Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils

The analysis published under this topic are as follows.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Yellen’s December 2017 Press Conference and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

The latest FOMC meeting was accompanied by Janet Yellen’s press conference. Let’s analyze the implications of her remarks for the gold market.

Solid Growth, Strong Labor Market, and Subdued Inflation

In her opening remarks, Yellen noted that economic activity has been solid recently, the labor market has been strong, but inflation has been running below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run objective. She, thus, upgraded the macroeconomic outlook, as she used to speak about a moderate pace of economic growth and about a strengthening, but not necessarily strong labor market. Although inflation continued to run below the Fed’s target, Yellen said that the FOMC members “continue to believe that this year’s surprising softness in inflation primarily reflects transitory developments that are largely unrelated to broader economic conditions.” Hence, her introductory remarks sounded rather hawkish, which is not good news for the gold market.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

New EU Rules For Cross-Border Cash, Gold Bullion Movements / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: GoldCore

– War on cash continues and expands to affect non-criminals including gold owners
– New definitions of “cash” to be drawn up by EU to include gold and precious metals
– Claim cash and gold bullion “often used for criminal activities such as money laundering, or terrorist financing”
– Legislation will allow authorities to seize assets from those ‘without a criminal conviction’
– New rules usurp those currently in existence since 2005

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Gold Cycle is Down, as the Multimonth Consolidation Continues / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: The_Gold_Report

Technical analyst Jack Chan charts the latest movements in the gold and silver markets, noting speculation has reached 'bull market values'.

Our proprietary cycle indicator is down.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

If You Listen to Youtube Commenters Gold Is Dead And Crypto Will Never, Ever Go Down In Price / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Jeff_Berwick

If you read the Youtube comments, many people think I am crazy for suggesting that those who have held crypto for the last year, or longer, and who have gains of 2,000-600,000% might want to take some profits and invest in an unloved sector like precious metals and gold stocks.

This is very interesting, because for the last six years, whenever I would mention that people should invest in cryptocurrencies as well as precious metals, many Youtube commenters would jeer me as being crazy for investing in a Ponzi scheme or scam such as bitcoin.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Gold and CPI and Retail Sales in November 2017 / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Last week, the reports on U.S. consumer inflation and retail sales were released. What do they imply for the gold market?

Consumer prices jumped 0.4 percent in November, following a 0.1 percent rise in October. However, the move was driven mainly by higher costs of gasoline and fuel oil. The energy index increased 3.9 percent last month. Hence, the core CPI, which excludes food and energy, increased merely 0.1 percent. On an annual basis, the core CPI was 1.7 percent, which means a drop from 1.8 percent in October. The overall index soared 2.2 percent, rising from 2.0 percent in October and exceeding the Fed’s target again. Therefore, there was a slight shift up in the overall index, but a minimal slowdown in core inflation, as one can see in the chart below.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Who Knows What Will Black Gold Do in Coming Week? / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Nadia_Simmons

On Thursday, crude oil moved a bit higher as oil investors turned their attention to the North Sea supply disruption. Although the price of black gold increased, the technical picture of the commodity doesn’t bode well for oil bulls. Why? We invite you to check our Oil Trading Alert. Have a nice read.

Yesterday, crude oil came back above $57 as oil investors focused on the Forties pipeline, which carries North Sea oil to Britain. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that the above-mentioned disruptions will physically mostly affect the North Sea region. In other words, we think that the shale drilling and the last week increase in the U.S. production (which approached the output levels of top producers - Russia and Saudi Arabia) are more important for the price of light crude. Therefore, in our opinion, it is worth waiting for today's Baker Hughes report before we get excited about yesterday's increase and its “bullish” implications. Having said that, let’s examine the technical picture of crude oil (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

Monday, December 18, 2017

Gold’s Shooting Star and Its Implications / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: P_Radomski_CFA

After three weeks of declines, gold finally moved higher last week. Was this move surprising? Not at all, if you read our analysis of the previous week’s huge decline in platinum. The sizable slide in the latter was likely to trigger at least a small rally and that’s what we saw last week. However, gold reversed quite clearly on Friday and shooting star candlesticks, as these sessions are called, are signs of a reversal. Did we see one?

That’s not likely. There are several reasons not to believe the shooting start in gold. Let’s take a look at yellow metal’s chart for details (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

Monday, December 18, 2017

Should You Consider Investing/ Buying Gold or Bitcoin? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: Chris_Vermeulen

Recently, we have been asked by a number of clients about the precious metals and what our advice would be with regards to buying, selling or holding physical or trading positions in the metals.  There are really only a few short and simple answers to this question and they are revolve around the concept of providing a hedge against risk, capital preservation and opportunity for returns.  Let's explore the details a bit further.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Gold EFPs: Absolute Proof that the Paper Gold Price is a Fraud / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Stewart_Dougherty

In recent months, the issuance of gold Exchange for Physical (EFP) contracts has surged. EFPs convert a physically deliverable Comex gold contract into an LBMA or LME contract supposedly deliverable at a later date ex London and/or Hong Kong. As an incentive for Comex contract holders to accept EFPs, a cash bonus reportedly is paid. EFPs in silver are also being issued in vast quantities, but we will focus on gold for brevity.

Most gold market observers believe that EFPs are a Comex gimmick designed to prevent, or at least forestall a formal Comex delivery failure. We believe the full story behind the EFPs is more complicated and disturbing, and that it involves collusion, conspiracy, and fraud.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Gold – Technical Obfuscation, Fundamentals, Predictions / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2018

By: Kelsey_Williams

It is pretty much expected today that any investment analysis with justifiable conclusions will be steeped in technical study that includes lots of charts.

This seems especially true of gold.

Which is all well and good, I suppose; except for the obfuscation:

Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The obfuscation might be either unintentional or intentional (although intent usually is connoted), and is accomplished with circumlocution (talking around the subject), the use of jargon (technical language of a profession), and the use of an argot (ingroup language) of limited communicative value to outsiders.^[1]

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Gold And Silver Futures Swing From Bearish To Bullish In Just Two Weeks / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: John_Rubino

After holding onto huge, unprofitable long positions for months, gold and silver futures speculators are finally giving up and bailing out, while commercial traders (who take the opposite side of these trades, since every long requires an offsetting short) are closing out their shorts at a near-record pace.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Relief Rally in Gold Mining Stocks / Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks 2017

By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne

In recent days the gold stocks (GDX, GDXJ) traded within 1% of our downside targets of GDX $21.00 and GDXJ $29.50. Last week we wrote: “the miners are getting oversold and a bounce could begin from those levels.” GDXJ troughed first last week at $29.84 while GDX printed a low of $21.27 on Monday. From their September peaks down to those lows, GDX and GDXJ had declined nearly 17% and 21% respectively. They are oversold, nearly touched good support and now the rate hike is behind them. We expect a rally in the sector well into January.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Amid Bad Fundamentals, Gold Sector Rally May Have Begun / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Gary_Tanashian

We have been expecting a seasonal rally in gold, silver and the miners off of a bottom due in either December or January, as is typical of the sector. I’ve marked up Sentimentrader‘s seasonal gold pattern to show the secondary low made (on average over 30 years) in December and the January ramp up that follows (on average).

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Gold Bullish on US Fed Interest Rate Hike / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Zeal_LLC

Gold has been battered lower in recent months as gold-futures speculators fled in dread of the Fed-rate-hike boogeyman.  As universally expected, the Fed’s 5th rate hike of this cycle indeed came to pass this week.  When gold didn’t collapse as irrationally feared, the cowering futures traders were quick to start returning.  Past Fed rate hikes have actually proven very bullish for gold, and this latest one will be no exception.

Back in early September, gold was sitting pretty near $1348.  It had rallied dramatically out of its usual summer-doldrums low in its typical major autumn rally, blasting 11.2% higher in just 2.0 months.  But even way back then, Fed-rate-hike fears for the FOMC’s December 13th meeting started creeping in.  When gold peaked on September 7th, federal-funds futures implied December rate-hike odds running just 32%.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Strap Yourself In - We Are About To See Some Big Moves In Precious Metals / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Avi_Gilburt

Recent price action

The last week has seen the metals and miners drop down into support regions. As I write this, we are sitting just over major support for most of the charts I follow.

Whereas the GDX likely provides the cleanest picture of the market potential right now, I will be providing you guidance about the GDX in my analysis below. And, while I maintain a strong bullish bias for 2018, the action we see in the coming weeks will tell us when we can begin to take a more immediate bullish perspective.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

December 2017 FOMC Meeting and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: Arkadiusz_Sieron

Yesterday, the Fed released its most recent monetary policy statement. How can it affect the financial markets?

In line with expectations, the Fed raised the federal funds rate target by 25 base points to the 1.25-1.50 percent range. This way, the U.S. central bank delivered the third hike this year, and the fifth rate increase in the post-crisis period. The most important paragraph of the released monetary policy statement is, thus, as follows:

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Gold’s Upside Target / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: P_Radomski_CFA

In our Monday’s analysis, we emphasized that a lot changed from the short-term point of view, even though price changes in gold and silver were small. On Tuesday, we argued that closing our short position on Tuesday had been justified. Mining stocks soared by over 3% making yesterday’s session the biggest daily rally since August. A lot has changed indeed. Will the rally continue for much longer?

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Year-end US Interest Rate Hike Again Proves To Be Launchpad For Gold Price / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017

By: GoldCore

– FOMC follows through on much anticipated rate-hike of 0.25%
– Spot gold responds by heading for biggest gain in three weeks, rising by over 1%
– Final meeting for Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen
– Yellen does not expect Trump’s tax-cut package to result in significant, strong growth for US economy
– No concern for bitcoin which ‘plays a very small role in the payment system’

Thursday, December 14, 2017

WTI Crude Oil Elliott Wave Analysis / Commodities / Crude Oil

By: Submissions

Science Investing writes: Short Term Price Trend

WTI crude oil started a bullish trend in June 2017. We forecast further upside in the crude oil complex.

For the past month we’ve witnessed a sideways movement in the WTI. It may have traced out a triangle pattern. The move from the 24th of November top looks complex, which is typical for a C-wave of a triangle. Triangles typically resolve into the direction of the greater trend. Hence we forecast price action to the upside short term.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

A Pivotal Week For Gold And Crude Oil / Commodities / Commodities Trading

By: Enda_Glynn

My Bias: Long to a new all time high above 1827.
Wave Structure: Impulse structure to a new high.
Long term wave count: wave (3) above 1666.