Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, December 11, 2014
Elliott Wave Charts Point to Shocking Countertrend for Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
It's not just surfers who scrutinize wave patterns. Steven Hochberg, chief market analyst at Elliott Wave International, uses the Wave Principle to predict the movements of commodities and the stock market based on a number of factors, including sentiment. In this interview with The Gold Report, he reads the waves and shares their indications that the stock market is headed for a downtrend, while commodities will move up, although not in a direct line.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Gold Price Surges As Greece Crashes - Eurozone Debt Crisis Part II Cometh / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Gold jumped 2.3 percent to a six-week high yesterday as sharp falls on stock markets globally led to renewed demand for gold as a haven.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Fade the Gold Short Squeeze Ahead of the FOMC / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
The over-hyped Swiss gold referendum led to volatile trading for the yellow metal last week. That continued into this week with safe haven buying after the announcement of an early election in Greece and the resultant short covering continued that volatility. However, it’s very plausible that the coming week will show gold with even greater swings.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
And On The Seventh Day God Shorted His People / Commodities / Commodities Trading
And on the Seventh Day, God sold his shares? What do you think, is He short the market? Short oil? Oil does look up a tad, but then the dollar lost about a percent vs the euro, so that definitely feels like a headfake from where I’m sitting. The dollar lost more vs the euro than oil gained against the dollar. Gold and silver have somewhat more solid looking gains, but that’s against the same feverish buck, so what does it really mean? We’ll have to wait and see.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Trading Some Gold For Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Last Friday I decided the gold:silver ratio was so out of line that I swapped some of my gold for silver. The ratio is a measure of how many ounces of silver it takes to buy an ounce of gold.
Exchange Rate
My exchange rate last Friday was as follows: "USD 38.2355/goldgram & USD 16.3589/silver ounce" where 1 gram (g) of gold Equals 0.032 troy ounces (oz t) in gold.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Norway's Falling Crude Oil Output / Commodities / Crude Oil
New oil projects are being scrapped in Norway amid falling production and low oil prices.
Long held up as the model for managing oil abundance, Norway has painstakingly sought to prevent the problems that occur with other natural resource-based economies, such as corruption, slow economic growth, currency appreciation, and subsequently, deindustrialization.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Physical Gold and Silver vs. Paper Gold and Silver: How Much Markup Are You Willing to Pay? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
I am a gold bull, but I am also concerned about seriously misleading hype regarding alleged shortages.
For example, a friend recently emailed an article that contained this claim: Gold Selling for at least 50% over Spot in Asia-Rob Kirby.
Read full article... Read full article...According to Rob Kirby "In the Asian market, if you could find physical bullion as cheap as spot plus 50%, you'd be doing really, really, really well and you'd be hard pressed to find serious tonnage at that price in Asia."
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Crude Oil and the War Cycle 2015 and Beyond / Commodities / Crude Oil
This year witnessed the bottom of one of several components of the 120-year cycle of inflation and deflation. The cycle to which I'm referring is the 24-year cycle. Of particular relevance is that this cycle answers to the cycle of war.
Since 1894 when the previous 120-year Grand Super Cycle bottomed and a new one began, there have been four military conflagrations at each subsequent bottom of the 24-year cycle. Most of these wars have been major in scope. The first such instance of war occurred in the years leading up to 1918, which saw the first 24-year cycle bottom of the current 120-year cycle. The 24-year cycle that bottomed that year saw the ending to the First World War. Remembering that the final "hard down" phase of the 24-year cycle approximates to almost two-and-a-half years, this represented roughly the second half of that major war, a war that involved the United States.
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Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Gold, Oil, Copper... Commodities Breakdown / Commodities / Commodities Trading
I have been commenting on how the CRB commodity index – including oil, gold and copper – have been trading in a sideways pattern for the past three years and that at some point they would break down.
The break down just happened. Oil broke below support at $75 to $80, copper broke below $2.90 to $3, gold broke below $1,180 and the CRB broke below $270.
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Tuesday, December 09, 2014
7 Questions Gold Bears Must Answer / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
A glance at any gold price chart reveals the severity of the bear mauling it has endured over the last three years.>
More alarming, even for die-hard gold investors, is that some of the fundamental drivers that would normally push gold higher, like a weak US dollar, have reversed.
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Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Crude Oil Price Sinking Or Rebounding / Commodities / Crude Oil
Trading position (short-term; our opinion): No positions are justified from the risk/reward perspective.
On Friday, crude oil lost 1.65% as a stronger U.S. dollar and news that Saudi Arabia lowered the price of oil for buyers in the U.S. and Asia continued to weight. As a result, light crude moved lower for the fourth time in a row and closed the week at its lowest level since mid-Jul 2009.
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Monday, December 08, 2014
Why Wall Street and Governments Hate Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Gold is hated more than ever by both governments and the financial services community. This is because it has now become imperative to keep the illusion of confidence in sovereign debt and paper currencies. To that end, a gentleman by the name of Willem Buiter, Citigroup's chief economist, shot into the media spotlight by writing a note on the day before Thanksgiving stating his belief that gold is in a six thousand year-old bubble.
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Monday, December 08, 2014
Agri-Equities: New All Time High / Commodities / Agricultural Commodities
China now surpasses the U.S. in real economic terms. "Real", most simply defined, is the production and consumption of actual goods and services with prices ignored. In that "real" process the Chinese economy becomes a receptacle for the resources of the world, tangible and human. Some in the world, like Agri-Equities, that service those needs have benefitted, and will certainly do so in the future. Those that sell to the biggest customers in the world, China, will be the success stories. Top tier Agri-Equities are one of those beneficiaries. Our index of First Tier Agri-Equities, as shown in chart below, is at a new, all time high for the second month. That action was recently confirmed by composite Agri-Equity Index also hitting a new all time high recently.
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Saturday, December 06, 2014
Gold-Backed Currency? Not Any Time Soon, But Be Prepared / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Last year, many in 2013 were calling for the price of gold and silver to double, and more! Then came 2014 and those dashed hopes were pushed back to the second half of 2014. Earlier, in the first half of the year, we said that the second half could likely be more of the same, as in 2013, [See 2014 Could Be A Yawner]. With just a few weeks away from the end of the year, prospects for 2015 can equally be brought into question re PM price appreciation.
Is the petrodollar on the way out? More frequently, the signs say yes. Is a gold-backed currency standard waiting to replace it? Beliefs, at least in the PM community, remain high, but facts to substantiate the beliefs are hard to find. Sure, China and Russia have been and continue to be the largest buyers of physical gold, but is either the Renminbe or the Ruble ready for Prime Time? The short answer is no, and more emphatically for the Ruble. While the Renminbe is becoming more widely viewed as a potential replacement for the "dollar," China has nowhere near the capability of a world reserve currency system and all that it entails.
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Saturday, December 06, 2014
Opecology Or The Art Of Saying Nothing / Commodities / Crude Oil
The Threat of $57 Oil
The recent head of the World Petroleum Council, Renato Bertani speaking from Houston in interview with Russia Today TV, December 1st, was set an increasingly ridiculous set of questions by the energetic if dumb interviewer lady in the Moscow bureau. She asked him if Peak Oil was true and if ISIS or ISIL was pricing its stolen oil (she said $30 a barrel) at the “right price”? Would oil get really cheap before it disappeared (not cheap after it disappeared)? Is fracking sustainable and are US producers lying when they say $57 a barrel is a price they can live with? Will hydrogen-fueled cars wipe out world oil demand? Would global warming terrify us so much we woke up one day and totally renounced oil? How will OPEC stabilize and control the market and set the right oil price for everybody (she didn't suggest we ask Goldman Sachs how they do it). Time for a sucker's rally!
Saturday, December 06, 2014
Crude Oil Price Slump: 7% Hit for Global Hotel Stock Prices and 25% Hit for Dubai Hotel Revenues Is Predicted / Commodities / Crude Oil
There is an increasing adjustment to the idea that the “totally unexpected” slump in oil prices to below $70 may prevail for some time.The model that predicted since 2011 Brent would, at some point, bottom at $67 which is just 3% below where it reached yesterday (not bad for a prediction made three years ago)... says the slump will last four years.
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Saturday, December 06, 2014
Global Crude Oil Consumption - What Countries Have Increased or Decreased Usage Since 2009? / Commodities / Crude Oil
Reader David Epperson sent in some interesting charts on global oil usage that he produced from U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. The data is through the end of 2013.
David writes...
Read full article... Read full article...Hello Mish,
I was curious how much oil consumption had declined over the last few years, so I went to the EIA web site, downloaded the consumption data and produced the following charts.
Friday, December 05, 2014
Russia and China’s Natural Gas Deals Are a Death Knell for Canada’s LNG Ambitions / Commodities / Natural Gas
In recent years, a number of Asian companies have been betting that Canada will be able to export cheap liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its west coast. These big international players include PetroChina, Mitsubishi, CNOOC, and, until December 3, Malaysian state-owned Petronas.
However, that initial interest is decidedly on the wane. In fact, while the British Columbia LNG Alliance is still hopeful that some of the 18 LNG projects that have been proposed will be realized, it’s now looking less and less likely that any of these Canadian LNG consortia will ever make a final investment decision to forge ahead.
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Friday, December 05, 2014
Gold Shorting Exhaustion / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Gold’s been on an incredible roller-coaster ride over the past couple months, whipsawing like crazy. And contrary to popular rationalizations, these swings had absolutely nothing to do with fundamentals. Their sole driver has been American speculators’ extreme shorting of gold futures, which has battered gold’s price around in the absence of investment demand. But this epic gold shorting looks exhausted.
The core mission of all trading, whether long-term investing or rapid-fire speculation, is buying low and selling high. That’s the only way to multiply wealth in the financial markets. Short sellers execute this same strategy, but reverse the order. They borrow assets they don’t own, sell them presumably high, and later hopefully buy them back low to repay their debts. The key to shorting is selling high, not selling low.
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Friday, December 05, 2014
Why OPEC Will Tolerate Cheap Crude Oil Price / Commodities / Crude Oil
Despite falling oil prices, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) voted on November 27th not to cut production in order to boost prices. The key to this decision appears to have been the attitude of Saudi Arabia, which has long been the first among equals in the coalition. Not surprisingly, the decision led to further oil price declines, and led many observers to conclude that OPEC has largely lost the ability to upwardly influence the price of petroleum. But this determination ignores the wider geopolitical considerations that may be convincing Saudi Arabia to be perfectly content, for now, with lower prices.
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