Transcripts

Investors Abandon Gold, Grain & Oil

SUSIE GHARIB: A big sell-off today in stocks and commodities. The Dow plunged almost 300 points and precious metals and oil fell sharply on inflation concerns. In New York trading, gold futures suffered their biggest one-day decline in 28 years, tumbling $59 an ounce or nearly 6 percent, to $945.30. And silver futures dropped more than 7.5 percent. Meanwhile, April crude futures fell nearly $5 a barrel or 4.5 percent to $104.48. Oil expert John Kingston at Platts says the government's latest oil inventory data indicates that the slowing economy is finally taking its toll on crude demand.

JOHN KINGSTON, DIRECTOR OF OIL, PLATTS: You've got to figure with a weaker economy and higher prices, demand was going to slide. And yet the strength of the dollar and the fact that oil is a dollar denominated hard currency, hard asset, resulted in the price rising anyway. Well, today all the numbers sort of came together and pointed to significantly lower demand. And that is really what took over and that is what drove this market down today.

GHARIB: Also behind today's commodity sell-off, a rebound in the U.S. dollar as traders speculated that inflation concerns could limit future interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.