Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Gold Price Manipulation – Gold Forecaster Speaks - Part 1 / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Julian_DW_Phillips
This article is in two parts. The first looks at the decades' long manipulation of the gold price and the second looks at why this will end with gold returning to its monetary role at much higher prices.
When coming off the Gold Standard it was found that Britain could not cover its gold obligations, despite its own major source of new gold in South Africa. The paper it issued was far in excess of its gold's ability to cover its promises. This was made so clear, simply by the amount of gold it held. Britain's behavior in those days set the trend for subsequent monetary duplicity until now.
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Sunday, April 29, 2007
Survey Results: More Interest, Volatility in Uranium and Price / Commodities / Uranium
By: James_Finch
More than 66 percent believed the uranium price would go higher, but less than 7 percent said they would trade uranium futures contracts over the next twelve months. More than 40 percent of our readers voted that those most likely to benefit from uranium futures trading would be current and near-term uranium mining companies.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Ethanol, Fertilizer & Higher Natural Gas Prices / Commodities / Ethanol
By: James_Finch
What does growing corn and other crops have anything to do with natural gas? It takes about 33,000 cubic feet of natural gas to produce one ton of nitrogen fertilizer. About 96 percent of the corn planted in the United States depends on fertilizers, such as Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3), 28pct-Liquid Nitrogen, Urea and Ammonium Sulfate.
Fertilizers consume more than three percent of total U.S. natural gas use. “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield.” – former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.
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Sunday, April 29, 2007
Weekly Gold and Silver Technical Analysis Report - 29h April 2007 - Technically Precious with Merv / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Merv_Burak
Time to start wondering if this is the start of a new bear or just a normal correction after a several week advance. There are analysts on both sides.
GOLD : LONG TERM
That Merv's Composite Index of Precious Metals Indices shown last week must be on to something. The initial reaction from a previous high last week, making a potential double top, accelerated this week. It's still in a “no panic yet” zone but another week or two of this kind of action and who knows?
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Gold and Silver Analysis - Precious Points: Why Not Gold? / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Dominick
"Despite a minor struggle last week, the trend continues to be up until it's not. Weaker consumer confidence and existing home data could be the start of that reversal." ~ Precious Points: Sailing the Seas of Liquidity , April 21, 2007
The dollar is sharply lower for April, and stocks are up largely on that fact, but precious metals, which would traditionally be the beneficiaries of a sinking dollar, are looking to come out roughly flat. Once again, recovery in the metals from softness earlier in the week was foiled by a Friday rally in the dollar. But the real damage started on Tuesday's economic data.
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Friday, April 27, 2007
Churning Stock Market and Gold, Silver Bullion Positions / Commodities / Financial Markets
By: Roland_Watson
The quick drop in silver this week seemed to have caught a few off guard to the extent that talk of manipulation pervaded the air. However, The Silver Analyst had already suggested a sell off in silver last weekend to subscribers and was not taken by surprise by current events.
However, in the light of that weekend comment about a silver price correction, I was asked a question about whether to sell silver stocks. That is a natural enough question which I answered but which I want to expand on here. If like me you believe we are still in a primary bull market for silver, then you may want to consider one or two matters before churning a stock or bullion position.
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Friday, April 27, 2007
A Tale of Two Crudes, WTI Divergence from Brent Crude Oil / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Elliot_H_Gue
I've received considerable e-mail from The Energy Letter subscribers asking about a rather unusual phenomenon in the crude oil markets today: a massive, unusual divergence between the prices of two of the world's most-popular crude oil benchmarks, Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI).As it turns out, this was a major topic covered in the most-recent issue of my subscription-based newsletter, The Energy Strategist ( www.energystrategist.com ). The explanation of this divergence also reveals signs of underlying strength in global oil demand. I've reproduced that analysis below:
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Friday, April 27, 2007
Gold, the Markets and India: A return to Tradition? / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Bob_Kirtley
As the United States stock market goes through the 13000 level and India 's Bombay Stock Exchange heads towards 14500 and possibly new highs we ponder the ramifications for demand for gold in India .
Friday, April 27, 2007
Base Metals Stockpiles and Prices 2 / Commodities / Metals & Mining
By: Zeal_LLC
Just a few years ago, the majority of stock traders were oblivious to the excitement that base metals had to offer commodities stocks. Futures traders hustled and bustled to make a buck in their familiar base metals marketplace, yet not even they were aware of the eruption of capital that would eventually take these markets by storm.
Today the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world's largest non-ferrous metals exchange, manages over $10 billion of traded contracts each day with well over $2 trillion worth turned over annually. These are numbers that the LME says have increased by tenfold in the last 15 or so years. And it expects another double in the next three to five years.
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Thursday, April 26, 2007
Plantinum The Forgotten Metal! / Commodities / Platinum
By: Money_and_Markets
Larry Edelson writes :Gold is within a mere 7% of a new 26-year high, exploding higher by $38 in just the last seven weeks.
The culprit is the growing recognition that the U.S. dollar is weak at the knees and heading down the tubes. That in turn is causing inflation to rev higher … and other natural resources to climb virtually non-stop.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Gold Shares – The Leverage Factor / Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks
By: Dudley_Baker
Investors the world over are constantly evaluating the leverage, risk and potential rewards of their investment decisions. Whether you are an individual investor or an analyst for a large mutual fund, leverage, risk and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow are always factors to be considered.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Gold Thoughts - Is Gold Vulnerable to the Carry Trade Unwinding? / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Ned_W_Schmidt
How much has Gold benefited from the carry trade loans? How much of the run from US$640 to US$690 has been fueled by the same borrowed money that has pushed paper equities higher? Is Gold vulnerable when the carry trade loans are forced to unwind?
How much price vulnerability might occur? These are the questions being mulled by serious investors in Gold. Unfortunately, these same questions as they apply to paper equities are being largely ignored. Too many speculators in paper equities believe the rise in the prices of their stocks is because they are talented, rather than being due to cheap money from foreign sources.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Gold, Palladium, and Sugar Commodity Markets Outlook / Commodities / Technical Analysis
By: Emanuel_Balarie
Several weeks ago I wrote about how the US dollar was on the verge of a breakdown and that gold was on a verge of a break out. Sure enough, the dollar has hit multi-year lows against a wide array of currencies and gold, while overbought in the short-term, seems to be well on its way to multi-year highs.
One of the interesting aspects of this recent move up in the gold market is that gold prices have had a relatively orderly move up to new highs. After the knee-jerk sell-off in gold (where gold mindlessly tracked the equities market) gold has moved higher by trading in ranges…and breaking those ranges…and moving swiftly higher due to buy stops being triggered. Another way of looking at this is that gold prices have moved higher in a “stairway” type approach. Take a look, for example, at the gold chart.
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Monday, April 23, 2007
Commodities Market Wrap - Gold, Silver, Crude Oil and Mining Stocks / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Douglas_V_Gnazzo
OilJune crude lost $2.22 to $64.11. May gasoline was down 1.9% and Natural Gas fell 5.4%. As the chart below shows, crude is at a critical stage - it either rallies up from here to hold support, or it breaks through support and starts a new leg down.
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Monday, April 23, 2007
Gold Forecast & Analysis - Ounces Aren't Just Ounces / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Neil_Charnock
Gold broke out last week and now looks set to run up at US$730 but a few resistance levels above here first. Back at the start of the year I made an educated guess at a May $730 top for the first half of 2007, time will tell. This is not a technical article, if is a fundamental one for my PDF clients and resource investors. Tread warily here is my current take – the ASX is toppy and needs a pull back but there are still some opportunities in the resource arena short term. Full technical and fundamental coverage of this is in the latest GoldOz Newsletter.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, April 23, 2007
COT Warning of possible near-term top in Gold and Breakdown in Resource Stocks / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Clive_Maund
Resource Stock investors have become increasingly excited as gold, silver and oil have advanced over the past 7 weeks or so, with the usual cheerleaders advancing plausible reasons why gold and silver will soon break out to new highs. However, as we will shortly see, big money is positioning itself to fleece the little guy yet again, with the same old music playing over, as it has done countless times in the past.
On shorter-term charts all seems to be OK - gold and silver were wildly overbought after their strong run in late 2005 and early last year, and were entitled to take a lengthy breather to let the extremely overbought condition unwind, and as they now approach the highs of last year they are nowhere near as overbought, and thus on the face of it, they appear to be ready to break to new highs at last.
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Sunday, April 22, 2007
Gold, Metals and US Dollar Analysis : Sailing the Seas of Liquidity / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Dominick
Oroborean writes “A corrective dollar rally, as short-lived as it might be, could become a hurdle for metals going forward … When support finally kicks in, as it may have on Friday, there could be some correction and consolidation in metals. ”
~ Precious Points: Got Discipline? , April 14, 2007
Everywhere you turn, economists and commentators are talking up the benefit of the weak dollar – how it's good for exports, how it will boost the profit margins of multinational corporations. What you don't hear quite as much of is how it makes your cash savings worse less and less and how your wealth would be more than keeping pace with inflation if it was stored in metals.
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Sunday, April 22, 2007
Weekly Gold and Silver Technical Analysis Report - Potential Double Top / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Merv_Burak
Lots of speculation about the next great gold boom – or not ? My Composite Index of Precious Metals Indices shows a serious double top. Let's hope it's just a short term aberration.
COMPOSITE INDEX of PRECIOUS METALS INDICES
At the end of most of these commentaries you will find a table of Precious Metals Indices. The table includes the major North American precious metals Indices, the various FTSE Gold Mines Indices, the seven Merv's Indices as well as gold, silver and the US$. Subscribers to my weekly precious metals service get the full expanded table along with a weekly Composite Index chart that shows the average weekly performance of all of these Indices. This week the chart may be giving a very serious warning so I thought I'd show it to all my commentary readers.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Gold Forecast - The Short-Term Prospects for Gold / Commodities / Gold & Silver
By: Julian_DW_Phillips
Brown Again ? 
Two of the chief qualifications for a Minister of the Crown in the U.K. are a complete disregard for the opinions of others and absolutely no regard for the consequences of his actions. Mr. Brown is superbly qualified to be Prime Minister in this regard.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the foolishness of the sale of half Britain 's gold in a manner to guarantee a low price, Mr. Brown unashamedly continues to press for the sale of other people's gold.
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Friday, April 20, 2007
Crude Oil and the US Dollar Under the Microscope / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Clif_Droke
Oil and gas stocks had a great run to the upside following the correction low in earlier March. The Amex Oil Index (XOI) rallied nearly 180 points from its March low of 1,100 to its most recent high of 1,280. The Amex Natural Gas Index (XNG) was likewise bullish from March through late April and rallied from its correction trough of 440 to its latest high of 500.
How much energy is left in the oil/gas stock sector after this extraordinary rally? To answer that question we turn to the internal momentum indicator series known as OILMO.
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