Analysis Topic: Commodity Markets - Metals, Softs & Oils
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Friday, January 24, 2014
Gold and Silver Trading Alert: Strong Rally’s Implications / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
In short: Opening a speculative short position (half of the regular position) in gold, silver and mining stocks might be a good idea right now.
Yesterday, gold rallied significantly, mining stocks rallied less significantly (didn’t close higher than on Tuesday) and silver moved higher very insignificantly. Let’s see how much changed (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Gold Price Bottoming, Gold Stocks Set to Soar / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2014
Gold is bottoming, showing incredible resilience over the past 7 months. After suffering an epic plunge in last year’s second quarter, gold has held its ground ever since. This is despite still facing the same howling headwinds that forced that extraordinary selloff. Gold has found strong support and carved a massive double bottom. Thus 2013’s gold super-storm has passed, and a mighty new upleg is dawning.
Obviously last year was exceedingly miserable for gold. This metal plunged 27.9%, its worst calendar-year performance in 32 years! When something hasn’t been witnessed for a third of a century, there is no doubt it is rare and extreme. But the whole year masks the real story, the second quarter. The gold price plummeted an astounding 22.8% in 2013’s Q2. That was its worst calendar quarter in 93 years!
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Fiat Money Implications for Gold and Silver / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By December, the most recent month for which statistics are available, the US dollar Fiat Money Quantity (FMQ) had grown to $12.48 trillion. This is $5.05 trillion more than if it had grown in line with the established average monthly growth rate from 1960 to the month before the Lehman Crisis. By this measure of currency inflation, since August 2009 inflation is now 68% above trend. This is illustrated in Chart 1 below.
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Germany’s Gold is the Story de Jour / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
It transpired last week that of the 43-odd tonnes per annum the Bundesbank expects to be returned from the New York Fed only 5 tonnes arrived in 2013. Furthermore, of the 373.7 tonnes stored with the Banque de France only 32 tonnes was delivered. This is little more than a morning’s delivery in the London market, so it is hard to swallow the Bundesbank’s excuses about logistics.
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Comparing Apples and Oranges of Silver and Gold Price Manipulation / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
By now, most observers have heard of precious metals price manipulation. As the issue creeps into the mainstream, more and more investors will come to understand it - along with its vast implications.We've covered the mechanisms used to manipulate the metals extensively, but it is important to point out the differences between gold and silver in terms of how they are managed. This is because it provides excellent insight into the relative character of each metal's unique supply and demand profile.
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Why Gold Stocks are Leading Gold Bullion Price / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2014
At the start of the year we asserted that the mining equities could lead the metals higher. Since then, the shares have roared higher while the metals have remained subdued. Gold has gained a bit but Silver has really struggled. Why are the stocks performing so well if the metals are not confirming?
The main reason is the stocks led the metals down (specifically Gold) during the bear market. The chart below plots CDNX (Canadian juniors), GDXJ (US juniors), GDX (large caps) and Gold. Note that both junior markets peaked months before Gold. GDX technically peaked at the same time but began its topping process in December 2010, well before Gold peaked.
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Thursday, January 23, 2014
Black Swans, Yellow Gold - Gold as a disinflation hedge Part2 / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
(The following is the second of a five-part series on how gold performs during periods of deflation, chronic disinflation, runaway stagflation and hyperinflation. The second installment examines gold’s safe-haven role during a disinflationary breakdown like the one in 2008-2009.)
Read full article... Read full article...“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history. . .But we act as though we are able to predict historical events, or, even worse, as if we are able to change the course of history. We produce thirty-year projections of social security deficits and oil prices without realizing that we cannot even predict these for next summer — our cumulative prediction errors for political and economic events are so monstrous that every time I look at the empirical record I have to pinch myself to verify that I am not dreaming. What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it.” - Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan — The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2010
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Two Gold Stocks You’ll Wish You Owned in 2013… and Should Still Buy Now / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2014
By Laurynas Vegys, Research Analyst
Looking back on 2013, we have to conclude that it was one of the worst years for precious metals stocks in recent memory—despite all the reasons why it should have been a great one.
Here's a sober look at the performance of the most widely followed indices in the precious metals (PM) sector.
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Thursday, January 23, 2014
Silver 'Bullets' - Not just about Vampires and Werewolves / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
The idea that bullets made from silver offered an effective (sometimes only) means of dispatching evil entities from vampires to werewolves, has been around in popular mythology for quite some time. A Brothers Grimm fairy tale called The Two Brothers, features a supposedly conventional bullet-proof witch being given an attitude adjustment via the use of silver bullets. According to Bulgarian legend, Delyo, a 17th century rebel who led forces against the Ottoman Empire, was immune to injury from either swords or guns, so his enemies cast a silver bullet in order to dispatch him from the scene.
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Thursday, January 23, 2014
Gold Investors Buy Signal Patience is Required / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
In my last post I noted that gold could give a major buy signal in the next 2-3 weeks. Let me stress again that patience is required right here. Gold has to confirm the intermediate rally first. That means it needs to break above $1268 and make a higher high. If it doesn't do that then no buy signal will be generated. Without a reversal of the pattern of lower lows and lower highs then this is just another weak bear market rally destined to roll over and break the bulls hearts again.
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Thursday, January 23, 2014
Gold Slam-Dunk Sell or Buy Trade of the Year? / Commodities / Articles
Mohammad Zulfiqar writes: Demand for gold bullion remains high. Each day there’s a new piece of information that continues to attest to this phenomenon. With this, I remain bullish on the yellow shiny metal. But one thing should be noted: I am not saying the bottom has been placed in, but that all the indicators are suggesting a bottom may be in the making.
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
What Does 2014 Hold for Gold and Silver? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Eric Lemieux, a mining analyst with Laurentian Bank Securities in Québec, is a realist, which makes his optimistic outlook for miners in 2014 that much more compelling. Lemieux believes that with the wheat separated from the chaff over the past tumultuous year, the truly strong companies have emerged. But you may be surprised by the jurisdictions he predicts will come to life in 2014. Lemieux makes some startling, but happy forecasts in this interview with The Gold Report.
The Mining Report: Eric, your top stock pick in 2013— Virginia Mines Inc. (VGQ:TSX)—outperformed the S&P/TSX SmallCap Index. What's your recipe for picking stocks in 2014?
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Energy Outlook: What’s Hot in 2014 / Commodities / Energy Resources
Investors who want to know how the energy sector will be doing in the coming year are, in my opinion, asking the wrong question. There really is no such thing as "the energy sector," because the performance of the different resources—from oil and gas, to uranium, to coal, to renewables—can vary dramatically.
Case in point: while unconventional oil exploration and production have seen a huge upswing in recent years, thanks to the vast success of the Bakken and other oil-rich shale formations, at the same time natural gas has taken a nosedive, due to a supply glut that still hasn't found its balancing point.
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Falling Commodities Prices Despite QE - What Does That Mean? / Commodities / Commodities Trading
During QE3, the latest round of the Fed's quantitative easing, the stock market rose. We all know that.
But did you also know that commodities fell?
That's right: QE3 had zero effect on commodities -- or maybe even a negative effect. In fact, an unbiased observer of the trend might conclude that the Fed drove commodity prices down.
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Gold Fix, Gold Market Rigging / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
Gold fell back to test its 50 DMA in light trade today, and silver followed.
There was a little movement in and out of the Comex warehouses on Friday, but nothing of significance.
This is a holiday shortened week in the US, and trading will be even lighter than usual in the first part of this week thanks to winter storm Janus. Janus as you may recall is the two-faced Roman god of transitions, beginnings and endings. He might very well be the god of choice for politicians in the modern era as well.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
A Dozen Gold, Copper, Phosphate and Uranium Stocks / Commodities / Metals & Mining
Amanda Van Dyke of Palisade Capital is confident that China's reforms will ensure that the commodity supercycle will continue for some time to come. In this interview with The Mining Report, Van Dyke argues that investors should worry less about the right balance of specific commodities and more about the right mix of early-stage, development-stage and producing companies. She expands on a dozen she believes have the right stuff to succeed.
The Mining Report: In December Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced a $10 million ($10M) cut in monthly quantitative easing (QE). He also said that interest rates would remain at zero for the foreseeable future. What effects will these decisions have on the economy and on precious metals?
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Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Cocoa Commodity Price Corrective Retracement In Uptrend / Commodities / Cocoa
On the cocoa-futures chart we see a nice uptrend since July. As such, we definitely want to stay with a trend, meaning that we will be anticipating even higher levels in this market. But first we need to identify the end of a corrective retracement that now appears to be in progress. We are talking about red wave 4 that may reach the 2.560/80 area before the uptrend resumes.
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Tuesday, January 21, 2014
OPEC Warned On 2014 Crude Oil Supply Glut / Commodities / Crude Oil
TIMELY ADVICE TO OPEC
Leo Drollas, the head of the Saudi-backed, London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies in a 3 December interview with New Europe on the eve of the 4 December OPEC meeting, itemized several supply-side reasons why present high oil prices are not forever. Apart from the USA's record-breaking output of oil driven by its shale-oil production, Drollas said: “Next year, Iraqi oil will increase by 300,000 barrels a day, we think at least, there will be 250,000 more from Venezuela, there will be possibly 1 more million barrels from Iran, when Iran comes back, and Libyan oil should return”.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Silver Game Changer - Institutional Buying / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014
The key to investing in silver is getting in before the big gains are made. Even though the price of silver is up substantially in the past decade, it has only kept in par with the rise of the cost of energy.
In 2004 the price of a barrel of Brent crude was $38 and silver was $6.67. Today the price of silver is $20.50 and Brent crude trading at an average $110 for the past month. Basically, the price of both have tripled in the past decade:
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Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Gold Stocks Long Wave Winter / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2014
As the Fed runs low on ammunition to further suppress the gold price, Ian Gordon, founder and chairman of the Longwave Group, is extremely bullish on gold. In this interview with The Gold Report, he recounts his history of the manipulation of the gold price and its implications for the global economy. He also expands on research showing that juniors are more effective and cost efficient at making discoveries.
The Gold Report: Gold was among the worst performing assets in 2013. How have its trading patterns and performance over the last two years informed your predictions for 2014?
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