Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Gold-to-Silver Ratio Heading Lower – Setup Like 1989-03 / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Fear is starting to become an issue. Traders are starting to realize inflation, CPI, PPI, and global currencies are reacting to the sudden policy shift by the US Fed and global central banks. This fear is showing up in the Gold-to-Silver ratio as well.
My research suggests the closest comparison to the current Gold/Silver setup may be found by looking at the early 2000~2003 US markets. Let’s investigate this setup a bit further.
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Monday, August 08, 2022
The End Game for Silver Shenanigans... / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: MoneyMetals
The federal criminal trial of JP Morgan executives Michael Nowak, Gregg Smith, and Jeffrey Ruffo began on July 8th. These senior bankers are accused of running a years-long scheme to manipulate precious metals prices through what is known as “spoofing.”
Perhaps the three will be found guilty, but it isn’t likely to have much impact on trading in the paper silver markets. If there is solution to artificially rigged prices, it will come from somewhere else.
It isn’t that regulators don’t have a lot to go on. Investigators had the goods when prosecutors got Deutsche Bank to plead guilty and cooperate.
Friday, August 05, 2022
Recession Is Good for Gold, but a Crisis Would Be Even Better / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The US economy fell into a technical recession. As a safe-haven asset, will gold soar now?What Is Recession, Anyway?
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the technical recession! According to the initial measure of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP dropped 0.9% in the second quarter, following a 1.6% decline in the first quarter (annualized quarterly rates). As the chart below shows, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, real GDP decreased by 0.4 and 0.2 percent, respectively. Thus, the US economy recorded two quarters of negative growth, which implies a technical recession.
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Friday, August 05, 2022
SILVER’S BAD BREAK / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Kelsey_Williams
Bad breaks can be tough to recover from. The process can be arduous and can take a long time. Sometimes a full recovery remains elusive and distant.
Silver has a history of bad breaks over the past half-century. Below is a series of charts that tell the story…
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Wednesday, August 03, 2022
Don’t Be Misled by Gold’s Recent Upswing / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: P_Radomski_CFA
Despite gold’s latest move higher, its outlook remains bearish. If its 2012-2013 pattern is to repeat, it means gold is now preparing for a big fall.
Patience Advised
Gold moved higher on Friday, so you might be wondering if this changed anything regarding the outlook. In short, it didn’t.
Let’s take a closer look at what happened.
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Aluminum, Copper, Zinc: The 3 Horsemen of the Upcoming "Econocalypse" / Commodities / Metals & Mining
By: EWI
This suggests "a burgeoning slowdown in economic activity"
It may seem strange to bring up deflation when surveys show that inflation is the public's number one worry.
But who would have thought that inflation would become a big issue, say, just two years ago?
Right -- a relatively small percentage of people. The point is: Things can unexpectedly change -- fast.
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Sunday, July 31, 2022
Gold Stocks’ Rally Autumn 2022 / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2022
By: Zeal_LLC
The gold miners’ stocks have been thrashed in recent months, crushed as heavy futures selling slammed gold. That obliterated any residual sector bullishness, leaving gold stocks wildly-oversold and deeply-out-of-favor. But having weathered a rough early summer, the battered miners and their metal are trudging back into their traditional strong season. That begins with robust autumn rallies really accelerating in August.
Seasonality is the tendency for prices to exhibit recurring patterns at certain times during the calendar year. While seasonality doesn’t drive price action, it quantifies annually-repeating behavior driven by sentiment, technicals, and fundamentals. We humans are creatures of habit and herd, which naturally colors our trading decisions. The calendar year’s passage affects the timing and intensity of buying and selling.
Gold stocks display strong seasonality because their price action amplifies that of their dominant primary driver, gold. Gold’s seasonality generally isn’t driven by supply fluctuations like grown commodities see, as its mined supply remains relatively-steady year-round. Instead gold’s major seasonality is demand-driven, with global investment demand varying considerably depending on the time in the calendar year.
This gold seasonality is fueled by well-known income-cycle and cultural drivers of outsized gold demand from around the world. Starting in late summers, Asian farmers begin to reap their harvests. As they figure out how much surplus income was generated from all their hard work during the growing season, they wisely plow some of their savings into gold. Asian harvest is followed by India’s famous wedding season.
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Friday, July 22, 2022
Gold Will Come Out Stronger from the Economic Hurricane / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Recession calls are getting louder. If history is any guide, the bust is coming. Good news for gold!
An economic hurricane is coming. Brace yourselves! This is at least what Jamie Dimon suggested last month. To be precise, he said: “Right now, it's kind of sunny. Things are doing fine. Everyone thinks the Fed can handle this. That hurricane is right out there down the road, coming our way. We just don’t know if it's a minor one or Superstorm Sandy.” When JP Morgan Chase’s CEO is painting such a gloomy picture, you know that something serious is going to happen!
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Friday, July 22, 2022
Do Fed Rate Decisions Affect The Price Patterns For Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Many traders are focused on Gold as price has contracted over the past 5+ weeks, and the $1700 level is being retested. This prompted my team and I to do some research related to the US Federal Reserve’s recent rate increases and how Gold has previously reacted to rising and falling interest rates.
Exploring Price Patterns Between Gold and Fed Rate Decisions
I knew from the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 event that Gold initially moves downward as extreme selling pressures drive almost all assets lower. Yet, in both cases, Gold quickly rebounded and began to move higher within 5+ weeks after setting up a bottom.
I started my research by outlining “Normal Fed Activity” and “Extended QE Fed Activity” to see if I could identify any difference in how Gold reacted to fear and uncertainty in these phases. My thinking was that Gold would react more muted in a price range in Normal Fed Activity phases because crisis events and economic uncertainty are more muted overall. When the Fed enters an expansive QE phase, this activity is associated with a US/Global economy that requires extraordinary measures to prompt expected normal capital functions.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Gold Is Getting Ready to Follow in Junior Miners’ Footsteps / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: P_Radomski_CFA
As junior miners continue to rise and the USD keeps falling, it seems like a matter of a short time before gold soars. It only needs a proper trigger.
Gold is doing pretty much nothing these days, but junior miners tell us what gold’s going to do next. It’s most likely to rally in the short term.
Why? Because the mining stocks tend to lead gold higher and lower, and looking at the relative performance of both parts of the precious metals sector, we see that this time, miners are already moving higher, while gold is getting ready to follow in miners’ footsteps. Let’s take a closer look at what junior miners (the GDXJ) did recently.
Friday, July 15, 2022
Gold Inflation Disconnect / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Zeal_LLC
Gold should be soaring with red-hot inflation raging, but instead it is breaking down. This history-defying disconnect has devastated sentiment, leaving this leading traditional inflation hedge despised. Traders need to realize gold’s bizarre decoupling from all precedent is an extreme anomaly that will prove short-lived. It has been driven by a parabolic US-dollar surge fueling unsustainable heavy gold-futures selling.
As a professional speculator and financial-newsletter writer for the past 23 years, I’m deeply immersed in the markets. I eat, breathe, and sleep trading, watching and analyzing market action all day every day. In such a long span of time, I’ve seen plenty of irrational episodes where prices temporarily disconnect from reality. But recent months’ serious gold weakness may take the cake as the most absurd I’ve witnessed!
For millennia, gold has proven the greatest investment in inflationary times of monetary debasement. Its supply growth from mining is very-slow, constrained naturally by the rarity of economic gold deposits and the decade-plus timelines necessary to bring them to production. So when governments irresponsibly expand their money supplies at excessive rates, gold prices surge to reflect those depreciating currencies.
Relatively-way-more money is suddenly available to compete for relatively-much-less gold, bidding up its price levels. And the higher gold powers, the more investors want to chase it accelerating its upside. This logical gold-inflation dynamic has fueled legendary gains during past inflation super-spikes. The previous couple before today’s monster hit in the 1970s, and gold’s performances reflected how it should react.
From June 1972 to December 1974, headline year-over-year US Consumer Price Index inflation soared from 2.7% to 12.3%. During that 30-month span, conservative monthly-average gold prices blasted up an amazing 196.6%! After that serious inflation wave passed, another one soon followed. From November 1976 to March 1980, the YoY CPI prints skyrocketed from 4.9% to 14.8%. Gold was a moonshot in that span.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2022
How Has Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Impacted the Commodity Markets? / Commodities / Agricultural Commodities
By: Travis_Bard
Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine continues to take an incredible human toll, with the very latest updates from the Office of the United Nations revealing that some 4,509 civilians had been killed in the conflict to date.
However, this geopolitical conflict has also caused significant financial and market disruption, from compounding the rise in global energy prices to significantly disturbing the world’s agricultural space.
But how exactly has this industry been impacted to date, and what does the conflict mean for the global commodity markets as a whole?
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Sunday, July 10, 2022
Trial Begins in Gold & Silver Manipulation Case Against J.P. Morgan Official / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: MoneyMetals
Fears of further Fed tightening continue to weigh on metals markets.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its most recent policy meeting. As CNBC reported, central bankers remain fixated on inflation.
CNBC Reporter: The minutes of the latest Fed meetings show that officials agreed that another rate hike of 50-75 basis points would likely be appropriate at its meeting later this month. Officials also acknowledge that there could be an even more restrictive stance that could be appropriate if inflation remains high. Now, the minutes show that Fed officials were worried about inflation becoming entrenched, that was debated several times in this document. Many participants viewed that as a significant risk.
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Sunday, July 10, 2022
What Needs to Happen for the Gold Stocks GDXJ to Hit New Lows? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2022
By: P_Radomski_CFA
Although the general stock market has risen, this trend may soon reverse. Since it often moves along with gold stocks, junior miners can face a fall too.
Let the S&P 500 Be a Clue
Mining stocks declined significantly this week, but they haven’t severely underperformed gold. There is a good reason for it – the general stock market moved higher recently.
What would have to happen for the mining stocks (in particular, junior mining stocks) to decline in a more profound manner and slide well below $30 (in the GDXJ)? For example, the trend in the stock market could reverse.
Guess what – that’s exactly what’s likely to happen based on what’s going on in the S&P 500 chart.
Saturday, July 09, 2022
Euphoric US Dollar Slams Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Zeal_LLC
The euphoric US dollar rocketing stratospheric to extreme multi-decade highs slammed gold this week! That vertical surge ignited heavy gold-futures selling, hammering gold into a serious technical breakdown. The resulting sentiment damage was severe, with traders now convinced gold is doomed to spiral much lower. But a major reversal is imminent in the radically-overbought dollar, which will catapult gold higher.
Gold has two primary drivers, investment demand and gold-futures speculation. Investment capital flows are much-larger and ultimately far-more-important. But because of the extreme leverage inherent in gold futures, speculators punch way above their weights in influencing gold price action. They totally dominate gold when investors are mostly missing-in-action. And the US dollar’s fortunes are their main trading cue.
Each gold-futures contract controls 100 ounces of gold, worth $180,600 entering this week. But traders are only required to maintain $7,200 cash margins in their accounts for each contract traded. That makes for maximum leverage of 25.1x, over an order of magnitude greater than the 2x legal limit in the stock markets. At 25x, each dollar traded in gold futures has 25x the gold-price impact of a dollar invested outright!
But that kind of leverage is exceedingly-risky, as a mere 4% gold move against speculators’ bets wipes out 100% of their capital risked. Always facing fast total ruin, these traders’ time horizons are forced to be ultra-short-term. They can only care what gold prices are doing in coming hours or days, even weeks are too distant. That extreme-leverage-necessitated myopia often leaves gold inversely slaved to the US dollar.
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Friday, July 08, 2022
Commodities: Bounce or Something More? / Commodities / Commodities Trading
By: Gary_Tanashian
Commodities have been corrected hard, generally to support
It is amazing how compressed the cycles are in the markets these days. But maybe it’s not so surprising when you consider the constant involvement of meddling, manipulating central banks and even governments. Add a dash of hysterical media and the human instinct for knee-jerk herding and voila, there you have it; sentiment in commodities (and the inflation trades in general) going from absolutely rock solid (over) bullish to bleak in the span of a month.
All of this in the wake of an entity that held out dovish as long as it could before being directed by the market to put on its hawk costume and go steroidal in its inflation fighting stance. Seriously, market participants are taking their cues from a monetary authority that itself is taking cues from the bond market’s signaling (tardy though they were on the uptake). The link above shows the 3 month T-bill yield’s directive that the Fed aggressively raise rates back back in February. There were other signals as well demanding the same.
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Friday, July 08, 2022
Crude Oil Is Caught Between Recession Fears and Supply Cuts / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Submissions
Oil prices fluctuated on fears of a recession and a contraction in demand. What are the main figures to observe in this critical month?
Crude oil prices hovered between red and green on Thursday after two days of steep losses this week, still plagued by fears of a global economic recession that could threaten demand but also supply cuts in a tight market.
New Lockdown and Restrictions for the Chinese Panda
On the Asian continent, several million people may again suffer from strict restrictions because of China’s “zero-Covid policy” because of this epidemic rebound, which raises fears of the return of restrictions in Shanghai a month after the lifting of a long and grueling lockdown.
Thursday, July 07, 2022
Crude Oil Collapsed Below $100PPB – Has The US FED Broken Inflation? / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Chris_Vermeulen
On Tuesday, July 5th, Crude Oil collapsed very sharply, down over 10% near the lows, in an aggressive breakdown of the price. The $97.43 lows reached that day were more than -14% from recent highs (set on June 29, 2022) and more than -21% from highs set on June 14, 2022.
Consumer Discretionary Spending Likely To Fall Further
In a recent research article (published June 9, 2022: CRUDE OIL PRICE AND CONSUMER SPENDING – HOW THEY ARE RELATED), we shared a similar breakdown that took place in Crude Oil in 2009 and how tightening consumer spending often correlates with peaks in Crude Oil when crisis events happen.
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Tuesday, July 05, 2022
Gold Price Summer Seasonal Doldrums / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Zeal_LLC
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. Long feared as the summer doldrums, they’ve actually moderated in recent years.
This doldrums term is very apt for gold’s traditional summer predicament. It describes a zone surrounding the equator in the world’s oceans. There hot air is constantly rising, spawning long-lived low-pressure areas. They are often calm, with little 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 trudging through early 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.
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Sunday, July 03, 2022
Stagflation With Powell Could Make Gold Price Happy / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2022
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The upcoming stagflation might be less severe than in the 1970s. So is the Fed’s reaction, which could mean good news for gold.
There are many terrifying statements you can hear from another person. One example is: “Honey, we need to talk!” Another is: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” However, the scariest English word, especially nowadays, is “stagflation.” Brrr! I’ve explained it many times, but let me remind you that stagflation is a combination of economic stagnation and high inflation. This is why it’s a nightmare for central bankers as they should ease monetary policy to stimulate the economy and simultaneously tighten it to curb inflation. Although we haven’t fallen into recession yet, the pace of GDP growth has slowed down recently. According to the World Bank’s report Global Economic Prospects from June 2022, “the global economy is in the midst of a sharp growth slowdown” and “growth over the next decade is expected to be considerably weaker than over the past two decades.” The U.S. growth is expected to slow to 2.5 percent in 2022, 1.2 percentage points lower than previously projected and 3.2 percentage points below growth in 2021.