Commodities: Oil, Gold Mixed, grains Sold Off Sharply

Commodity markets won't feel as much of the impact from the Japanese quake and tsunami as one might think.

Sure gold and oil will bounce around, as they did on Friday, but there are other issues with a more direct impact on these major commodities.

These include Libya and oil prices, fears about the strength of global demand (which is partly why copper prices are off 10% in the past month) and worries about inflation, which will get a kick along from US inflation data this week.

But offsetting this was a big sell-off all last week in grains on major markets with soybeans, corn, rice and wheat all seeing sharp falls, not only on Friday.

Oil and copper also lost substantial ground last week.

The currency is not to blame; the falls were much larger than the movement in the greenback.

The dollar fell slightly against the euro and the British pound on Friday, but was down 1.3% against the yen.

Grain prices were down two to three times that on Friday.