Crude oil and metals slide on global cues; cryptocurrencies crash

Commodity prices continued to fall in line with global markets, with copper leading the decline in metals on Thursday.

Doom sentiment in financial markets has hit crypto currencies. Bitcoin fell $1,000 in 15 minutes to trade at $6,000 level.

A few days earlier, it was at $9,250. Ethereum and Ripple were also sharply down. And analyst tracking crypto currencies said this was in line with the sentiment with other asset classes in financial markets.

Market veterans said investors and traders were booking profits wherever possible. In the international market, “only sentiments are driving. Fundamentals and technicals are behind”, said Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, director at Commtrendz Research.

On Thursday, copper dropped over 2 per cent on the London Metal Exchange (LME) to $5,409 a tonne, the lowest since December 2016. Later in the day, it cut some losses to trade 1.7 per cent lower at $5,433.5.

The fall in other…