Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, July 23, 2020
China Recovered in Q2. Will the Red Dragon Sink Gold? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
China’s economy grew 3.2 percent in Q2 2020. The expansion was above expectations, but it does not have to sink gold.Last week, China reported that its economy grew 3.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of this year, following a 6.8 percent contraction in the previous quarter, as the chart below shows. Importantly, the actual growth rate beat the market expectations of a 2.5 percent expansion. The number is of great importance also because China is the first major economy to report positive growth after the coronavirus pandemic and the Great Lockdown. So, the Chinese data bode well for the U.S. and other countries, where the epidemic started later.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Translating the Gold Index Signal into Gold Target / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Last week, we wrote that gold miners flashed an “extremely overbought” signal, which they had only flashed once in the past – almost right at the 2016 top. The Gold Miners Bullish Percent Index recently moved to the highest level that it could reach – 100.
The only other case when the index was at 100, was in mid-2016.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Weakness in commodity prices suggests a slowing economy / Commodities / Commodities Trading
As the world's economic engine starts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for certain key commodities are a good indicator of the rebound strength.
The S&P GSCI Commodity Index (Chart 1) is a collection of 24 commodities from all commodity sectors (energy products, industrial metals, agricultural products, livestock products and precious metals).
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Gold and Oil: Be Aware of the "Spike" / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
"Hope and fear look different on a chart"
Recently in these pages, we noted that bull markets in stocks tend to end with "a subtly slowing ascent" rather than with a final "spike" higher, as many investors believe. Historical examples were provided.
It was also pointed out that, by contrast, commodities do tend to end major uptrends with a price spike.
The Wall Street classic book, Elliott Wave Principle: Key to Market Behavior, by Frost & Prechter explains why (keep in mind regarding the quote from the book that fifth waves are the final wave in the main trend of a financial market):
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Gold and gold mining stocks are entering a strong seasonal phase / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
You may have heard that gold typically rallies seasonally from the middle of the year. This trend is driven by jewelry demand, which increases ahead of the Christmas business, the Indian wedding season and the Chinese New Year celebrations on the back of advance purchases by jewelers, which tend to put upward pressure on prices.
But what about the seasonal trend in gold stocks? Since the earnings of gold producers are highly geared to the gold price, a relationship should be discernible.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Silver Eyes Key Breakout Levels as Inflation Heats Up / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Gold and silver markets advanced early this week, with silver leading the way. On Thursday, the metals sold off a bit as the U.S. dollar gained.
The major trend for the dollar, however, is down. The Dollar Index has been grinding lower since mid March, when it put in a spike high.
Silver finally broke through $19 level with a strong close above it on Monday. There hasn’t yet been much follow-through. Although silver has continued to close above $19, we’re not seeing a big momentum push higher.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Gold During Coronavirus Recession and Beyond / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
It’s official now! On June 8, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research stated that economic activity in the United States had peaked in February 2020 (and in Q4 2019, when it comes to the peak in quarterly economic activity), marking the start of a recession. The peak also designates the end of the expansion that began in June 2009 and lasted 128 months, the longest in the history of business cycles dating back to 1854.How did gold behave during the last U.S. economic expansion? Let’s look at the chart below. As one can see, a lot happened in the gold market during 2009-2020 period. Initially, the yellow metal rallied until 2011, doubling its price from about $900 to $1,900 in September 2011.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Summertime Sizzle for Gold and Silver / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Summer doldrums? Not for precious metals markets!
In early July, gold and silver each broke out to fresh multi-year highs. The yellow metal is within striking distance of new all-time highs and the headline worthy figure of $2,000/oz.
The white metal, meanwhile, has a lot of catching up to do. And as it does, the gains in percentage terms could be explosive.
Silver has already packed on 60% since its March panic-selling low. Importantly, it has shown leadership by narrowing its historically large discount to the gold price.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Silver Demand Exploding! / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Silver investment demand is exploding in recent months, skyrocketing higher in wildly-unprecedented fashion! That has catapulted silver sharply higher since mid-March’s COVID-19-lockdown stock panic. Accelerating even in this usually-weak summer season, the massive capital inflows deluging into silver show no signs of abating. This is very bullish for silver, yet most traders remain unaware it is happening.
While silver prices are fairly-widely followed, the data revealing the underlying fundamentals driving this metal is sparse. The best silver global supply-and-demand data is only published once a year by the venerable Silver Institute in its outstanding World Silver Surveys. The latest covering 2019 was released in April, and is essential reading for all traders interested in silver. One key trend is very relevant to today.
Last year global silver demand edged up an ever-so-slight 0.4% to 991.8m ounces worldwide. Every demand category fell except for two, net physical investment and net investment in exchange-traded funds. The former rose a respectable 12.3% to 186.1m ounces. It makes sense investors’ interest in silver should grow with its price climbing 15.3% in 2019. That translated into far faster growth in silver ETFs.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 17, 2020
Gold Rallies Together With U.S. Covid-19 Cases / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
The number of cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. have been rallying very quickly in last weeks, giving way only to the gold prices, which have surpassed $1,800.
It’s not easy to terminate the viruses, especially that they are not quite alive. Indeed, the pandemic of the coronavirus is still not over, as the chart below shows. The global number of daily confirmed Covid-19 cases has surpassed 220,000 last week – and the trend is still upward.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 17, 2020
Gold & Silver Measured Moves / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
The next few weeks are certain to attract much attention to precious metals. Hardly anyone can argue that Gold has not experienced an incredible upside price rally over the last 12+ months. Recently, Gold closed above $1800 for the first time since 2011. Our researchers believe the next target is $1935. Keep reading to learn why we believe this is the next major price target for Gold.
Gold Weekly Price Analysis
Over the past 18+ months, Gold continues to develop price patterns that seem to be replicating going forward. This pattern consists of an advance in price followed by consolidation/rotation in price to set up a new momentum base. The example of this price advance from May 2019 to August 2019 consisted of a $267 upside price advance (just over 20%). Subsequent advances were similar in size. November 2019 to March 2020 advance rose $248. March 2020 to April 2020 advance rose $325.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Silver Is At A Critical Point Based On US Dollar Action / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Previously, I have shown how there were virtually no significant Silver rallies over the last 50 years during a period when the US Dollar index has been rising.
Betting on a silver rally when the US Dollar index is in decline makes for great odds. There have been two significant Silver rallies in the last 50 years (marked out with rectangles on the chart below). During both of these, the US dollar index was in serious decline.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Gold & Silver Gaining on US Dollar Weakness / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
The US economy is nowhere near recovering from the lockdown measures imposed by cities and states during the covid-19 pandemic, and that is weighing on the US dollar, which has fallen sharply since March.
The beneficiary, as expected, has been gold (and silver), which normally moves in the opposite direction as the greenback. Year to date, spot gold has risen 16% to $1,811/oz, while the US Dollar Index (DXY), a measure of its value against a basket of currencies, has slumped 6% to 96.60.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Gold Amid Epidemiological and Economical Update / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Sometimes when we observe people on the streets, when we see crowded restaurants and pubs, it seems like the pandemic has ended. But is the global epidemic really over? Not at all. Please look at the chart below. As one can see, the daily number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world is still in an upward trend.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Is it Time To Dump Gold Stocks? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2020
As a contrarian and long-term holder of Goldcorp. (now Newmont), the latest push higher in the price of gold begs the question: is now the time to sell? The concern, for the uninitiated, is that after the price of gold moves powerfully higher there is an uncanny tendency for forces to mysteriously align and push prices powerfully lower. These “forces” (excuse the conspiratorial flare), have been known to short paper gold contracts in seemingly unlimited quantities, and, according to some, with the implicit backing of the Federal Reserve…
Conspiracy or not, it is obvious that the paper-traded price of gold can have an impact on the physical price of gold and/or the sentiment of those that buy and sell precious metals. After all, just as “$1,800+ gold!” attracts attention, like it did today, so too can headlines like “COMEX gold suffers historic crash!”. In other words, while record inflows into gold ETFs this year are certainly noteworthy, the informed contrarian knows that record inflows can quickly lead to record outflows.
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Getting Ahead of the Game: What Determines the Prices of Oil? / Commodities / Crude Oil
Oil is a commodity that plays an indisputable role in the global economy. At the start of the 20th century, the oil industry went into mass production, thus giving birth to what we refer to as the modern era of oil consumption. Gradually, coal was starting to take a backseat to it and oil became the world’s #1 fuel source and the undisputed king of commodity trading.
To this very day, this remains unchanged. The only question is, what drives the prices of oil?
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 11, 2020
The Bearish Combination of Soaring Silver and Lagging GDX Miners / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Silver is moving up quite shortly today, which sounds bullish, until one realizes that silver tends to be particularly strong right before the precious metals market tops. And you know what’s the other thing that quite often happens at the tops, in addition to silver’s temporary strength? Miners tend to underperform. What did gold miners do on the last trading day of the previous week?
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 10, 2020
Golds quick price move increases the odds of a correction / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Every market corrects, maybe profit taking, maybe of allowing those who missed out, to get in!
The current open interest on the gold contract looks to high after a very fast price move, it looks like 2008 may be repeating. A quick flushing out of the weak hands open interest may take place before a real advance in price takes place. The correction may be on the back of a wider sell off of risk assets (either before of after US elections) as all assets suffer contagion selling (just like 2008).
This blog view is a gold price correction of 10% to 20% range is a buying opportunity. Of course we may see a very minor price correction but a long time correction, a price or time is correction is expected, we shall watch and wait.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 09, 2020
Gold and Silver Seasonal Trend Analysis / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020
Gold, silver, and their miners’ stocks suffer their weakest seasonals of the year in early summers. With traders’ attention normally diverted to vacations and summer fun, interest in and demand for precious metals usually wane. Without outsized investment demand, gold tends to drift sideways dragging silver and miners’ stocks with it. Feared as the summer doldrums, sometimes unusual catalysts short-circuit them.
This doldrums term is very apt for gold’s summer predicament. It describes a zone in the world’s oceans surrounding the equator. There hot air is constantly rising, creating long-lived low-pressure areas. They are often calm, with little or no prevailing winds. History is full of accounts of sailing ships getting trapped in this zone for days or weeks, unable to make headway. The doldrums were murder on ships’ morale.
Crews had no idea when the winds would pick up again, while they continued burning through their limited stores of food and drink. Without moving air, the stifling heat and humidity were suffocating on these ships long before air conditioning. Misery and boredom were extreme, leading to fights breaking out and occasional mutinies. Being trapped in the doldrums was viewed with dread, it was a very trying experience.
Gold investors can somewhat relate. Like clockwork heading into most summers, gold starts drifting listlessly sideways. It often can’t make significant progress no matter what trends looked like heading into June, July, and August. As the days and weeks slowly pass, sentiment deteriorates markedly. Patience is gradually exhausted, supplanted with deep frustration. Plenty of traders capitulate, abandoning ship.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 09, 2020
Following the Gold Stock Leaders as the Fed Prints / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2020
Gold stocks have led the market for a year, and with economic deceleration and Fed policy response that leadership looks to continue [edit: today’s ‘in the bag’ bounce-back Jobs report does little to alter the economic deceleration theme]
We have been on a bullish gold mining view for over a year now. Over that time there have been three interruptions, the downward-biased consolidation from August to November 2019, the flash crash (and very constructive gap filling mission) in March and most recently the pullback that logically began in May as broad stock market relief started to fan out to more and more momentum chasers who’d finally gotten the hint that the Fed means to devalue the US currency (in competition to a degree with its global counterparts seeking to do the same), making cash a non-viable investment position (other than for risk management to the bullish asset market atmosphere).
Read full article... Read full article...