Regular readers will recall our feature on “Attempts to Corner Commodity Markets” back in February of 2013 (see here on page 12 – http://issuu.com/spreadbetmagazine/docs/spreadbet_magazine_v13_generic) and our coverage of one “Dr Copper”. Recent news reports of a large buyer hovering up almost all the physical copper in recent weeks has us wondering – is Dr…
I know we have the charting equivalent of a man crush on the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) at the moment, but it is such an important chart for anyone with the slightest interest in the health of the mining sector. And as regular readers of SpreadBet Magazine will know, if we have a bit of…
By Investment Contrarians To put it mildly, natural gas simply doesn’t get as much attention as crude oil, or even gold. Mr. Speculator, my good old friend, once said, “Why would you want to even bother looking at it? The prices have collapsed and have been ranging for years.” It’s certainly true that natural gas…
The rally in commodity stocks looks like it has legs! Prices of raw materials have taken a bit of a dip in the last week, but the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) has suddenly soared. The BDI is issued daily by the Baltic Exchange, based in London, and measures the utilisation of 23 of the…
Throughout the summer we’ve been banging the commodity drum as loudly as we can as regular readers will be aware. Quite simply, we believed commodities had plunged too far into oversold territory, as QE-fuelled investors had driven up bond and stock prices, while trashing the non-interest bearing raw materials, precious metals especially. At the very…
The Short end of the stick – Copper Trade idea hypothesis – Copper is a sell through to below $260. Copper, in unison with the Precious Metals mining universe has had an exponential run since 2001 from its lows of $50.23 In 2011, unlike most of the other precious metals universe, it exceeded its…
The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index shown above is comprised of the principal physical commodities that are the subject of active, liquid futures markets including metals, energy and food. The GSCI is an excellent proxy for global demand and sentiment on the commodity front and looking at the last 4 months, the index has been remarkably…
As global growth retreats, in particular in Asia, demand for commodities is also dropping creating a surplus that is pressuring down prices. Iron ore, a commodity highly correlated with China’s growth, has seen its price in particular slashed by 45% since February last year as China’s growth has come off the boil. Copper in contrast…
The continued rising tension between China & Japan is weighing further on Chinese equities in particular with the index hovering at a new 4 year low just over the key psychological level of 2000 (see below). As we covered in our latest edition of our magazine in setting out the Buy case for the Chinese…
The Chinese Shanghai Composite Index continued its precipitous decline yesterday, closing down over 1% at 2,065 – now 6% in the red for 2012 YTD and the lowest since March 2009. The reason for the further falls was China Premier Wen Jiabao’s comments at the weekend pledging new measures aimed at stablising export growth perhaps…
