Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils

The analysis published under this topic are as follows.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Silver Crash 2006 vs Silver Today, Does it look Familiar? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Submissions

Willem Weytjens writes: First of all, here is an update of a chart I posted 3 weeks ago…

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Silver Shorts Feel the Burn / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Clif_Droke

Silver has stolen the spotlight among investors in recent days after surging nearly $50/oz. Lost in all the commotion, however, are the wildly disparate rumors accompanying silver's rally. It's hard to believe that it has been only a week since a widely circulated story concerning a large hedge fund which supposedly made a "gargantuan" bet against silver. This story, which smacked of being planted by speculative interests, was circulated by some otherwise reputable financial publications.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Gold, What to Watch out for in Early May / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Przemyslaw_Radomski

We have written before that institutional investors are going to wake up one day and realize that they need to buy gold for their portfolios. Well, that's beginning to happen.

This week the Texas teachers’ pension fund, one of the largest college endowments, announced that it has placed 5% of its assets in gold bullion, nearly $1 billion's worth, in excess of 650,000 ounces at today’s prices. It is interesting to note that the fund chose to take physical possession of the bullion rather than buy it through a gold ETF.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Lease Rates Show Greater Silver Interest / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Dr_Jeff_Lewis

In December of 2010, we looked at silver lease rates to see how a recent spike might affect metals.  Then, it was out of the norm to see a spike in the lease rate, which often corresponded with a bid to borrow silver for the short-term.  Today, silver lease rates are starting to normalize above zero, which means that demand to borrow silver in the short-term is becoming a constant, and that investors are now starting to price in recent history into the future.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Impact of Chinese and Indians Climbing the Protein Ladder / Commodities / Food Crisis

By: Richard_Mills

Over the next fifty years, as we add another 4.5 billion people to the world's population, global demand for food will increase almost 70% if population growth predictions are correct.

Already approximately 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night. Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds - most are children under the age of five.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Cornering the Silver Market is Impossible at Current Prices / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Submissions

SilverDoctors write : Rumors of a corner of silver in process have been swirling overnight.

A cornering of silver by a billionaire is in process? Really? Here’s the definition of Cornering of the Market from Wikipedia, “In finance, to corner the market is to purchase enough of a particular stock, commodity, or other asset to allow the price to be manipulated, by analogy to the general business jargon where a company described as having "cornered the market" has a very high market share. The one attempting to corner a market hopes to gain control of enough of the supply of the commodity to be able to set the price for it.”

Friday, April 22, 2011

What's Behind the Crude Oil Spike to $112 and Why There's More to Come / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Money_Morning

Kent Moors, Ph.D. writes: Crude oil prices rose for the third straight day yesterday (Thursday) - with more of the same to come.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for June delivery rose to $111.50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and traded as high as $112.48, the highest intraday price since April 11. Crude prices are up by a full third so far this year.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Metals Market Equations Are No Longer Simple / Commodities / Metals & Mining

By: HRA_Advisory

World events continue to signal support for hard assets, but caution is still advised. News in the copper space is as much about consolidation of the players as the metal itself right now. The $7 bid by China Minmetals for Equinox Minerals (EQN-T, ASX) has offered some support for other mid tier copper assets. The Minmetals bid requires EQN to drop its own bid for Lundin Mining (LUN-T, LUNMF-Q) that had already squelched the planned merger of LUN with Inmet Mining (INM-T, IEMMF-Q). EQN had already merged with an Australian junior to acquire its Saudi copper mine development that is to begin out put late this year. To this has just been added a take-over bid by Capstone Mining (CS-T, CSFFF-Q) for Far West (FWM-T, FWMLF-Q) and its copper-iron project in Chile, with an assist from state owned Korea Resources Corp. Small and mid tier copper producers are focused on securing growth assets of the right scale as Asia gets more aggressive in ensuring supplies for its markets.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Silver Set to Soar as Fiat Paper Currencies Fold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: John_Browne

As a result of active "demonetization" efforts by the IMF and its member central banks, gold and silver have experienced the type of volatility that has given conservative investors reasons not to perceive the metals as dependable cash alternatives. Instead gold and silver have become known as the asset class to hold as a hedge against inflation.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Debunking the Anti Gold Investing Propaganda / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Casey_Research

A meme is now circulating that gold is in a bubble and that it's time for the wise investor to sell. To me, that’s a ridiculous notion. Certainly a premature one.

It pays to remain as objective as you can be when analyzing any investment. People have a tendency to fall in love with an asset class, usually because it’s treated them so well. We saw that happen, most recently, with Internet stocks in the late ‘90s and houses up to 2007. Investment bubbles are driven primarily by emotion, although there's always some rationale for the emotion to latch on to. Perversely, when it comes to investing, reason is recruited mainly to provide cover for passion and preconception.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Bullish on Unconventional Crude Oil Investment Plays / Commodities / Oil Companies

By: The_Energy_Report

Pain at the pump for consumers is windfall time for E&P companies. When the low-hanging fruit of old oil and gas fields is exhausted, companies are incentivized to move to new and different regions where the potential reward profile might justify the inherent risk of difficult or unexplored environs and potential political upheaval. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Pathfinder Asset Management Associate Portfolio Manager Taylor MacDonald tells investors where he's finding new ways to play growing energy demand.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Playing the Move in Natural Gas / Commodities / Natural Gas

By: Mike_Paulenoff

A review of natural gas futures shows the chart pattern exploded above 4.20-4.25 resistance. The iPath Dow Jones UBS Natural Gas (GAZ), however, has not followed the same path.

GAZ has stalled, perhaps owing to its premium price 3-4 weeks ago in its relationship to underlying natural gas prices. Meanwhile, natural gas prices have played catch-up, perhaps moving the GAZ-U.S. Natural Gas ETF (UNG) underlying natural gas price relationship more into line.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Gold and Silver, What’s Driving Their Prices Higher? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Submissions

Ian R. Campbell writes: Gold and Silver continued making headline news yesterday and this morning, with everyone reading this likely being well aware that both breached, and so far have held above U.S.$1,500 and U.S.$45 respectively.  At 11:30 a.m. ET this morning they trading at U.S.$1,504.14 and U.S.$46.02.  To put these two prices in context, on January 1, only 80 calendar days ago:

Friday, April 22, 2011

What's Different About $1500 Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Adrian_Ash

The golden constant stands out amidst the US Dollar's latest plunge...

So what's different about gold at $1500 per ounce...?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Gold and Silver: Supreme Safe Haven Assets / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Jeb_Handwerger

Silver (iShares Silver Trust (SLV)) hit the ball out of the park yesterday as it hit a record high exceeding my late January target of $40. Silver has doubled in the past seven months alone. Poor man's gold is making some poor men rich as the US dollar (PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (UUP)) and long term US debt (iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treas Bond (TLT)) remain under pressure.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Shift to Physical Accelerates as Gold, Silver Adds 7.7% for the Week / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Adrian_Ash

THE WHOLESALE PRICE of gold broke fresh US Dollar highs ahead of the long Easter weekend in London on Thursday, but fell against all other major currencies, unwinding this week's sharp gains entirely for Euro buyers.

The price of gold in British Pounds slipped 1.4% from yesterday's new all-time highs.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Silver Breaks Above $46 on Short Squeeze Rumour / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: GoldCore

Gold and silver have surged to new record nominal highs in dollar terms (all time and 31-year) with the dollar falling sharply on international markets. Silver has continued to surge in all currencies and has surged to a new record nominal high of $46.25/oz (£27.85/oz and £31.54/oz) on growing rumours of a short squeeze involving a billionaire or state interest attempting to corner the silver market (see FT news story below).

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Gold Tops $1,500 in Flight to Quality / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: Mike_Shedlock

The New York Times reports Gold Tops $1,500 an Ounce in 'Flight to Quality'

The list of factors that have supported the price of precious metals in recent weeks is long. It includes worries about the sustainability of European debt levels — and whether countries like Greece will soon default; the threat of a possible downgrade of U.S. credit ratings amid an impasse over raising the debt limit and dealing with the budget deficit; the weaker dollar; rising inflation in many parts of the world and continued unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, which has pushed up oil prices.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Oil Services Stocks Correction Due? / Commodities / Oil Companies

By: Dian_L_Chu

Michael Tarsala writes: Oil services stocks are seeing downside earnings revisions and bearish options bets ahead of earnings, and could be in danger of losing their price uptrend, according to a Thomson Reuters technical signal.

The options positioning suggest there’s a lot less optimism for services versus drillers and refiners, and less hope they’ll have another blockbuster quarter.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

What Does $1,500 Gold Really Mean? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011

By: The_Gold_Report

When the price of Comex gold futures kissed a record high $1,500/oz. Tuesday before settling back to the high $1,400s at day's end, and then topped the benchmark in early trading Wednesday, the smack sounded a lot like "I told you so." The Gold Report's expert contributors explain what this milestone means for investors going forward.