Best of the Week

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Gold Spikes Higher on Unprecedented Fed Interest Rate Cut Low / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Mark_OByrne

The surprise move by the Fed to lower the Fed funds rate by more than 75 basis points to a record low and an unprecedented band between 0.25% and 0% led to sharp falls in the dollar (low of 1.4188 to the euro) and a spike in the gold price to over $859.40/oz.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Upside Seen for Agribusiness ETF / Commodities / Agricultural Commodities

By: Mike_Paulenoff

The Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (AMEX: MOO) has spent the past 2 1/2 months or so carving out a base-like formation in the aftermath of a multi-month decline from 66.20 to 20.08 (-70%). The base-like pattern should resolve itself to the upside and will represent the central portion of an intermediate-term recovery rally period that should propel the MOO to 30.00-31.00. Only a break below 25.70 will begin to compromise the developing constructive pattern.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Profit from the Commodities Bull Market During 2009 / Commodities / CRB Index

By: Money_Morning

Martin Hutchinson writes: Between September 2007 and June 2008, oil prices doubled, gold rose 30% and commodities, in general, advanced by a similar percentage. So why, six months later, when prices have fallen back below last year's levels, does everybody think they won't rise again? The difficulties of extraction haven't gone away, nor have the prospects of increasing consumption in the faster-growing emerging markets such as China. Yes, the prices of commodities are severely affected by marginal moves in supply and demand, but this is ridiculous!

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

U.S. Interest Rate Cuts to Drive Gold Bull Market During 2009 / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Adrian_Ash

THE PRICE OF WHOLESALE GOLD slipped lower early in London on Tuesday, recording the best Gold Fix in two months at $833.50 an ounce but trading 1% below Monday's top in the spot market.

Tokyo stocks ended the day 1% down, while London shares held flat. The US Dollar regained one of yesterday's four-cent losses vs. the Euro.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Gold Strong Bull Market Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Mark_OByrne

Gold rose again yesterday and the dollar fell sharply in anticipation of the Federal Reserve further slashing interest rates to record lows of 0.5% today.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Crude Oil Forecast 2009 and Geopolitical Implications / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: STRATFOR

Oil prices have now dipped — albeit only briefly — below US$40 a barrel, a precipitous plunge from their highs of more than US$147 a barrel in July. Just as high oil prices reworked the international economic order, low oil prices are now doing the same. Such a sudden onset of low prices impacts the international system just as severely as recent record highs.

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Agri-Foods Representing Rare Value Investment Opportunity / Commodities / Agricultural Commodities

By: Ned_W_Schmidt

A funny thing happened on the way to the end of commodity investing for all of time. What was it? Commodity prices bottomed, and started going up. Wow, could the Street strategists possibly be wrong? Is that conceivable? Is not oil at $200 as was forecast? No, that's right, they changed the forecast. Oil is now going to $10 in the Spring. Ignoring the inability of the Street to understand that commodities is really composed of three sectors, one of which is Agri-Food, would probably be wise. The other two are mineral ores, like copper and Gold, and energy, like oil and natural gas.

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Monday, December 15, 2008

What Next After Crude Oil's Intraday Plunge? / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Mike_Paulenoff

The US Oil Trust ETF (NYSE: USO) has plunged over 6% from its early morning rally peak, which is not a surprise from a volatility perspective, but it is a surprise to me IF I thought that a more bullish pattern was under development. In other words, the plunge in the USO has taken back too much of its prior rally to be considered the start of a new bull move.

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Gold Facing Comex Delivery Squeeze as Traders Fear Counterparty Risks / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Mark_OByrne

Gold rallied sharply last week and was up nearly 9% despite continuing uncertainty and a very mixed performance in stock markets. The US dollar index fell some 4% on the week and it looks increasingly likely that the dollar may have topped out and may soon resume its bear market. For the year, gold is now up by more than 4% in dollar terms and by much larger amounts in euros (+11.7%) and pounds (+40.4%).

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Gold Surges as Governments Start Running Out of Ideas / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Adrian_Ash

THE SPOT PRICE OF GOLD BULLION came within $1 of a new two-month high early Monday in London, holding onto last week's 9% jump and recording its best Morning Gold Fix since Oct. 16th for US investors.

Crude oil and the Tokyo Nikkei index both jumped more than 5%, but European stock markets gave back their opening gains by lunchtime.

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Gold Stocks Absurdly Undervalued! / Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks

By: Peter_Zihlmann

AN EXAMPLE OF AN ABSURDLY UNDERVALUED JUNIOR MINING STOCK WITH ASSETS IN-SITU WORTH 8 BILLION DOLLARS

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Gold and the $8.3 Trillion & Journey to OZ! / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: David_Vaughn

Well, it has finally happened. USA Today has raised the cost of their daily paper to one dollar. Knew the day was coming. The mining industry continues to suffer along with the rest of the stock market. Definitely a contrarian market now. The availability of credit is now zero and blessed be those companies who have previously stock piled huge wads of cash. They will have the best chance of surviving this market.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Gold Backwardation That Shook The World / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Professor_Emeritus

On Friday, December 12, backwardation on gold was still in force at an annualized discount rate hovering around 2% in the December contract, and 0.3% in February contract. Many readers have asked me how it is that so many other observers fail to see the backwardation. The discrepancy is due to differences in methodology. Most analysts calculate the basis as the difference between February and December futures prices which gives them a positive reading. They use the December futures price as proxy for the spot price. This is clearly wrong. The December futures price is not the same as the spot price, even though we are in December.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Gold Rallies as Precious Metals Stocks Soar / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Merv_Burak

A nice weekly move by the metals but boy did the stocks move. Most gold Indices were making gains in the 20% area while the Merv's Spec-Gold Index gained 32.1%. We should not expect gains like this to come along very often but enjoy them when they do.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008

Junior Mining Stocks: Canada’s Subprime Market Crash / Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks

By: The_Gold_Report

Prior to the recent market meltdown, the market for junior mining companies had already been experiencing a severe correction since its peak in early 2007. Despite rising and historically high metal prices, money began leaving the market, in earnest, in the summer of 2007. By late last year, the correction had become a full-fledged bear market. Then the credit markets collapsed in September 2008. This caused another leg down which also included the major mining companies and the underlying commodities.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

Playing U.S. Dollar Weakness and Silver Strength / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Mike_Paulenoff

The seven-week sideways coil pattern in the daily chart of the Euro/$ resolved itself to the upside earlier this week. The ability of the Euro/$ to hold Thursday's gains amidst acute overnight weakness in equities is a very powerful sign of relative strength, and likely that the Euro has further to climb against the USD -- at least to the 1.3600-1.3700 area next. This action should be supportive for gold and silver as well.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

Investments Diversification Remains Key to Weathering the Economic Storm / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Mark_OByrne

With the economic slowdown and the consequent fall in jewellery sales, jewellers have recently begun touting the merits of jewellery and diamonds as being “investments”. Gold, silver, platinum or palladium rings, bracelets, necklaces and diamonds or other gemstones should not be sold as an investment and it is irresponsible to sell them as such.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

Gold and the Credit Crash / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: Adrian_Ash

"... To stay ahead of inflation, don't beg for a raise. Just borrow the money instead...!"

The TROUBLE with GOLD...? If you choose to use it as money, then you can only abandon it once. Once done, it's done forever. You can't keep floating the value of cash time and again.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

U.S. Oil Funds Bullish Structure Quashed / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Mike_Paulenoff

For the upmove off of Wednesday's upside pivot reversal (34.07) into Thursday's high (39.82) to be considered bullish, I needed to see the US Oil Fund ETF (NYSE: USO) weakness hold at or above 38.00, which was the case yesterday afternoon. However, this morning's gap down open and plunge beneath 35.78 has quashed the potentially bullish pattern structure into something considerably less constructive -- and possibly has initiated a new downleg within the still dominant bear trend.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

More on Gold Backwardation / Commodities / Gold & Silver

By: James_Turk

Over the last few weeks, there have been a lot of articles on the Internet about backwardation, i.e., when the price of commodities for delivery today is higher than the price of commodities for delivery in the future. Like nearly all the things on the Internet, most of what was written is useful, but some of it is total rubbish, and it takes time to sort through to find the gems from the rest. I offer the following in the hope that it clears up some of the confusion that has arisen about backwardation as well as to provide some insight into today's gold market.

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