The world’s leading finance ministers gave their tacit approval to the soaring US dollar and plunging Japanese yen at the weekend, but international divisions over economic strategy and European banking union remained unresolved.

Unusual and rare objects always seem to be a favorite with collectors; the weirder, the better. The same applies to money. Some currencies don’t even look like our regular perception of what money should be, but served as legit cash at some point in history.

Launched in 2005, the European Union’s emissions trading system represented a huge step forward in the fight to curb global warming. Under the scheme, some 5,000 companies generating half of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions must surrender a carbon permit for each tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit.

Major investors are sweeping their portfolios clear of commodities as they start to fret again that the Chinese economy could suffer a ‘hard landing’, hitting demand for the world’s raw materials.

Stocks are up because of rampant QE, which is squeezing investor flows out of bond markets and into equities. And the reason we’ve got rampant QE is the continued lack of near-term economic recovery globally, which is manifestly bad for industrial commodities.

Once the darling of hedge funds, commodities are now looking like a poisoned chalice. Last year, hedge funds such as BlueGold, which specialized in crude oil; Centaurus, in natural gas; and Fortress Commodities, across all raw materials, shut down. Several commodities fund of funds also closed last year after clients fled.

Money managers are the most bearish on commodities in more than four years as a majority expected a weaker Chinese economy for the first time in 14 months, a Bank of America Corp. survey showed.

Prolonged low inflation has sent commodities allocations among fund managers to a four-year low, according to a new survey. A quarter of respondents to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s monthly poll on manager sentiment said a commodity collapse is the number one tail risk, an increase from 18% in April.

European officials have begun investigating several big oil companies including Shell, BP and Norway’s Statoil over suspected attempts to manipulate global oil prices for more than a decade.

China will probably commission additional storage sites for its strategic petroleum reserve this year, boosting crude demand even as construction work on the program takes longer than expected, according to the International Energy Agency.

The US will account for a third of new oil supplies over the next five years, more than previously expected, according to the International Energy Agency, illustrating the impact of the shale revolution.

The U.S. shale boom will send “shockwaves” through the global oil trade over the next five years, benefiting the nation’s refiners and displacing OPEC as the driver of supply growth, the IEA said.

Oil production from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries rose by 250,000 barrels per day in April from a month earlier to 30.5 million barrels per day, according to a Platts survey of OPEC and oil industry officials and analysts released Monday.

Iran’s oil minister says the upcoming meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will mainly focus on the situation of the global oil market.

Rising U.S. shale oil production will help meet most of the world’s new oil demand in the next five years, even if the global economy picks up steam, leaving little room for OPEC to lift output without risking lower prices, the West’s energy agency said.

If Europe thought it had a crisis on its hands in the Eurozone, it’s nothing to the crisis a lack of oil would inflict. Thanks to the EU’s disastrous energy policies, while the world is proving to be awash with black gold in one form or another, Europe is fast losing the security of its oil supply.

Jim Rogers recently said in an interview to Morningstar, that he is not disturbed by the recent tumble in gold prices. “Gold had gone up 12 years in a row, without a down year, which is extremely unusual in any asset. Equally important, gold has only had one 30% correction in 12 years.

Gold lost its sheen on the auspicious Akshaya Tritiya day by falling nearly Rs 400 but retail purchase got a boost with jewellers saying sales recording at least 15 percent growth.

Are diamonds an investor’s best friend? The collapse of gold prices earlier this spring seems to have been met with a kind of muted elation from those promoting the idea that diamonds, like the precious metal, could become a recognized asset class and another form of haven investment.

While gold has seen a decent rebound, silver and the mining shares (the more speculative side of the complex) have failed to sustain any rebound despite tremendously supportive sentiment amid an extreme oversold condition. Is the failure to rebound bearish? Not really.

The “mora” is one of many people’s currencies springing up in Spain as the economic crisis advances, inspired by old methods such as barter or time-banks. The mora has been around now for a year, and there are over 400 users throughout some 10 municipalities in the Sierra Norte de Madrid region. Several establishments have also signed up to accept payment in moras.

Here’s a very strange thing: Europe’s decades-long effort to reduce carbon emissions has been thrown into a shambles because utilities and manufacturers are exceeding their carbon-reduction targets. That’s right. Exceeding them. It almost sounds like a joke, but it’s not.

Is it too early to pronounce the so-called commodity super-cycle over? Just maybe. Two Canadian commodity indexes came out Monday, and they both suggest that raw materials are going through a modest stumble, not the huge blow up being forecast by the commodity doom and gloom crowd.

The main fundamental drivers of the commodities supercycle are still in force and recent commodity price weaknesses are more related to business-cycle fluctuations and short-term commodity-specific supply increases than a change in structural fundamentals.

Farmers responded to a big rise in prices in the past five years with a combination of increased planting, better husbandry and larger applications of fertiliser and pesticides. As a result, production rose, sending prices down.

The decline in Scotiabank’s Commodity Price Index in April was quite mild - down 0.2% month-over-month (m/m) - despite a sharp mid-month selloff in gold and talk of an end to the ‘Super-Cycle’ in commodity prices. “Financial market concern over the outlook for commodity markets was overblown mid-month,” said Patricia Mohr, Scotiabank’s Vice President of Economics and Commodity Market Specialist.

Iran is unhappy with the current oil prices, its oil minister said Monday, hinting at a proposal for the OPEC to lower its output to compensate for a drop in crude prices. “Iran’s suggestion has always been to reduce OPEC production ceiling,” Rostam Qasemi told reporters at a petrochemical conference in Tehran.

Crude oil prices slipped Friday on renewed global demand worries after OPEC left its 2013 estimate unchanged and reported increased output in April. New York’s main contract, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for June delivery, closed at $96.04 a barrel, down 35 cents from Thursday.

Emkay Commodity Research has come out with its report on energy and precious metals. The research firm expects crude oil prices to go down as investors would remain cautious ahead of the manufacturing, GDP and retail sales data to gauge the health of global economy.

According to Bloomberg, Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. is gearing up to drop $1.9 billion on new wind farms in Iowa. The investment might build as many as 656 new turbines by 2015, which would add as much as 1,050 megawatts of wind power capacity to the 2,285 megawatts the company already operates in the state.

Consumers will sell the least used gold in five years after prices tumbled into a bear market, curbing a source of metal that typically accounts for about one in every three ounces of global supply.

How many of us would like to walk into a shopping mall holding several grams of gold in the pocket to buy a packet of soap or other daily necessities? This is quite possible if paper currency loses its significance or value. But why would that happen and what does it have to do with gold prices?

I find myself reminiscing about April 2011 when the white metal ended the month at a sterling $48.70 an ounce after hitting an all-time intraday high of $49.51. That record surpassed the previous high of $49.45 set three decades earlier when the Texan Hunt brothers set out to corner the silver market.

Weaker metals prices overall spurred speculators to shed some of their bullish precious metals futures and options positions at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, according to U.S. government data.

Physically-backed gold exchange traded funds are used by investors as an easy alternative to buy the metal within the equities markets. However, the innovation in ETFs can also add to the selling pressure on gold.

Despite price gains across a range of commodities last week, commodity investors remain cautious. In fact last week saw the largest ever inflows into ETF Securities short gold ETP (SBUL), with $48mn of net new inflows.

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) said Monday it reached in April a total trading volume of 24.5 million contracts, valued at 1.025 trillion U.S. dollars and a first since the market’s inception in 2005.

It may be hard to accept, given the yen’s recent sharp fall, but the Japanese unit remains in the eyes of many a haven currency. The dollar’s rise above Y100 is not just a function of Bank of Japan easing, but also the benign market of late.

A report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Ernst & Young forecasts that South Korea’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) could reach the penalty level of $90 per tonne of CO2 – exceeding that of any other ETS in the world.

Hedge funds increased bets on lower gold prices after investors pulled a record $20.8 billion from bullion funds this year while BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest money manager, said it’s still bullish.

A controversial hedge fund-lite structure looks likely to survive, despite a regulatory clampdown that has claimed its first victim. Cantab Capital Partners, a $5.5bn systematic global macro manager, last week announced the imminent closure of its only onshore Ucits fund as a result of pressure from European regulators.

The net long money held by hedge funds and other big speculators in commodities is back to a six-week high, moving on from April’s market tumble, as traders piled into oil and oversold crops like coffee, cocoa and corn, trade data showed on Friday.

Commodity trading houses are not “too big to fail”, says a report commissioned by the banking industry’s top lobby group, which had hoped it would conclude the opposite.

Dubai demand for gold has been witnessing a massive surge since the price collapse of last month, with demand far outstripping supply. Various estimates suggest that demand in the past few weeks has been nothing short of astronomical, surging by 10 times the normal demand.

Survey participants are divided on the price outlook for gold next week, with no one group capturing the majority of opinions, although nominally more participants see weaker prices.

The Opec will need to pump more oil than previously thought to balance the market in 2013 and expects global consumption to be much higher in the rest of the year, the group said in a report ahead of its meeting to set policy on May 31.

A surge in US tight crude oil production has reached 2 mb/d; and it is expected to reach 2.8 mb/d by 2015 and 3.1 mb/d 2020, London based Barclays noted in a report.

Dubai demand for gold has been witnessing a massive surge since the price collapse of last month, with demand far outstripping supply. Various estimates suggest that demand in the past few weeks has been nothing short of astronomical, surging by 10 times the normal demand.

Gold bullion fell to a two-week low Friday, drifting lower towards $1440 an ounce during this morning’s London session before dropping sharply through that level, as stocks gained and most commodities fell as the Dollar strengthened against major currencies.

Gold attracts investment capital when other asset classes fail to deliver. So now equities have clearly regained their appeal after more than a decade of what finance professionals would rather we called “sub-optimal” returns, gold investing has lost its urgency for money managers.