ‘customer’ with US postal address but discover that the e-mail has been sent from an African country – you know what to do ! 

Users of web-based free e-mail services like Yahoo, Rediffmail, Hotmail etc. may think that their true identity and location are hidden. In reality – one may still find information about them by analyzing their e-mail headers.

‘Received:’ Headers

Of all header elements we have discussed, ‘Received:’ headers are most important for identifying sender’s country. One reason is that – ‘Received:’ headers are most difficult to tamper with. 

Any header element can be forged and faked ones inserted up to a point, as the headers are just textual data, and only the headers added by servers that you trust can be considered reliable. 

Every time an e-mail moves through a new mail server, a new Received header line (and possibly other header lines) is added to the beginning of the headers list. This means that as you read the Received headers from top to bottom, you are gradually moving closer to the computer/person that sent you the e-mail. 

But please note that as you read through the Received header fields and get closer to the computer/person that sent you the e-mail, you need to consider the possibility that the sender added one or more false Received header lines to the list (at the time, the senders beginning of the list) in an attempt to redirect you to another location and prevent you from finding the true sender. But, now that you know false header lines are possible, just stay alert.

Reading ‘Received:’ Header

Consider following e-mail header and its interpretation:

1. Received: from [216.136.225.35] (helo=web20024.mail.yahoo.com)
2. by arjuna.banijya.com with smtp (Mann 4.43)
3. id 1CPhNE-0002Qt-0T
4.  for info@infobanc.com; Thu, 04 Nov 2004 07:09:56 -0600
5. Received: from [69.132.4.255] by web20024.mail.yahoo.com via 
6.   HTTP; Thu, 04 Nov 2004 05:09:53 PST

Interpretation

Line 1 – 4 : Mail sever arjuna.banijya.com  receives a mail  for one of its clients (info@infobanc.com) 
 from mail server web20024.mail.yahoo.com
 which has an IP address 216.136.225.35



Line 5 – 6 : Mail server web20024.mail.yahoo.com receives
  a mail from IP 69.132.4.255

By the way – IP stands for Internet Protocol. The Internet uses a technology to interlink millions of computers in its fold – TCP/IP. The core of this technology is called IP addressing or Internet Protocol addressing. Every computer connected to Internet is given a unique number for identification – called IP number. IP number is used to verify location and activities of any computer. Your ISP provider assigns you an IP address each time you connect to the Internet. 

It is evident from header interpretation that actual sender is the one at the bottom of series of ‘Received:’ headers and the recipient is at the top. In other words, mail server web20024.mail.yahoo.com received an e-mail from IP address 69.132.4.255. 

So IP address 69.132.4.255 is the sender of this e-mail. 

Interestingly, this sender used a free web-based e-mail service (yahoo.com) to send this e-mail – still his/her identity can be traced using IP address 69.132.4.255 found in mail header.

Locating Sender’s Country from IP Address

Spammers and fraudsters may forge many header elements like ‘From:’, ‘Received-date:’ etc. – but it is very difficult to change IP addresses inserted by mail servers. At best, they may insert fake ‘Received’: headers to confuse recipient. 


Once you locate IP address of actual sender’s mail server or computer, it is possible to locate geographical location or country.

E-mails are anonymous by nature – but contains significant information in its header about the path it traversed before reaching your mailbox. The header is normally not visible. We have discussed how to view and analyze header of any e-mail and locate actual sender with his/her IP address. In this issue – we shall discuss how to locate sender’s country from IP address.

Internet Resources for IP Analysis

There are various free and paid-for Internet resources to help you find information about IP addresses, domain names etc.

1. VisualWare

Perhaps the leader in IP tracking software, Visualware has number of products to track e-mail, IP, domain name owner etc. 

VisualRoute and eMailTrackerPro are two software from Visualroute that can help you significant information on e-mails. 

VisualRoute has a free service to demonstrate how the software works. If your IP tracking requirement is modest – you may use this free service to track any IP address. However, if you wish to use this facility regularly – please consider buying the software. 

To use the free service – please visit Visualware web-site http://www.visualware.com/index.html

Click on ‘Online demos’ button on above page – you will reach http://www.visualware.com/demo/index.html 



Click on ‘VisualRoute’ link on above page and you will reach IP Tracking area – http://visualroute.visualware.com/ 



There is a simple one-step registration process that requires your e-mail address only. Enter your e-mail address in registration box – an identification number (called PIN) will be sent to your e-mail. Use this PIN for first time – you will not require it again. 

After registration – copy and paste any IP number and it will immediately show the country of origin of the IP number on world map.

2. DNS Stuff

My favorite – this is a very powerful yet completely free service that does dozens of extremely useful functions. Internet is truly a marvelous place – where else would you find such high quality service completely free of cost ? 

This does not even require registration – please visit http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and perform dozens of IP and DNS related functions. 

To trace geographic location of an IP address – please use Tracert (Traces the route packets)

3. American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

An excellent free source for finding information on IP number. To use this service, please visit http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html . Enter the IP into the search text box and hit “Submit”. If the IP address belongs to an organization in North America or sub-Saharan Africa it will display the details of owner of the IP address. 

For organizations located outside ARIN’s geographical area of responsibility – here are other resources 


RIPE (European Registry): http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/whois/whois.html

APNIC (Asia Pacific Registry): http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois2.pl

LACNIC (Latin America and the Caribbean Registry): http://lacnic.net/cgi-bin/lacnic/whois?lg=EN

To determine in which geographical area a particular country is located, see the List of Countries in Regional Registry Geographical Areas: http://www.arin.net/library/internet_info/countries.html

 4. NetGeo – The Internet Geographic Database

NetGeo is a free service for locating geographical position of an IP address. Though this free service is almost as good as Visualware – much of its functionality is now lost as its database is not updated regularly. 



You may find more information about NetGeo at http://www.caida.org/tools/utilities/netgeo/ 



To use this facility – please visit http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and use NetGeo IP Lookup

Here are just some pointers to help your business and personal life. Our companies, MJS Commodities and MJS Capital  are very active within international trade, we are very diligent in making sure that we deal with real players in the business. Trust, Integrity and relationships are our greatest commodities in our business. I hope this will help you become productive and have a safe experience in this new technologically savvy  generation of fraud, scams and cyberbullying. I look forward to your comments, feedback and suggestion. -reprint from  MJ Santos,Global Chairman/CEO MJS Global Group

According to the Cement Manufacturers’ Association (CMA), the industry, which is expected to grow at about 1.2 times of the country’s GDP growth this fiscal, is estimated to have sales growth of 8-9 per cent in 2008-09, but profit margins are likely to dropped by 20 per cent for the same year.

“In 2009-10, about 50 MT of capacity will be added to the country’s total cement production,” CMA president H M Bangur told reporters here.

In the last fiscal, the 30 MT of capacity were added and the additional production of 50 MT this year would fulfill India’s overall requirement, he said.

As on March 31, the country had an installed capacity of 210 million tonnes, while production stood at 181 MT in FY’09, he added.

Bangur, however, said the industry’s overall profit margin was expected to be lower by 20 per cent in 2008-09 due to rising input costs.

“Profit is falling due to cost structure… earlier most of the manufacturers used to get coal by linkage, but now over 50 per cent of this fuel is purchased from the open market or imported,” he added.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said Petroleos de Venezuela SA will cut “excess” costs by $11 billion, about a tenth of last year’s estimated spending, freezing wages for its 75,000 employees and reducing salaries for all top officials, including himself, by 20 percent.

He gave no other details on what areas of spending would be affected.

A company statement said the spending cuts will allow PDVSA to pursue $14 billion in investments in maintenance, upgrades, natural gas and other projects this year, even as world oil prices remain low.

“We’re not going to hold back on our investment plan,” Ramirez said. “If we want to keep our company functioning and expanding, we have to work hard at administering our resources.”

After years of financing many of President Hugo Chavez’s broad social programs, PDVSA may finally be putting oil and gas developments above other financial obligations as falling oil prices slash income, said Caracas-based economist Pavel Gomez.

Venezuela relies on oil for 93 percent of exports, but world crude prices have tumbled 65 percent since their July peak.

The spending cuts are “probably a signal to generate credibility” among international investors at a time that the company may be pushed to issue new bonds, Gomez added.

After nationalizing four of Venezuela’s biggest heavy crude projects, PDVSA last year invited foreign private companies to bid for minority stakes in seven exploration areas in the same Orinoco region.

Though nineteen companies, including Chevron  Corp., Total SA, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc spent $2 million each for technical information about those deposits, none have publicly announced bids yet.

PDVSA spent $81.4 billion on maintenance, exploration, administration and other costs in the first nine months of last year, the latest period for which figures are available. Soaring oil prices, which peaked in July, gave PDVSA net income of $12.1 billion for that period.

Hu Xiaolian, the head of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange told Xinhua news agency that the country has added 454 metric tons to its gold reserves since 2003 when it said reserves totaled 600 metric tons. Purchases were made off the exchange as private transactions, Hu said which explains the global surprise by the Friday announcement.

The recent buying brings China’s total gold reserves to 1,054 metric tons and the ratio of gold to total reserves to 1.6% from 1.7% in 2003, according to Tom Pawlicki, a precious metals and energy analyst at MF Global. It also places them fifth among countries with the largest gold holdings.

Pawlicki expects China to continue building gold reserves because its has recently expressed interest in buying strategic commodities while prices are low. Gold is an obvious choice given China’s huge foreign exchange reserves.

“The purchase of gold removes some country risk inherent in foreign currency holdings and protects against potential dollar weakness,” Pawlicki said.

The news helped push up prices of gold futures trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange with the price of June gold up by $7.50 to settle at $914.10 an ounce on Friday.

Axel Merk, president and chief investment officer of Merk Mutual Funds, suspects that China’s decision to address its gold reserves is in keeping with the country’s recent efforts to increase transparency as it endeavors to become a more active participant in global financial markets. Lately, the country has been seeking a more active role in the debate over global currencies and Merk suspects that the country is looking to diversify its reserves as a way to become a more active global player.

China may also see an opportunity in possible gold sales of 400 metric tons by the International Monetary Fund. Merk said buying gold from the IMF would be a way for the Chinese to build its reserves quickly without causing large disruptions to the market.

Since coal is used in power generation and steel production, it has suffered dwindling demand alongside those industries. Even though some U.S. coal companies are cushioned from weak coal prices since they negotiated contract prices before the recession’s onset, sales have suffered from customers’ high inventory levels and delayed shipments. Struggling steelmakers may even try to renegotiate prices, says Raymond James analyst James Rollyson and they might have some leverage since nobody wants to put their customers out of business.

“We expect contracts with utilities to be honored, but deliveries could be postponed in some cases,” Rollyson said. “The same cannot be said for metallurgical coal contracts, as we continue to hear stories of certain met coal contracts being cancelled or held off for delivery and/or requests for price adjustments. More lawsuits against the steelmakers for breach of contract could start to pop up.”

Although Peabody Energy ’s results missed analysts’ estimates on April 15, better-than-expected first-quarter earnings from Consol Energy  on Thursday lifted shares across the sector. When Arch Coal reports first-quarter earnings on Friday morning, analysts will be eagerly anticipating any comments regarding guidance for 2009 since companies are declining to give exact estimates given industry uncertainty.

Analysts will also be watching to see whether Arch will announce more production cuts. In January, the company projected sales volumes from company-controlled operations to be between 120.0 million and 127.0 million tons in 2009, compared with production of 134.0 million in 2008.

“Included in this range are 6.0 million tons of metallurgical quality coal–some of which will likely shift into steam coal markets or, conversely, will be left in the ground depending on market conditions,” the company said.

Arch Coal has been further hurt by a recent roof fall and has said previously that it isn’t benefiting from lower diesel costs since it already had hedges in place against higher prices.

Last quarter, Arch said it expects the first quarter of 2009 to be the weakest operating period of the year–and well below 2008’s fourth-quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters have been projecting a first-quarter profit of 24 cents a share on sales of $680.5 million. Arch shares closed Thursday’s trading session up by 15 cents, or 1.0%, at $14.91.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Fitch cited “steep declines” in the company’s fourth-quarter sales volumes as well as the devaluation of the Mexican peso, British pound and Euro versus the U.S. dollar. 

Further, ratings have been placed on “Rating Watch Negative” because of the challenges Cemex, the world’s third-largest cement producer, faces in trying arrange financing that will let it meet debt coming due over the next few months, Fitch said.

Cemex’s debt maturities during the second, third and fourth quarter of this year are $473 million, $428 million and $2.2 billion, respectively. In 2010 and 2011, Cemex faces debt amortizations of $3.8 billion and $7.8 billion, respectively.

“If successful (in servicing its debt), Cemex’s risk will remain high until it reaches a broader agreement with the banks that will allow it to lengthen the maturity schedule of a significant portion of its debt that comes due in 2009, 2010 and 2011,” the agency said.

At the end of last year, Cemex had total adjusted debt of $23 billion and cash and marketable securities of $993 million.

In afternoon trading, the company’s American Depositary Shares rose 58 cents, or 14.4 percent, to $4.60, as the broader markets surged.

The Fed surprised investors on Wednesday by announcing it would buy $300 billion worth of long-dated US Treasuries, the first aggressive buying since the early 1960s, as part of a move to inject an additional $1 trillion into the economy by also purchasing more US mortgage and agency debt.

This sent the dollar lower and helped lift commodities, which have seen some signs of strength in recent days and sent the Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, to a five-week high.

Oil jumped more than 6 percent to above $51 a barrel, its highest since early December, while copper rallied over 5 percent to its highest in more than four months as investors dipped their toes in riskier markets on hopes that the global slowdown may soon reach bottom.

“Commodities take a lot of cue from equities and this move (from the Fed) could be a reassurance that equity markets, which have been rallying in the last couple of weeks, could continue to rise,” said Michael Lewis, global head of commodities research at Deutsche Bank.

“If we get more of these concerted easing steps they will obviously help,” he said. European shares rose around 2 percent by midday while the euro was up around 1 percent versus the US dollar.

A fall in the greenback makes dollar denominated assets such as commodities cheaper for holders of other currencies.

US crude for April was up $3.84 a barrel at $51.98 by 1310 GMT, having earlier traded as high as $52.04. London Brent for May delivery rose $3.61 to $51.27.

“We have for the time being a return to risk appetite in the oil market and it’s based on the Fed’s announcement yesterday,” said analyst Mike Wittner of Societe Generale. “That’s having a positive impact on sentiment.”    

Spot gold rose to a peak of $951.90 an ounce, its highest since March 2, and was quoted at $947.20/949.20 an ounce from $940.00 late in New York on Wednesday.

Richcomm Global Services said in a research note there are concerns the Fed move may prompt other central banks to follow suit, creating a domino effect of weakening currencies and sending investors to safer investments such as gold.

The move and improvement in the sentiment pushed all metals higher. London Metal Exchange copper rose to $4,020 a tonne, above $4,000 for the first time since Nov. 10. Aluminium jumped 4.5 percent, while nickel rallied 3.7 percent.

Copper is up 25 percent this year in London and 30 percent on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, but some analysts think the initial euphoria from the Fed move could peter out soon with any expected benefit unlikely to be felt immediately.

“There may be positive economic benefits but I think it will take time for those to emerge. For the time being, real economic data out of the U.S. has remained extremely weak and an obstacle to sustained recovery in base metals prices,” said said David Moore, commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Demand growth in China, the world’s largest copper consumer, is also sluggish with estimates of an increase of between 3-8 percent this year, say analysts.

Sugar, cocoa and coffee futures all rose, swept up in a broad-based advance in commodity markets triggered by the Fed measures.-Reuters