Oil jumps on output freeze speculation

Despite a slightly weaker dollar, the prices of most industrial metals ended the week lower on the back of mixed data out of China. While industrial activity looks to be holding up reasonably well – at least judging by the hard data on output volumes – downbeat investment figures raise further doubts over the efficacy of recent policy easing. Meanwhile, though, oil prices have benefited from renewed talks of a production freeze by OPEC and other large producers.