Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Crude Oil Price Epic Blowout / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Bob_Loukas
The FED’s easy money has encouraged rampant energy speculation and over-investment, resulting in more than $500 billion in new loans and investments in just the past 4 years. And so long as Crude prices stayed comfortably above $90, investments made money and everyone was happy. But once energy prices started falling, the decline quickly became a negative loop-back effect because the very high levels of leverage could not tolerate the move. Whenever asset prices fall in a highly levered market, there is often a sudden lack of liquidity to absorb the speculators’ need to unwind leverage, leading to desperation and fire sales. In the case of energy, the sudden disappearance of “investors” highlights just how speculative the underlying market had become.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Stunning Crude Oil Price Crash - Black Gold Loses its Glitter / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Peter_Schiff
The stunning 40% drop in the price of oil over the past few months has scrambled global economic forecasts, changed the geo-political landscape, and has severely pressured many energy sector investments. Economists are scratching their heads to determine if the drop is good or bad for the economy or whether cheap oil will add to or decrease unemployment, or complicate the global effort to "defeat" deflation. While all of these issues merit detailed discussions, the first question to address is if the steep drop is here to stay and whether energy prices will stay low enough, for long enough, to seriously reshuffle the economic deck. Based on a variety of factors, this is not likely to happen. I believe a series of technical, industrial, and monetary factors will combine to push oil back up to, and potentially beyond, the levels that it has seen over the last few years.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Silver Price Bottom? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Clive_Maund
Silver broke out of its 5-month downtrend last week as expected, but, as with gold, the move was unfortunately not confirmed by action in stocks, which have continued to drift lower. When this fact is combined with the ramping of Commercial short and Large Spec long positions over the past couple of weeks, it starts to look like this breakout was false. Certainly a reaction is looking a lot more likely now.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Gold Price Base Building Bullish Pattern / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Clive_Maund
If we lived in a normal word of fiscal propriety, the falling oil price would be viewed as something to celebrate, as it reduces costs across the board, and should theoretically boost the economy, but we live in an abnormal debt-wracked world where instead fears are surfacing that the plunging oil price will trigger a series of cascading loan defaults that have the potential to collapse the system - already world stockmarkets are buckling. If things really start to unravel it should provide the perfect excuse to bring in global coordinated QE, which we have been moving towards over the past few years, albeit on an ad hoc basis, whose underlying purpose will be to maintain interest rates at zero to stop the system collapsing, and to push the bill for the mess onto the little guy, whose standard of living will be progressively eroded by QE engendered inflation. At what point will they ride to the rescue with their global QE program? - that is a matter of conjecture, but we can presume that they will wait until things get sufficiently bad that people are starting to clamor for it so that it becomes politically acceptable and they can get away with it.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Silver Eagle Coin Sales Very Robust - Record High For Second Consecutive Year / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: GoldCore
Silver bullion demand remains very robust as silver stackers continue to stack. 2014 has been another record-breaking year at the U.S. Mint which has sold 43.3 million silver eagle coins – up from 42.7 million coins last year.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Is The Oil Price Collapse A Monumental Black Swan? / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: DK_Matai
Although the conditions for an oil price collapse have been there since 2013, yet when it arrived in the second half of 2014, it happened suddenly and then accelerated in momentum like a snowball rolling down the Alps. A truly monumental black swan with many cascading consequences for geo-strategy, financial markets and the global economy. Ten key questions discussed at a recent private lunch ATCA 5000 hosted for select chairmen and chief executives of major financial institutions, family offices and technology players:
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Monday, December 15, 2014
Gold - The Weight of Time as Trend / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Submissions
George R Harrison writes: We’ve all felt it. The ‘weight’ of time acting as Trends in the markets.
Trends that hold longer than expected and whose change in direction appears when we least expect or believe it.
Once time accumulates for an action and establishes a Trend, those trends take a lot of work to change.
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Sunday, December 14, 2014
Crude Oil Price Crashing Towards $40 per Barrel / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Joseph_Russo
From speculation of international currency wars, to related geopolitical tensions, to the economics of actual supply-demand equations, there is no shortage of theories as to the reasons behind the recent tumble in crude, or if such a decline bodes ill or well for the economy of main street.
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Sunday, December 14, 2014
Gold and Silver Dreaming of a White Christmas / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Jesse
Stocks continued lower, putting in their worst week since May 2012.
Oil cracked into the $50's. We paid 2.25 per gallon for regular gasoline yesterday. Supply has been healthy, but demand has been off. So this is a mixed bag. We need to keep an eye on retail sales and wages.
I have a suspicion that a lot of the stock selling is part of an end of year portfolio cleansing. We will know more if we see how it goes next week.
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Saturday, December 13, 2014
Gold And Silver - Wall Street, aka United States, Pulls Off Another Destructive Coup / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Michael_Noonan
The clichéd definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
There is no room for sanity in the United States, anymore, and the public is sleepwalking through it all. Arguably, this has been carefully orchestrated by the elites over the past century, as in 100 years and not just in the past decade or so. Capitalism is dead in the US, and has been for decades. Ironically, China and Russia are far more capitalistic. Once the elites took over the money supply, with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, there was a concerted effort to take over all media and start a propaganda scheme that is far superior than any other country in effective population control.
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Saturday, December 13, 2014
Gold and Silver Starting to Show Bullish Signs / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne
We've believed that Gold would need to break $1100 before we thought a bottom could start to develop. While that could still be the case, we are starting to see building evidence that precious metals could be forming a bottom.
In the past we've written about the importance of Gold's performance against other asset classes. Relative strength in Gold has preceded important bottoms in the Gold price during 2001, 2005 and 2008. That relative strength is starting to show. Below we plot Gold against various asset classes, which are noted in the chart. Several days ago Gold against foreign currencies (and the Euro) closed at a 15-month high. Gold has also moved to a 13-month high against Commodities. Also Gold may have bottomed against global equities as it has held support three times in 2014. Gold is weak only against the S&P 500.
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Friday, December 12, 2014
Commodities - Is Inflation Oversold? / Commodities / Commodities Trading
By: Gary_Tanashian
First, for all you right minded wording detectives out there, you are absolutely right… inflation is not rising prices and deflation is not dropping prices. Also, deflation is not two measures of a heavily manipulated bond market (chart 1) dropping impulsively. But for the sake of argument, let’s realize that Main Street does indeed call $4 regular at the pump “inflation” and every several years when a scare crops up they call dropping stocks and house prices “deflation”.
Here are some pictures of an over sold ‘inflation’ story, which put another way, is an over bought ‘deflation’ story.
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Friday, December 12, 2014
Gold Was The Safe Haven This Week / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Alasdair_Macleod
This week precious metals continued their recovery, with gold up $35 at $1220 and silver up about $1 at $17 this morning, thus building on the improved trend since gold bottomed nearly $90 lower at $1132 on 7 November.
Gold seems to be finding support at the 50-day moving average (MA), which currently stands at $1198 and now rising. The 200-day MA is at $1246, which suggests supply at this level could cap the rise for the moment: these levels matter to technical traders. On Comex there is evidence of some buying of gold futures, as opposed to bear closing, which is reflected in the rise in net contracts for the managed Money category shown in the chart below.
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Friday, December 12, 2014
New York Times on Benefits of Gold in Currency Wars / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: GoldCore
The New York Times published an important article this week in which the benefits of gold to nation states during a period of currency wars was highlighted. The article was noteworthy as the New York Times has rarely covered gold in a positive manner.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Petro Dollar Ponzi Madness / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Dr_Jeff_Lewis
The drop in commodity, and especially oil prices, has been spectacular. The price action has generated a wide range of commentary. Some say this is a reflection of the true state of the global economy. Like the Baltic dry goods index or electricity consumption.
Some will say the fall in oil is deflationary - priced in as the inevitable confluence of factors ranging from demographics to lack of real economic growth manifest. Or it is more evidence of failed monetary policy. And paradoxically, another excuse to double down and go the way of Japan in pursuit of a lost decade muddle thru.
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Friday, December 12, 2014
2014 Silver Eagle Sales Break Annual Record at Over 43 Million! / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Jason_Hamlin
Silver Eagle sales in 2014 have already broken the 2013 annual record with a few weeks of sales still left to be counted. As of December 11, the U.S. Mint reported that 43.1 million silver eagles have been sold so far in 2014. This compares to the 42.7 million during all of 2013, which was the previous all-time record.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Will Crude Oil Kill The Zombies? / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Oil producer Russia hikes rates to 10.5% as the ruble continues to plunge, while fellow producer Norway does the opposite, and cuts its rates, but also sees its currency plummet. As Greek stocks lose another 7.35% after Tuesday’s 13% loss on rumors about what the left leaning Syriza party will or will not do if it wins upcoming elections, and virtually anonymous Dubai drops 7.42%. We all know the story of the chain and its weakest link, and beware, these really still ARE global markets.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Silver Price Bottom - Maybe / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By: Joseph_Russo
If you’re wondering whether silver has finally bottomed, just hang on because in a minute, we’re going to outline the 3-essential criteria points that will determine if this is going to be the case or not.
Is $14.10 all she wrote for silver bears? Technically, we cannot yet confirm this; however, I must admit that this particular bottom does appear rather alluring.
Don’t get your shorts all twisted in a bunch just yet people. Remember, you don’t want to fall prey to every pretty-looking bottom that comes along now, do you?
Friday, December 12, 2014
Low Crude Oil Prices Fuel Bonanza Increases in Ethanol Stocks / Commodities / Ethanol
By: The_Energy_Report
Chen Lin was one of the very few who foresaw the collapse in oil prices, so investors are well advised to pay attention to his advice. In this interview with The Energy Report, the author of the What is Chen Buying? What is Chen Selling? newsletter touts the prospects of a few oil companies that can prosper in the downturn, and explains why cheap oil means high profits for U.S. ethanol producers.
The Energy Report: You anticipated the collapse of the price of oil. How did you see this coming when so few others did?
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Thursday, December 11, 2014
Russia’s Unfazed by Falling Crude Oil Prices / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Marin_Katusa
Oil is not quite as powerful a weapon against modern-day Russia as one might think.
By arguing that the slump in oil prices will finish off Russia just like it did the Soviet Union, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in the Daily Telegraph, is forgetting how far Russia has come since those dark days.
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