Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Friday, June 08, 2018
The Deviant Conundrum Called Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Precious metals expert Michael Ballanger discusses silver's mercurial aspects. When I was a young lad, there was a classmate (let's call him "Frankie") in the very early years of my education whose behavior was quite often deemed as "peculiar" and while I found him immensely entertaining, the teaching staff and my fellow students did not entirely agree. Frankie was the kind of kid who would bang on our doorknocker on a frigid winter morning just before sunrise, fully clad in hockey skates, gloves and stick, and ask if he could skate on our frozen backyard hockey rink. The fact that it was a school day made it not exactly the brightest of decisions but my Dad would invariably say "Alright. You two boys have got 20 minutes then back in your houses to get ready for school." It was never an outright rejection on the grounds of unsuitable behavior; it was more so an accommodation for the simple reason that 20 minutes of hockey at 6:35 a.m. in advance of school was a "noble enterprise" and certainly beat watching Captain Kangaroo over a bowl of Fruit Loops.
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Friday, June 08, 2018
Get Out Of Crypto Cannabis Bubble Before It Pops and Move Into Bargain Basement Miners / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
Summary
1)2018 has seen so much volatility in the equity and bond markets after going straight up since 2009.
2)"Everything" bubble is simply the result of record low negative real rates manipulated by Central Bankers to prevent deflation by all means possible.
3)The ending of QE combined with increasingly inflationary concerns has sparked the US to start raising rates.
Thursday, June 07, 2018
Sharp Dollar Appreciation and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
On the macroeconomic front, the rapid strengthening of the U.S. dollar has been the most important development since the latest edition of the Market Overview. Let’s mull over the reasons behind it and its potential effects on the gold market.
As one can see in the chart below, the U.S. dollar appreciated 6 percent against the broad basket of currencies since its bottom from the early February. But the real rally started in mid-April. Since April the 17th, the index rose from 117.27 to 122.16 on May the 18th, for more than 4 percent.
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Thursday, June 07, 2018
Why $10,000 Gold Will Not Be What You Think / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
For almost 7 years now, I have been actively engaged in the online community relating to investing opportunities. In fact, my first public article about a specific asset was when I called for a top in gold back in the summer of 2011, when most were certain we were about to easily eclipse the $2,000 mark. However, my expectation was that the $1,915 region would likely put a cap to this rally, despite the parabolic rally we were experiencing in gold at the time. And, as we now know, gold topped at $1,921 about a month after my top call.
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Wednesday, June 06, 2018
Precious Metals Represent Something True / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
You began investing in precious metals because they represent something honest.
Gold and silver are tangible, scarce, and beautiful. People have always recognized them as such. Societies naturally gravitated toward using them as a trusted medium of exchange – money – almost as soon as societies were formed.
Over time civilizations have come and gone. The world has seen constant social upheaval and change.
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Wednesday, June 06, 2018
Gold’s Breakout vs. Relativity / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Gold, silver, and mining stocks moved higher once again yesterday and the former even managed to move above the declining trend channel. Breakouts are bullish and thus the outlook for gold improved significantly… Or did it? Gold’s price in terms of the euro and gold’s relative performance to silver and mining stocks make replying to the above question quite easy. Looking at the relative price moves on a day-to-date basis doesn’t provide any interesting implications, but who says that it’s the only way in which one can examine them?
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Tuesday, June 05, 2018
Two Key Events Will Unleash Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
TIMBER!! That is the standard cry in the forest industry among loggers who cut down giant trees, the warning to step aside for the great impact. GET READY FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS BANKING CRISIS IN THE THREE BIGGEST EUROPEAN ECONOMIES: GERMANY, FRANCE, ITALY. The United States and the London Centre will not be able to avoid the crisis.
Try that again. TIMBERRRR !! An event of monumental importance and impact is on the verge of occurrence. The largest bank in Europe is Deutsche Bank. Its credit default swap is rising in cost, while its stock price has entered single digits in a powerful decline. The great D-Bank, site of the European office in management of the multi-$trillion derivatives, is on the verge of financial failure. It is the largest bank in all of Europe. All of its business segments are impaired and losing money in a hemorrhage. Furthermore, it is a big bond holder for Italian Govt Bonds. The Italian banking system is in the death throes, which has finally been recognized. Their recent elections openly debated pathways in the face of banking system failure, which the Jackass has been expecting for over a year in steady coverage with analysis. However, the bigger bond holder for Italian debt is France. Expect a massive bank crisis to emerge very soon that wrecks Societe General and BNP Paribas, its two largest banks.
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Monday, June 04, 2018
Unbelievable Analogy in Gold & Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
Gold moved lower in May and it’s also down in June, but the price action is far from being spectacular. The overall volatility is still very low and the situation in the precious metals sector is simply extremely boring. But with May now being over and with a new month, new factors are likely to come into play and the odds are that this month will be anything but boring. Especially, if we see the continuation in the analogy that practically nobody seems to realize.
Let’s move right to it and analyze the gold market from the long-term point of view.
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Monday, June 04, 2018
Inflation & Precious Metals to Rise, Fed to Act Late / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome back Axel Merk, President and Chief Investment Officer of Merk Investments and author of the book Sustainable Wealth. Axel is a highly sought after guest at financial conferences and on news outlets throughout the world and it's great to have him back on with us.
Axel, it's a pleasure to have you join us again today and thanks very much for coming on.
Axel Merk: Great to be with you. What a week.
Mike Gleason: Exactly. Well, Axel when we spoke to you in February the equity markets were in the midst of a sell off and some significant volatility, which had been extraordinarily low, came roaring back to life. Since then, the stocks have recovered some. The S&P regained about half of what it lost by the end of February and has been trading in a range since then.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Silver Mining Stocks SIL ETF Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
The major silver miners’ stocks remain deeply out of favor, languishing near multi-year lows. Of course that reflects investors’ lack of interest in silver itself. It has greatly lagged, not following gold higher like usual over the past year and a half. That’s really torpedoed silver-stock sentiment, making for a challenging environment for silver miners. But they’re weathering it as their recently-released Q1’18 results show.
Four times a year publicly-traded companies release treasure troves of valuable information in the form of quarterly reports. Companies trading in the States are required to file 10-Qs with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by 45 calendar days after quarter-ends. Canadian companies have similar requirements. In other countries with half-year reporting, many companies still partially report quarterly.
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Saturday, June 02, 2018
Crude Oil Price Bulls’ Wishes vs. Reality / Commodities / Crude Oil
Wednesday’s rally that followed Tuesday’s reversal gave hope for a sustainable move higher. But only to those, who focus on the daily price movement only, without taking bigger picture into consideration. As we explained last Friday, there were bearish implications of the weekly candlestick pattern even before it was completed. In the following analyses we wrote the same about the monthly candlestick and since May is over, the candlestick is completed, and we can say that our previous expectations were met. What do the more long-term patterns indicate for the crude oil’s future and how much can we trust the recent rally?
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Friday, June 01, 2018
Once Again, Gold Is Not Commodit / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
We know this… we really know it. This is awkward. Gold is a metal. This is why it used to be money for thousands of years: it was rare, tangible and its supply couldn’t be increased at will. An ideal store of value. So why are we saying that gold is not commodity?
We mean here not the physical attributes of gold, but the approach to valuing it. You can model it either as a currency, or as a commodity. From the investment point of view, we always treated gold as a currency, so in the previous part of this edition of the Market Overview, we discussed – in line with that approach – the three most important drivers affecting the price of gold. Now, we will present the final critique of treating gold as a commodity.
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Friday, June 01, 2018
Gold Stocks Back in the Volatility Saddle Again / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2018
Precious metals expert Michael Ballanger dissects his volatility trades.
One week ago today, I made the following commentary:
Read full article... Read full article..."Finally, I am officially revisiting the "volatility trade" (VIX: CBOE Volatililty Index) but unlike February where I used the UVXY (ProShares Trust Ultra VIX Short) as my proxy for the increase in volatility, I am using the TVIX (VelocityShares Daily 2X VIX ST ETN) because it is a double leverage ETF for the VIX but has better leverage than the UVXY. UVXY used to be a triple-leverage play on volatility but the slippage due to its dependence on futures became too difficult to navigate and they cut the leverage from 3:1 to 2:1. I had a 250% gain on this in February but gave back 9.84% in April. I am long 50% of the TVIX position from yesterday at $4.95 and am using the opening this morning to add another 25% in the $5.25 range. I will again use a 10% stop-loss but since the 52-week low is $4.60, that will be the exit level. Upside target will be $8.00 remembering of course that the 52-week high was $26.56.
The month of May is rapidly coming to a close, which starts what is historically the worst six months of the year. With the situations in Turkey and Italy worsening, with the North Korean summit in question, central banks engaged in "quantitative tightening," rising oil prices, and the possibility that the China-U.S. trade talks go south, markets are going to be in peril as summer illiquidity arrives. For this reason, gold "should" be the go-to asset, but I am banking on volatility rather than gold as the preferred method of riding the correction."
Friday, June 01, 2018
A Purrrfect Gold Price Setup! / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Featured is the weekly gold chart. The green arrows point to ‘upside reversals’, developing after price dropped below the 50WMA. The blue arrows point to a positive follow-through, following an upside reversal. A similar situation back in December enabled gold to rise for 5 out of 6 weeks! The current rise has the potential to jump above the $1365 resistance area with a target at $1395. The RSI is neutral, but the A/D line is positive.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Emerging Market Meltdown Could Undermine Oil Price Rally / Commodities / Crude Oil
Saudi Arabia and Russia just destroyed the oil price rally, potentially putting an end to all the speculation about what the group might do next. But higher production doesn’t necessarily mean higher oil prices are entirely out of the question, and in fact, the oil market is still faced with a ton of uncertainty.
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Thursday, May 31, 2018
Topping USD’s Implications for Gold Investors / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
The euro plunged, the USD Index soared and gold… just stayed put. There was no meaningful action except for the big intraday volatility that ended in a rather small decline. Can one infer anything at all from the above combination of factors? Yes, if one knows where to look.
Let’s start by recalling what was the likely reason behind the recent strength in the precious metals in the first place and why did gold move (a bit) higher along with the USD Index.
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Thursday, May 31, 2018
This is When Gold Will Soar… / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Despite the insistence of some, precious metals have not been in a bull market. After a big pop at the start of 2016, the sector has trended lower. Sure, Gold has traded up towards a major breakout but Silver and the gold stocks have trended lower. When the US Dollar corrected significantly, the stock market outperformed precious metals. Does that sound like a Gold bull market to you? The moribund performance has left us wondering what could turn the tide. A quick study of Fed history with the context of current conditions is very instructive as to when Gold could begin a true bull market.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2018
How Far Is it from North Korea to Italy? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Almost 5500 miles ( 8,800 kilometers ) . That’s the distance between Pyongyang and Rome. It seems a lot, right? But not for gold, the truly global monetary asset. In recent days, the price of the yellow metal has immediately reacted to the developments around both North Korea and Italy. What has happened?
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Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Silver Trading in Tight $1 Range As Pressure Builds For A Breakout / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
- Trump Cancels Historic Summit with North Korea
– US 10-Year Falls Below 3%, Gold Jumps Back Above $1300
– “Inflation Overshoot Could Be Helpful” – Latest FOMC Minutes
– Gold Demand in Turkey as Lira falls sharply, true inflation near 40%
– EU Crisis Looming as Italy Plan Outright ‘Money Printing’ with ‘Mini-Bots’
– Silver Trading in Tight $1 range, Pressure Building for a Breakout (see chart)
Saturday, May 26, 2018
Three Drivers of Gold, Second Look / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018
Let’s take a second look at the drivers of gold. We have already stated that the three most important factors are: the real interest rates, the U.S. dollar, and the risk aversion. Fair enough. But we have presented just the first approximation. We need to dig deeper. Why?
First, all these variables are connected together. Many analysts and investors who listen to them often make a mistake, assuming that the forces which push one driver have no effect on the other inputs into the value of gold. This is a dangerous delusion, which may expose investors to heavy losses.
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