Commodities Fall Continued, Crude Slipped To $97 a Barrel (USO, UNG, SLV, GLD, CVX, LNT)

Commodities continued to fall on Monday as Wall Street considered weekend elections in which voters in Greece and France rejected candidates tied to austerity budgets. In France, socialist party candidate François Hollande ousted conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, and is expected to challenge the approach, pushed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that spending cuts are the main remedy to the euro zone's sovereign debt woes. In Greece, the two mainstream parties, and the austerity policies they backed, received less than a third of the votes combined.

Crude-oil futures declined 1.20% to $97.32 a barrel, while gold futures slipped 0.5% to $1,636 a troy ounce. The U.S. dollar fell against the euro but gained some ground against the yen. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 1.868%. Most other energy futures moved lower Monday, with June gasoline lost 2 cents, or 0.5%, to $2.96 a gallon and June heating oil fell 3 cents, or 1.010%, at $2.7 a gallon.
June natural gas bucked the trend, rose 5 cents, or 2%, to trade at $2.33 per million British thermal units.
Silver for July delivery lost 1.42%, to $30 an ounce. Platinum for the same month’s delivery declined 0.50%, to $1,528  an ounce.

June palladium fell 0.60%, to $648 an ounce. Copper for June was flat at $3.72 a pound.
United States Oil Fund LP (ETF)(NYSEARCA:USO) was down 0.45 (-1.21%) at $36.84, SPDR Gold Trust (ETF)(NYSEARCA:GLD) down 0.54 (-0.34%) to $158.53, iShares Silver Trust (ETF)(NYSEARCA:SLV) fell 0.34 (-1.16%) to  $29.06 and United States Natural Gas Fund, LP(NYSEARCA:UNG) added 0.27 (1.65%) to $16.67.
Chevron Corporation(NYSE:CVX) was down 0.66% as the company says as it says it moves its fifth deepwater drill ship into the Gulf of Mexico. The ship, under contract with Pacific Drilling, is the first drillship designed with the capacity to perform dual gradient drilling, which allows drillers to more closely match pressures and effectively eliminates water depth as a consideration in well design.

Alliant Energy Corporation(NYSE:LNT) fell 1.14% to $43.40 s on a couple of downgrades today, on the back of the company's disclosure on Friday in its earnings report that a deferred tax balance would slow expected growth in its Wisconsin regulated rate base through 2014. Ladenburg Thalmann cuts the shares to Neutral, and Wunderlich lowers its rating to Hold.