Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Bottom Line Thoughts on the Gold Sector / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Gary_Tanashian
Improving Macro Backdrop
In light of a shifting global macro backdrop that we can finally sink our teeth into with respect to a bullish orientation on the gold stock sector, I thought it might be a good idea to publicly post some bottom line thoughts from this week's NFTRH report.
The report went into great detail to explain why more fundamentals that matter are starting to come in line, after the chart below refused to make a signal against our big picture view of global economic contraction, which has been the biggest key for the counter-cyclical gold mining sector.
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Monday, January 19, 2015
Silver Price Breaks Out on Swiss France Euro Decoupling / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Clive_Maund
Silver broke out from a Head-and-Shoulders bottom on Friday, a day after gold did the same following the news that the Swiss Franc is to be decoupled from the euro. In the face of the impending QE tsunami in Europe, the Swiss have decided to call it a day and give up supporting the euro peg and retreat to the relative safety of the mountains, where at least they will have a plentiful supply of their high quality cheese and chocolate, as foreigners are less able to buy it. The reason that gold and silver broke higher is that the Swiss move is an unwelcome reminder of the ongoing and intensifying global currency war, characterized by competitive devaluation and bouts of QE. When there is more and more money and it buys less and less, gold and silver must go up in price - that's not too difficult to understand, is it??
Monday, January 19, 2015
Gold, Flights to Quality / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Alasdair_Macleod
It is pleasing to see precious metals in favour as 2015 gets underway in earnest. Whilst ‘quality’ might be a subjective term, it seems to have been applied, in my opinion quite rightly, to gold, silver, platinum and palladium by investors looking to protect themselves from a start-of-the-year volatility storm in other asset classes. In the wider commodity world, oil and copper prices are still languishing whilst precious metals have shown their value to investors as a stand-alone and increasingly non-correlated asset class.
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Sunday, January 18, 2015
Gold Sheep Sheared / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Austin_Galt
Baa, baa. That's the sound of the sheep that follow the crowd spouting bunkum that gold can't go up if the US dollar goes up as well. This fallacy has been shown over the past couple of months for what it is - complete nonsense.
Both gold and the US dollar have surged in tandem the past couple of months. This is why I like to analyse each instrument on its own merits and not let my judgement of one be clouded by my view of another. This is often easier said than done mind you.
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Saturday, January 17, 2015
Gold And Silver – Swiss National Bank Rally. Enough For A Change? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Michael_Noonan
It would seem that last week’s rally in gold was Swiss National Bank-driven, plain and
simple. It is difficult to get a handle on the ramifications of what just happened with the
Swiss “unpegging” from the Euro. It was becoming prohibitively expensive for the SNB
to keep buying Euros and trashing their own economy in the process. Ostensibly, this is
a tale of a central bank telling the US and the rest of the EU, enough! We have had it,
and we are now going to be more fiscally responsible.
Right. Just after opting not to have the Swiss franc backed proportionately by gold, a move that would have been an act of fiscal responsibility. If there is one constant about world-wide central bankers, it is that they lie on an ongoing basis. The truth, if it ever comes out, may not become apparent for the next several months. It makes no sense for one part of the central banking cabal to pull a “surprise attack” on the rest of the group.
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Saturday, January 17, 2015
China’s Global Gold Supply "Game of Stones" / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: MoneyMetals
China has a 4-way global gold supply domination strategy. And it’s starting to corner the market.
First, China buys physical gold in world markets, fabricates it where necessary into “good delivery” bars – in Switzerland or the Middle East – then ships the bullion, transparently through Hong Kong or Shanghai (or quietly through Beijing and other ports of entry).
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Saturday, January 17, 2015
Gold Price Rally Has Technical and Fundamental Support / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Sy_Harding
Gold plunged 48% from its record high above $1,900 an ounce in 2011, to its low late last year. That was a sizable bear market move.
Shorter-term, it was one of last year’s worst performers, down 15% for the year.
In a recent column, I noted how at year-end, investors looking for the next year’s winners tend to look for them on lists of last year’s ‘Top 25 stocks’ or ‘Top 25 mutual funds’. However, studies show they would be better off shopping among the previous year’s losers. (The previous year’s winners are more liable to already be overbought and over-valued, while the losers are more likely to be oversold and on the bargain table).
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Friday, January 16, 2015
Silver Price Ready to Run / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Zeal_LLC
Silver looks to be on the verge of a major new upleg, finally emerging from the past couple years’ ugly sentiment wasteland. This beleaguered precious metal recently bottomed as futures speculators threw in the towel on their extreme shorting. And while investors’ ongoing silver stealth buying continues, it’s been modest. So there is vast room for capital inflows to accelerate dramatically as gold mean reverts higher.
Silver has always had a special allure for hardened contrarian investors. Its price action is exceptionally volatile, with massive rallies erupting from time to time that multiply capital deployed in it. With silver’s relatively-small market size, it doesn’t take a lot of new investment buying to catapult prices higher. And shifting sentiment, a powerful self-feeding motivator, fuels the big swings in capital flows that really move silver.
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Friday, January 16, 2015
From Gold Bear to Gold Bull? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne
Bear markets end with extreme bearish sentiment but positive price action is needed before a trend change can be confirmed. That can include (among other things) breaking downtrends, breaking resistance and breaking the pattern of lower lows and lower highs. There have been positive developments for precious metals beneath the surface but Thursday's breakout in Gold is more significant. If Gold holds this breakout then it will be all but impossible to argue that it remains in a bear market.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
What to Make of the Surge in Oil Prices / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Money_Morning
Dr. Kent Moors writes: There are a few historical figures I greatly admire, even though I have pronounced personal problems with some of their opinions.
Winston Churchill leads the list.
On November 9, 1942, Churchill uttered these famous words at a London luncheon: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
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Thursday, January 15, 2015
Gold Trend Change? Price Breaks Above 200 Day Moving Average / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Jeb_Handwerger
For weeks I have been predicting that precious metals and the junior gold miners would bottom and outperform in January. Now gold is breathtakingly breaking above the key 200 day moving average and breaking four month highs as the World looks to gold as a safe haven. The intermediate to long term trend may be turning positive and unfortunately the amateur investor has already panicked out or may be covering their shorts.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
The Oil-Fueled Economic Cycle / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Harry_Dent
I’ve been focusing on this fracking and high-yield debt bubble precisely because it’s most likely to become the new trigger that the housing and subprime bubble was to the last global financial crisis in 2008/2009.
Bubbles just go on and on until they either get so extremely high that they burst of their own weight — as with the tech bubble — or more often when something triggers defaults that then cascade through the very debt markets that helped create the bubble.
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Thursday, January 15, 2015
Market Chaos as Swiss Franc Surges 30% In 13 Minutes, Gold Rises Sharply / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: GoldCore
Chaos was seen in financial markets today as participants were thrown a curveball when Switzerland surprised the world by removing its three-year cap on the Swiss franc, unpegging it from the euro. This sent the undervalued currency soaring and Europe’s shares and bond yields tumbling.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
GDX vs. SPY; Different This Time / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
By: Gary_Tanashian
The title is not meant to declare that this time gold stocks are going to exercise the excellent risk vs. reward stance vs. the US stock market. But it is meant to declare that the stimulus for the recent out performance is much healthier than it was last summer, during the last bounce.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Another 15% Drop in Copper Price? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Ashraf_Laidi
Today's 4.3% slump in copper is the ninth consecutive daily decline in the metal, a pattern last seen 11 months ago during the peak of China's financing shenanigans -- when Chinese companies used the metal as collateral to access cheap-USD financing and invest the proceeds in higher yielding Chinese yuan.
Since the start of 2014, copper is down 20, outperforming energy commodities (Brent -56%, WTI -49%, NatGas -29%) and underperforming metals (gold +2.0%, silver -14%). The striking difference between now and Q1 2104 is that copper is now joined by the much feared converging decline along the rest of metals, energy and agricultural commodities. The extent of copper's damage is highlighted by more than just unwinding in Chinese trade financing.
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Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Crude Oil Price Collapses and Copper Crashes – Great Recession 2015? / Commodities / Commodities Trading
By: GoldCore
Oil prices fell another 1 per cent this morning and continue their collapse – down 57% in just over 6 months. Copper crashed 8% on the London Metal Exchange, plunging to 5 and a half year lows.
Oil fell to fresh six-year lows and has fallen almost 60 per cent since June 30, 2014 to levels last seen in early 2009 after the 2008 crash (see chart).
February Brent crude dropped another 79 cents to $45.80 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate crude for was at $45.34, down 55 cents. Copper for delivery in three months on the LME dropped as much as 8.7 percent to $5,353.25 a metric ton, the lowest intraday price since July 2009. Nickel slid 4.6 percent and lead fell 3.8 percent to the lowest in more than two years.
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Wednesday, January 14, 2015
5 Ways To Play The Oil Price Plunge / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
The collapse of the oil price has created losers and winners, and like every major movement in a commodity sector, the trick for investors is figuring out which side of the trade to be on. The most obvious victim of the slide in Brent and WTI prices over the last 6 months has been the major oil producers. Holders of these equities have seen price slides up to 33 percent. The question for oil company investors now is how to determine which of these companies are prepared to weather a sustained period of oil prices around $50 a barrel, or worse. Inevitably, those companies with high debt levels combined with high operating costs will be the first to get washed away. In contrast, low-leveraged companies with attractive cost structures are likely to survive. These companies will gain when the oil price comes back, and are the ones that investors should be eyeing right now. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Why the Smart Money is Betting on Renewable Energ - Brewing Solar Power Boom / Commodities / Solar Energy
By: Money_Morning
Dr. Kent Moors writes: While everyone’s been fixated on oil, renewable energy has been gathering some serious steam.
Led by solar power, worldwide capital investment in “clean” energy surged by more than 16% last year.
In fact, spending on renewable energy was so strong in 2014, some have begun to label the recent rush into renewables as a “turning point” in the energy balance.
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Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Bitcoin Price At Beginning of an Extremely Important Decline / Commodities / Bitcoin
By: Mike_McAra
Briefly: short speculative positions, stop-loss at $257, take-profit at $153.
There’s been a plunge in the price of Bitcoin and this is reflected by an uptick in the (already relatively high) number of news stories covering the “Bitcoin crash” or how much the currency has lost since its peak values. On CoinDesk, we read:
The bitcoin price has plunged below $250 and appears to be falling further, as sell orders pile up at major exchanges.
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Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Suddenly, Not A Bad Environment For Gold Mining Stocks / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2015
By: John_Rubino
A few years ago (when the world was very different) veteran mining analyst Jay Taylor told me something that seemed counterintuitive: Deflation can actually be a good thing for the gold and silver mining business — if the prices of mining inputs like oil fall faster than the price of precious metals.
In other words, it’s not inflation or deflation per se that matter, but the distribution of price trends. “With quantitative easing,” said Taylor, “the liquidity being pumped into the system has caused energy and labor costs to rise, which has more than offset higher precious metals prices. Historically, the miners have actually done better in a deflationary environment in which gold and silver are seen as monetary metals and the cost of getting them out of the ground declines due to lower energy and labor.”
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