Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, August 04, 2021
Gold is the Key to Financial Wisdom / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Michael_J_Kosares
To fully understand markets, understand gold. It is the key to financial wisdom. By learning of its role as a financial asset, one will discover universal truths about the value of money, and hence, the underlying value of all assets. It does not do much good, for example, to make a small fortune in the stock market, only to see it dwindle (or disappear overnight) in an inflationary storm or an implosion in financial markets.
The central tenet to the wisdom of gold lies in its status as the most liquid and widely owned asset that is not simultaneously someone else’s liability. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once remarked: “No one refuses gold as payment to discharge an obligation. Credit instruments and fiat currency depend on the creditworthiness of a counter-party. Gold, along with silver, is one of the only currencies that has an intrinsic value. It has always been that way. No one questions its value, and it has always been a valuable commodity, first coined in Asia Minor in 600 BC.”
In 2001, James Grant wrote an essay aptly titled “For Real Money.” It is a study of gold’s role in the financial marketplace. Though two decades old, that essay still resonates today. In it, he said that a new bull market for gold was already underway. Few believed him, but he turned out to be right. At the time, the metal was trading in the $280 range. Over the ensuing twenty-year period, it would rise to a little over $1800 per ounce today for a total return of 567%, or just over 10% per year compounded. (Gold reached a record high in August 2020 at $2067 per ounce.) He summed up the need for gold as follows:
“There are many differences between physics and economics, but the greatest of these is that particles aren’t people. Participating in a monetary system, clever people will exploit the rules in such a way as eventually to bring the system down. The system in place subsidizes and encourages risk-taking and borrowing. Accordingly, leveraged financial structures and colossal debts abound. The gold standard failed by reason of its structure (perceived as rigid). The pure paper standard is failing on account of its lack of structure. Anticipating the end of the dominance of the paper dollar, we have cast around for an alternative. The answer we keep coming up with is the one you already know.”
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Monday, August 02, 2021
Gold at a Crossroads of Hawkish Fed and High Inflation / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Gold has been trading sideways recently, but this won’t last forever – the yellow metal is likely to move downward before continuing its rise.
So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell, a bull market from a bear market? It’s not so easy, as gold seems to be at a crossroads. On the one hand, accelerating inflation should take gold higher, especially that the real interest rates stay well below zero. On the other hand, a hawkish Fed should send the yellow metal lower, as it would boost the expectations of higher bond yields. The Fed’s tightening cycle increases the interest rates and strengthens the US dollar, creating downward pressure on gold.
However, gold is neither soaring nor plunging. Instead, it seems to be in a sideways trend. Indeed, as the chart below shows, gold has been moving in a trading zone of $1,700-$1,900 since September 2020.
Sunday, August 01, 2021
Gold Stocks Autumn Rally / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2021
By: Zeal_LLC
The gold miners’ stocks were whacked hard earlier this summer on a Fed-rate-hikes scare. That serious anomaly really damaged sentiment, spawning exceptionally-weak seasonal performance in this contrarian sector. But the bruised gold stocks and the metal they mine have trudged through, making it back to the start of their traditional strong season. That begins with robust autumn rallies that usually start marching now.
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 exhibit strong seasonality because their price action mirrors 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.
Indians believe getting married during their autumn festivals is auspicious, increasing the likelihood of long, successful, happy, and even lucky marriages. And Indian parents outfit their brides with beautiful and intricate 22-karat gold jewelry, which they buy in vast quantities. That’s not only for adornment on their wedding days, but these dowries secure brides’ financial independence within their husbands’ families.
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Friday, July 30, 2021
Gold and Silver Precious Metals Technical Analysis / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: The_Gold_Report
Technical analyst Clive Maund explains why he is bullish on gold and precious metals. Despite the looming threat of massive inflation, or at least stagflation in the event that markets collapse, many appear to have given up on gold at the worst possible time, perhaps due to the mistaken belief that it will be perpetually suppressed by market manipulators.
The key point to grasp with gold, which has always been the same, is that since it is "real money" with intrinsic value it will always retain its value, and this has never been more the case than in situations where a currency is rapidly losing its purchasing power, as is set to happen with the dollar—and is already happening—and with almost all currencies around the world. With the purchasing power of fiat money everywhere set to be vaporized by inflation/hyperinflation, gold's (and silver's) appeal as a store of value has never been greater.
It is crucial to understand that even if markets crash, and take gold and silver prices down with them, their prices should drop at a lower rate than most other assets, and thus they should retain or increases their purchasing power so you will be able to buy more—just ask the people of Venezuela what they would prefer to have owned before their country was destroyed by hyperinflation, their local currency or gold—by end of it gold would buy wagonloads of the currency. So, at a time like this, there are no asset better for retain value than gold and silver.
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Thursday, July 29, 2021
Waiting On Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Kelsey_Williams
Expectations still abound for the long-awaited, vertical leap in silver prices. We are told it is inevitable; and that it is supported by solid fundamentals. Those fundamentals include supply deficits, a return to the 16 to 1 gold-silver ratio, increasing monetary demand for silver, etc.
However, an examination of those fundamentals reveals a different picture. That picture is inconsistent with the call for higher silver prices.
SILVER SUPPLY & DEMAND, RATIOS
The supply deficits (gaps in consumption over production) have been talked about for decades. In the 1960s and 1970s they were the principal fundamental justification in the case for higher silver prices.
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Wednesday, July 28, 2021
The US Dollar is the Driver of the Gold & Silver Sectors / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Lorimer_Wilson
The U.S. dollar, as the world reserve currency, is still the driver of silver, gold, and inflation pricing and the charts below show that they should now be ready to run based on the USD topping and then dropping in “price”.
At this point the U.S. Dollar has corrected upward but has now either entered its next top, or is very close to that overhead resistance. Thus, we appear to be at the point where the USD will very soon start to move lower causing Precious Metals pricing across the board to start to move up aggressively, once again. In fact, I suspect that we saw a glimpse of exactly that into the close last week. All USD comments are on the chart.
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Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Gold And Silver – Which Will Have An Explosive Price Rally And Which Will Have A Sustained One? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Our followers and readers have been emailing us asking for more research into Precious Metals and updated Adaptive Dynamic Learning (ADL) Price Modeling charts (our proprietary price/technical mapping system capable of predicting future trends, setups, and price levels). This special Gold and Silver research article will help you learn what to expect over the next 24+ months and where opportunities exist in Gold and Silver trends.
Longer-term support in Gold likely to act as an upward sloping price floor over the next 24+ months
There are two key upward sloping trend lines we want to focus your attention on, on this Monthly Gold chart, below. The first, the YELLOW trend line, originates from the 2009 bottom from the Housing Crisis. The important thing to remember at this time was that the US markets were in the midst of a broad market Depreciation Cycle that started in 2001-02 and ended in 2010. The rally that was taking place before the 2000 Depreciation Cycle started was a reactionary upside price trend resulting from the end of the DOT COM bubble and the post 911 terrorist attacks. The US entered a war that pushed fear levels higher – resulting in a transitional shift in how Gold was perceived at that time.
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Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Inflation Pressures Persist Despite Biden Propaganda / Commodities / Inflation
By: MoneyMetals
As the summer doldrums drag on, precious metals bulls are eying potential support levels for a seasonal bottom.
The gold market found support at the $1,750 level last month and has since been trading with a slight upside bias. Although the price action hasn’t been especially exciting, base building in these summer months can be a healthy technical process in the context of a larger bull market.
Meanwhile, investors are weighing troubling developments on the inflation front. Price increases are hitting consumers every time they shop, and that trend shows no signs of letting up.
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Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Gold Investors Wavering / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Zeal_LLC
Gold has been sucking wind this summer, trudging along after getting slammed by a distant-future-rate-hikes scare. The resulting lower prices have really damaged psychology, leaving investors wavering on gold. Their recent capital inflows have reversed into modest selling, contributing to unusual weakness in this leading alternative asset. But investment demand should roar back in this inflationary environment.
Gold entered summer 2021 with strong upside momentum, in a young upleg that had just powered up 13.5% in 2.8 months by early June. This current interrupted upleg is the fifth of gold’s secular bull, and the previous four averaged big 33.3% gains. Gold was progressing nicely until the June 16th meeting of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee. The FOMC was expected to do nothing, and that’s what it did.
In a nothingburger monetary-policy decision, the FOMC left its zero-interest-rate policy and $120b per month of quantitative-easing money printing in place indefinitely. There were no hints that either of these hyper-easy policy stances would be changed anytime soon. The leveraged gold-futures speculators who dominate gold’s short-term fortunes should’ve yawned at that, and gone back to enjoying lazy summers.
But with every other FOMC decision, the Fed releases a Summary of Economic Projections that shows where individual top Fed officials expect to see certain economic data in coming years. That includes their outlooks for the federal-funds rate, which are gathered in a scatter chart known as the “dot plot”. In mid-June’s version, 6 out of 18 top Fed officials thought there might be two quarter-point hikes into year-end 2023!
That was about 2.5 years into the future, an eternity away in the markets. And the dot plot has proven a notoriously-inaccurate FFR predictor anyway. That very afternoon the Fed chair himself warned that the dots are “not a Committee forecast, they’re not a plan. ... the dots are not a great forecaster of future rate moves.” He said they should “be taken with a big grain of salt.” Jerome Powell advised to ignore the dot plot!
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Sunday, July 25, 2021
Gold’s Behavior in Various Parallel Inflation Universes / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The current high inflation could theoretically transform into hyperinflation, disinflation, stagflation, or deflation. What does each mean for gold?Inflation, inflation, inflation. We all know that prices have surged recently. And we all know that high inflation is likely to stay with us for a while, even if we assume that the CPI annual rate has already peaked, which is not so obvious. But let’s look beyond the nearest horizon and think about what lies ahead after months of high inflation, and what consequences it could have for the gold market.
From the logical point of view, there are three options. Inflation rates could accelerate further, leading to hyperinflation in an extreme case. They could remain more or less the same, resulting possibly in stagflation when the pace of GDP growth decelerates. And, finally, the rates of annual changes in the CPI could slow down, implying disinflation, or they could even become negative – in this scenario, we would enter the world of deflation. So, which of these “flations” awaits us?
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Friday, July 23, 2021
Junior Gold Miners: New Yearly Lows! Will We See a Further Drop? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2021
By: P_Radomski_CFA
It seems that choosing GDXJ to short the PMs was a good decision – juniors closed the day at new 2021 lows. Will our profits only grow from now on?
Gold’s yesterday’s intraday attempt to rally was not bullish. On the contrary, it was what usually happens right before a big slide. Especially given the USDX’s breakout.
Let’s start with the latter.
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Powell Gave Congress Dovish Signs. Will It Help Gold Price? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Powell admits that inflation is well above the Fed’s target, but he still considers it transitory. Gold increased in response – only to fall again.Last week, Powell testified before Congress. On the one hand, Powell admitted in a way that inflation had reached a level higher than expected and is above the level accepted by the Fed in the longer run:
Inflation has increased notably and will likely remain elevated in coming months before moderating.
It means that the Fed was surprised by high inflation, but it doesn’t want to admit it explicitly. Instead, Powell admitted that inflation would likely stay at a high level for some time. The obvious question here is: why should we believe the Fed that inflation will really moderate later this year, given that the US central bank failed in forecasting inflation in the first half of 2021?
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Thursday, July 22, 2021
What’s Next For Gold Is Always About The US Dollar / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Kelsey_Williams
Since the origin of the Federal Reserve in 1913 the US dollar has lost ninety-nine percent of its purchasing power.
Not coincidentally, but in direct reflection of the dollar’s loss in purchasing power, the price of gold has multiplied one hundred fold from $20.67 oz to $2060 oz as of August 2020.
The chart (source) below shows the ever-increasing price of gold over the past century…
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Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Gold Asks: Has Inflation Already Peaked? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Inflation surged in May, and some worry that it has already reached its peak. Has it indeed? This issue is key for the Fed and the gold market.Inflation has soared recently. The CPI annual rate surged 5% in May, which was the fastest jump since the Great Recession. However, the Fed officials still maintain that inflation will only be temporary. Some of the analysts even claim that inflation has already peaked, and it will decelerate from now on. Are they right?
Well, they present a few strong arguments. First, there is no doubt that the recent rise in prices has been partially caused by the problems with the supply chains. But, luckily, the bottlenecks are short-lived phenomena, and they always resolve themselves, i.e., by the magic of market mechanism. The best example may be lumber prices which were skyrocketing earlier this year but which have recently declined, as production surged in response to rallying prices.
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Friday, July 16, 2021
Inflation Soars, Powell Remains Unmoved. What about Gold? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The CPI surged 5.4% in June, but Powell still sees inflation as transitory. For now, gold has risen under the dovish Fed’s wing amid higher inflation.Did you think that 5% was high inflation? Or that inflation has already peaked? Wrong! Inflation rose even further in June, although it was already elevated in May. Indeed, the consumer price index surged 0.9% in the last month, following a 0.6% jump in May. It was the largest one-month change since June 2008, during the Great Recession.
Importantly, the Core Price Index, which excludes food and energy, also rose 0.9%(after a 0.7% increase in the previous month). It shows that inflation is accelerating not only because of higher energy prices but also due to more structural, underlying trends.
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Thursday, July 15, 2021
Goldrunner: Gold Could Jump To $1,900-$2,100 In Next 30 days – Here’s Why / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Lorimer_Wilson
For the past two years at this juncture, the Precious Metals Sector has risen sharply in a month-long up cycle for Silver and with the high inflation expectations going forward a similar ramp up for the Precious Metals Sector is a real possibility.
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Thursday, July 15, 2021
ECB Changed Monetary Strategy. Will It Alter Gold’s Course? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The ECB adopts a new inflation target. Is the European Central Bank mimicking the Fed or doing its own thing? The revolution in central banking is spreading. Following the Fed, the European Central Bank has also modified its target. Last week, after an 18-months review of its monetary policy framework, the ECB published a statement on its monetary policy strategy, deciding to change its goal from “below but close to 2%” to a more symmetric aim of “2% inflation over the medium term”. The most important part of the statement is below:The Governing Council considers that price stability is best maintained by aiming for two per cent inflation over the medium term. The Governing Council’s commitment to this target is symmetric.
The symmetry means that the ECB considers both overshooting and undershooting as equally bad. In the previous framework, the ECB clearly believed that downside deviations from inflation were less harmful than upside deviations.
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Thursday, July 15, 2021
NASA And Big Tech Are Facing Off Over This Rare Gas / Commodities / Investing 2021
By: Submissions
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Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Is This The Best Way To Play The Coming Helium Boom? / Commodities / Investing 2021
By: Submissions
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Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Gold: High Time to Move Out of the Penthouse / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2021
By: P_Radomski_CFA
Gold’s days in a glamorous apartment at the top of the PMs’ building are numbered. We’d better prepare for a rapid elevator ride to the first floor.
The Gold Miners
With the gold miners essentially running laps on the treadmill, the HUI Index, the GDX ETF, and the GDXJ ETF are working extremely hard but making little progress. And with the gambit resulting in ‘one step forward, two steps back,’ frustrating exhaustion has mining stocks questioning their every move. To that point, even though the trio transitioned from the conveyor belt to the stairs in recent weeks, history shows that slow climbs often culminate with elevator rides lower. Should we expect a different outcome this time around?
Gold ended the week in the green (up by $27.30), but the HUI Index was stuck in the red (down by 1.39). This is extremely noteworthy, as a similar divergence occurred at the end of May. For context, when the yellow metal rallied by $28.60 in a week back then, the HUI Index fell by 1.37 index points.
In the following weeks, the HUI Index declined by about 50 index points, while gold declined by about $150.