Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils

The analysis published under this topic are as follows.

Friday, May 31, 2024

Gold Has Done Its Job – Isn’t That Enough? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Kelsey_Williams

GOLD HAS DONE ITS JOB

For most of us who understand what gold is (and, what it isn’t), gold continues to perform as reasonably expected. Rather, its price continues to reflect the ongoing loss of purchasing power in the U.S. dollar. Gold, itself, isn’t doing anything at all. (see Not About Gold; All About The Dollar)

Short term nominal profits notwithstanding, gold’s value is the same as it is always. Gold is real money and its value is in its use as money. Gold is a medium of exchange, a measure of value, and a long-term store of value.

Friday, May 31, 2024

Gold Stocks Catching Up / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Zeal_LLC

After getting off to a slow start in this upleg, gold miners’ stocks are beginning to catch up with their metal.  Gold stocks lagged dreadfully early on, but are increasingly outperforming in gold’s remarkable breakout surge of recent months.  These mounting gold-stock gains are boosting bullish sentiment, attracting in more traders accelerating the upside.  This virtuous circle of capital inflows still has a long way to run.

If gold stocks can’t leverage gold’s gains, they aren’t worth owning.  While miners have high potential to soar with their metal, they bear big additional risks.  Those include all kinds of operational, geological, regulatory, and geopolitical challenges and problems.  And they are all heaped on top of the biggest risk of all, gold price trends!  Yet that’s the only risk in gold bullion, so miners’ stocks really need to outperform.

If they don’t, speculators and investors are much better off sticking to gold itself.  Historically the leading GDX gold-stock ETF has amplified material gold moves by 2x to 3x.  This range’s lower end is probably the minimum acceptable to compensate traders for gold stocks’ big additional risks.  And the upper end is where this high-flying sector can quickly multiply wealth.  Unfortunately much of gold’s latest upleg saw neither.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Gold vs. Silver – Very Important Medium-term Signal / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: P_Radomski_CFA

Gold and silver soared and plunged together, but… Not at the same pace. And this can tell a lot.

Recent Movements and Their Implications

The way in which both precious metals move relative to each other is not random. It has specific rhythms and patterns, and understanding what it means can give one an extra edge over other market participants. Every now and then, the gold-to-silver ratio moves in a specific manner that indicates something important for the following weeks – and that’s exactly what happened.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Is Gold Price Heading to $2,275 - 2,280? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: The_Gold_Report

USD index has given back recent gains this morning with bond yields continuing to rise.

Gold (+.2%) and silver (+.77%) are rebounding very slightly but there has occurred some s/t technical damage, especially for gold. Copper (- .2%) and oil (-.08%) are lower, while stock index futures are modestly higher across the board.

Saturday, May 25, 2024

Gold Mid Tier Mining Stocks Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Zeal_LLC

The mid-tier and junior gold miners in this sector’s sweet spot for upside potential recently wrapped up their latest earnings season.  These fundamentally-superior smaller gold producers delivered big last quarter, reporting spectacular results.  The potent combination of record gold prices, lower mining costs, and better production fueled some of their richest profits ever.  Yet mid-tiers still remain way undervalued.

The leading mid-tier-gold-stock benchmark is the GDXJ VanEck Junior Gold Miners ETF.  With $5.5b in net assets mid-week, it remains the second-largest gold-stock ETF after its big brother GDX.  That is dominated by far-larger major gold miners, though there is much overlap between these ETFs’ holdings.  Still misleadingly named, GDXJ is overwhelmingly a mid-tier gold-stock ETF with juniors having little weighting.

Gold-stock tiers are defined by miners’ annual production rates in ounces of gold.  Small juniors have little sub-300k outputs, medium mid-tiers run 300k to 1,000k, large majors yield over 1,000k, and huge super-majors operate at vast scales exceeding 2,000k.  Translated into quarterly terms, these thresholds shake out under 75k, 75k to 250k, 250k+, and 500k+.  Today only one of GDXJ’s 25 biggest holdings is a true junior!

Thursday, May 23, 2024

All That Glitters Isn't Gold: Silver Has Outperformed Gold During This Gold Bull Run / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

All that glitters isn’t gold.

Silver also has quite a shine lately.

While gold has gotten the headlines, silver has had a solid bull run over the last several months. In fact, the white metal has outperformed gold in this gold bull market.

Last week, silver charted an 11 percent gain, cracking $30 an ounce for the first time in over a decade.

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Gold and Silver Expose Stock Market’s Phony Gains / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

Wall Street is ecstatic after the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) hit 40,000 for the first time ever. The nominal record makes for plenty of pithy headlines.

The Dow is indeed racing higher in terms of depreciating U.S. fiat dollars. But what about in terms of real money – gold and silver?

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Silver Price Forecast: Trumpeting the Jubilee | Sovereign Debt Defaults / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Hubert_Moolman

Over the last 125 years, the silver chart has formed two remarkable, similar patterns. The chart below shows a yearly silver chart (only closing values):

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Could We See $27,000 Gold? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

Could we see $27,000 gold?

That seems far-fetched but financial analyst and investment banker Jim Rickards makes the case that it could happen.

Gold charted a big rally in recent months, hitting a new all-time high of over $2,400 an ounce last month. Even with the higher prices, gold demand has remained robust. Central banks globally are adding gold to their reserves, as have investors, particularly in the East.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Gold Mining Stocks Fundamentals / Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks 2024

By: Zeal_LLC

The major gold miners just wrapped up another quarterly earnings season, reporting great results.  Sector unit profits continued blasting higher on stable production, lower mining costs, and record prevailing gold prices.  Yet individually plenty of majors still struggled with rising expenses or lower output.  So deploying capital in miners to leverage gold’s remarkable breakout requires handpicking fundamentally-superior stocks.

The GDX VanEck Gold Miners ETF remains this sector’s dominant benchmark.  Birthed way back in May 2006, GDX has parlayed its first-mover advantage into an insurmountable lead.  Its $13.9b of net assets mid-week dwarfed the next-largest 1x-long major-gold-miners ETF by nearly 28x!  GDX is undisputedly the trading vehicle of choice in this sector, with the world’s biggest gold miners commanding most of its weighting.

Gold-stock tiers are defined by miners’ annual production rates in ounces of gold.  Small juniors have little sub-300k outputs, medium mid-tiers run 300k to 1,000k, large majors yield over 1,000k, and huge super-majors operate at vast scales exceeding 2,000k.  Translated into quarterly terms, these thresholds shake out under 75k, 75k to 250k, 250k+, and 500k+.  Those two largest categories account for fully half of GDX.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

The Gold and Silver Ship Will Set Sail! / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

Over the last couple of months, gold has scaled record highs, peaking at over $2,430 an ounce before correcting and settling in the $2,300 range.

That's a healthy gain. But you could argue that gold remains significantly underpriced given the inflation we've experienced that continues to rapidly devalue the dollar.

That leaves many people wondering when gold is really going to break out.

Thursday, May 09, 2024

Could Chinese Gold Be the Straw That Breaks the Dollar's Back? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

There are cracks in the foundation of dollar dominance. Could Chinese gold be the straw that breaks the dollar’s back?

In a column published by the Telegraph, economist Julian Jessop points out that people have been predicting the dollar's demise for decades. Eventually, they'll be right.

“And that day may be drawing much closer.”

It may seem premature to talk about the demise of the dollar. Based on the dollar index, the greenback is stronger than ever. But this doesn’t necessarily reflect the greatness of the dollar. It’s more a function of weakness in other global currencies. As the saying goes, the dollar is the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry.

Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Copper: The India Factor / Commodities / Copper

By: The_Energy_Report

Michael Ballanger of GGM Advisory Inc. shares how India's copper demand may impact the metal's price. Ballanger also reviews the gold and silver market, and shares one company he thinks might have a VMS project.

As I was doing some research this week on the history of copper demand, what started as a focus on China wound up with some interesting revelations surrounding the economic history of neighboring India. Despite going to high school with a number of classmates who had immigrated from India, I never actually took the time to understand the rich history of India, largely because the narrative was always centered around the British Raj and how colonialism saved the poor savages from a grim future.

Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Gold 2008 and 2022 All Over Again? Stocks, USDX / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: P_Radomski_CFA

Can the HUGE price move from those years really be repeated?

Analogous Situations: 2008, 2022, and Now

As gold continues to move back and forth in the same trading range, I decided to dedicate today’s analysis to something different. After all, I already described my current gold price forecast for May 2024 and the situation in the forex market remains just as I had described it earlier.

Monday, April 29, 2024

Inflation Still Runs Hot, Gold and Silver Prices Stabilize / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

As economic data comes in worse than expected, investor uncertainty is rattling markets.

On Thursday, the Commerce Department released its estimate of Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter. GDP growth came in at a disappointing 1.6% -- well short of the 2.3% consensus forecast.

Stocks sold off on the news. But gold and silver markets bounced modestly off their lows from earlier in the week.

Monday, April 29, 2024

GOLD, OIL and WHEAT STOCKS  / Commodities / Commodities Trading

By: Kelsey_Williams

Financially speaking, the markets have been all over the map in the past four years since the onset of Covid and the self-inflicted wounds from forced economic shutdown. I went back to August 2020, five months after the festivities began,  and pulled up some charts which show the price action since then for gold (money), wheat (food), crude oil (energy), and stocks (S&P 500). I will make some comments after each chart and provide observations at the end of the article. We’ll start with gold…

Monday, April 08, 2024

Gold Is Rallying Again, But Silver Could Get REALLY Interesting / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: MoneyMetals

Another week, another record high for gold.

On Wednesday, the monetary metal surged above $2,300 per ounce. It took a bit of a breather Thursday ahead of today’s key employment report but it rallied again on Friday. 

Turning to silver, it made a significant breakout of its own this week. The white metal shot up above the $27 level to a fresh 2-year high and rallied to over $27.50 on Friday

Sunday, April 07, 2024

It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet) / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Gary_Tanashian

On the occasion of another standout payrolls report, we note that the macro is indeed changing beneath the surface

Another payrolls report, another beat of expectations. Here is the breakdown of the details as posted earlier. However, let’s pluck one graphic from that post and illustrate a phenomenon I’ve been watching unfold for several months in a row; that of unabated government hiring this election year.

The USS Good Ship Lollipop sails along, supported by its vast services economy and construction (a product of the services industries, not a productive industry itself, unlike for example, manufacturing) as well as a continued trend of brisk government hiring this election year. I am not going to play politics (I am dispirited by both major parties) but as usual, I am going to lay out facts so that we can properly manage the situation from an investment perspective.

Sunday, April 07, 2024

What Happens To Gold Price If The Fed Doesn’t Cut Rates? / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Kelsey_Williams

GOLD PRICE IF THE FED DOESN’T CUT

With the increasing gold price of late comes the assumption that the expected cut in interest rates will open a torrent of cheap money that will bring the U.S. dollar down with a thud.  But, what would happen to the gold price if the Fed doesn’t cut interest rates?

What seemed like a universally expected event may not be as likely as some have assumed. In fact, the Fed has a history that includes examples of pivots and re-pivots; or, ignoring the presumed pivot and staying the course.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle / Commodities / Gold & Silver 2024

By: Clif_Droke

Of the many factors that determine gold price trends, the long-term cycle of inflation and deflation is of singular importance. The cycle in question corresponds closely to the 50-to-60-year economic periodicity known as the Kondratieff Wave (or K-Wave), but is in fact a separate cycle. As we’ll discuss here, the cycle tells us to expect a gradual acceleration of inflationary pressures between now and the year 2029, with particular significance for gold investors.

The K-Wave was brought to renown in the 1920s by the Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff and is widely regarded as the predominant economic super cycle. This cycle arguably represents the most casual approach to identifying the real supply/demand conditions of any free market economy and is especially applicable to the United States. (Cycle analysts have even identified this cycle as existing as far back as thousands of years ago in Assyria and the Roman Empire.)