Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Gold Price Technical Chart Turns Bullish / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Precious metals have rebounded strongly over the past week, following comments from the Federal Reserve. While the FED dropped the word “patient” from their statement last week in relation to raising interest rates, Yellen clarified that removing the term patient does not mean the Fed is impatient. To the contrary, the FED plans to remain “highly accommodative” even after the first rate hike occurs.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2015
California’s Epic Drought: Only One Year of Water Left! / Commodities / Water Sector
Wars over California’s limited water supply have been going on for at least a century. Water wars have been the subject of some vintage movies, including the 1958 hit The Big Country starring Gregory Peck, Clint Eastwood’s 1985 Pale Rider, 1995’s Waterworld with Kevin Costner, and the 2005 film Batman Begins. Most acclaimed was the 1975 Academy Award winner Chinatown with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, involving a plot between a corrupt Los Angeles politician and land speculators to fabricate the 1937 drought in order to force farmers to sell their land at low prices. The plot was rooted in historical fact, reflecting battles between Owens Valley farmers and Los Angeles urbanites over water rights.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2015
What’s Wrong With Silver? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Which silver? Paper silver or real silver?
Silver prices are largely set on the COMEX futures – paper silver. A company can post the margin and sell short thousands of contracts with no actual metal available thereby creating artificial supply. The reverse occurs when some company buys thousands of contracts. It is a paper game, but unfortunately it has tremendous influence on the price of real silver.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Gold Price Rises For Fifth Day – 2 and Half Week High / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,192.55, EUR 1,088.89 and GBP 801.18 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,193.25, EUR 1,085.56 and GBP 798.96 per ounce.
Gold rose 0.26 percent or $3.10 and closed at $1,193.70 an ounce yesterday, while silver slipped 0.35 percent or $0.06 at $17.00 an ounce.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Palladium Commodity Price Forecast / Commodities / Palladium
Let’s analyse the technicals of Palladium taking a bottom up approach beginning with the weekly chart.
PALLADIUM WEEKLY CHART
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
The Secret of Success in Mineral Exploration / Commodities / Metals & Mining
By Louis James, Chief Metals & Mining Investment Strategist
As an investor, I want to bet on the jockeys who win the most races, not just the best-looking horses. So, while I’m no Tom Peters or Stephen Covey, I’ve made a study of success over the last decade. The critical question for a metals investor: what does it takes to be a serially successful mine-finder?
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Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Safety Deposit Boxes In UK Being Closed By HSBC – Not Closing Gold Vaults / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
- Incorrect rumours abound around blogosphere that HSBC is rapidly and quietly closing gold vaults
- HSBC are in fact closing down their safety deposit box facilities in vaults in branches
- Banks internationally closing boxes as not profitable and move to “cashless society”
- Incorrect speculation that HSBC move forcing gold clients to sell bullion
- Speculation understandable given poor communications from HSBC and manipulation of precious metal markets
- Salutary lesson to all – media and blogosphere – to be more rigorous
- Underlines vital importance of owning gold in allocated manner outside financial system
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Wall Street Losing Millions From Bad Energy Loans / Commodities / Oil Companies
Oil companies continue to get burned by low oil prices, but the pain is bleeding over into the financial industry. Major banks are suffering huge losses from both directly backing some struggling oil companies, but also from buying high-yield debt that is now going sour.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Casey Gathers Top Gold Experts to Share Secrets for Making Money in Any Market / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
When the bears are attacking and "stuckholders" are looking for shelter, that is the time to call on the experts who have found a way to make money in up and down years. In this excerpt from the Casey Research "Going Vertical" webinar, The Gold Report shares inside secrets from Pierre Lassonde, Rick Rule, Jeff Clark, Doug Casey, Frank Holmes and Louis James as they call out their favorite picks of yesterday and today. (Click here to watch it now.)
Pierre Lassonde, co-founder and chairman of Franco-Nevada Corp. (FNV:TSX; FNV:NYSE): I think today's gold market is reminiscent of the 2001–2004 era. Gold bottomed around August of 2001 at $250/ounce ($250/oz) when the gold stocks recorded their absolute lows. I became president of Newmont Gold Co. at that point, and we were selling for $18/share and our cash costs were $160/oz.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Thoughts on The Current Crude Oil Market / Commodities / Crude Oil
Crude oil has slid into a definitive bear market starting 2H14. Since most of the oil companies (majors as well as E&Ps) based their budget, growth, and strategy trajectory on ~$50 oil price scenario even for the most conservative, the current ~ $45 WTI price environment has created a crisis situation for many oil and gas producers.
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Monday, March 23, 2015
Platinum Commodity Price False Break Low / Commodities / Platinum
Platinum has been trending down quite strongly in recent times however I think that move is now done with a low at US$1086 and a bear market rally is already in its infancy. Let’s investigate using the daily and weekly charts.
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Monday, March 23, 2015
Silver Price Reliance During U.S. Dollar Rally / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Silver showed impressive resilience on the latest dollar rally, refusing to break to new lows, and with the dollar signaling that its huge rally is burning out, and gold's COTs now strongly bullish, the outlook for silver is suddenly a lot better. While the bearish scenario painted in the last update is still a possibility that could become reality in the event that we spiral into a deflationary implosion, right now with the dollar faltering, the picture for silver is brightening fast.
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Sunday, March 22, 2015
Gold and Silver - That Was The Week That Was / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
"Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance. Furthermore, if an economy with a sizeable body of speculative financial units is in an inflationary state, and the authorities attempt to exorcise inflation by monetary constraint, then speculative units will become Ponzi units and the net worth of previously Ponzi units will quickly evaporate. Consequently, units with cash flow shortfalls will be forced to try to make position by selling out position. This is likely to lead to a collapse of asset values."
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Sunday, March 22, 2015
Exploring The Gold Market: The Fed, The Charts. The COTS and GLD / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
As most of you know by now, I am bearish on gold from an intermediate term perspective on account of the fact that I do believe that the Fed is eventually going to have to raise rates and try to somehow normalize monetary policy/interest rates. Perhaps I am wrong about that but I find it hard to believe that we can expect near zero interest rates into perpetuity. My own view is that the Fed can only do much to help the economy with monetary policy. What it cannot do however is to set fiscal policy or to deal with the heavy regulatory burden of an overreaching federal government. That will require a change in the party which controls the White House but that is unfortunately a long way off at this point. I maintain that had we a business friendly administration (think Obamacare and the burden that has produced on business for example, not to mention a runamok EPA), coupled with near zero interest rates and more fiscally sound budgets (controlled spending) that the economy would be in much better shape than it currently is. That being said, we have to work with what we have before us, not what we might wish for. For now, we have a Fed that has managed to inject enough uncertainty in regards to interest rates that it has taken some of the selling pressure off of gold for the time being.
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Sunday, March 22, 2015
Gold Trading Week Ahead - 23 March 2015 / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Gold staged a strong rally following the conclusion of the FOMC meeting last week with the market downgrading interest rate expectations and also the outlook for inflation. Gold ended the week up over US$23/oz and erased all of the losses of 2015 so far.The US dollar weakness and dollar profit taking is benefiting gold, in the short term I expect this will continue and be a significant driver for the price of gold. The dollar index lost more than 2.5 percent last week.
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Sunday, March 22, 2015
Is the tide turning for Precious Metals? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Chris Marchese writes: Has the tide begun to turn for the precious metals, notably silver and gold? In our view the turn began last year and if pressed to pinpoint one event, it would be following the failure of the Swiss referendum when the SNB de-pegged the franc from the euro. The Swiss National Bank was frustrated with the continued depreciation of the Euro. This had as much to do with sentiment as it did with the SNB clearing seeing the Euro might be going the way of the Rentenmark.
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Sunday, March 22, 2015
Gold And Silver - China's AIIB Spells U.s. Dollar Demise, Not Clear For Precious Metals / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank [AIIB]. What is it? Yet another political disaster for the Obama administration as it leaves a wide swath of blunder after blunder in massively failed efforts to keep US allies from aligning with China's newest anti-US, anti- fiat Federal Reserve "dollar, AIIB. It will not just compete with the World Bank, a US- dominated financial entity, the AIIB will logically replace the World Bank in its own Asian sphere of influence.
Obama is pissed, a crass way to express his sentiment but an apt word choice for a crass politician with virtually no international diplomatic skills, and the AIIB amply exemplifies how true this is. The US continues to become more and more isolated through its ongoing war drums beating incessantly as the only viable solution the US has to offer.
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Saturday, March 21, 2015
Cocoa Commodity Price Technical Outlook / Commodities / Cocoa
Cocoa is the basis of chocolate. The word cocoa is derived from the Spanish word cacao as the cacao tree is native to Latin America. It originated in the Amazon and Orinoco basins which are in Colombia and Venezuela. However, it is now West Africa which dominates world production of cocoa with the Ivory Coast being by far the largest producer.
Let's investigate the technicals of the cocoa price taking a top down approach beginning with the yearly chart.
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Saturday, March 21, 2015
Gold Sentiment Not Bearish Enough / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
Precious metals are closing the week out with a good rally. The Federal Reserve nonsense proved to be a catalyst as it can be in either direction. Regardless of the Fed, the precious metals sector was oversold and due for a bounce. We wrote about that last week. Maybe this could be the bear market bottom. Maybe not. It concerns us that Gold is rebounding from an area of insignificant long term support amid sentiment that is not at a bearish extreme. Extreme bearish sentiment coupled with very strong support raises the probability of a major rebound or bear market bottom. I don't see that for Gold, yet.
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Friday, March 20, 2015
FOMC is boxed in, Gold and Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement released on Wednesday was notable for deferring interest rate rises to some unspecified time in the future. This was realistic, given the continuing strength of the dollar, downward revisions to the inflation outlook, and economic weakness in virtually all industry surveys. The Fed's obvious problem in deferring a rise in interest rates is the continuing improvement in the unemployment statistics. However these are seriously flawed: for example in February housing starts fell sharply due to the bad weather, yet seasonally adjusted non-farm payrolls for residential construction jobs were said to rise by 17,200.
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