The average developing country lives off exporting commodities like oil, gas, copper, cocoa or soybeans. The sale of these resources brings both revenue to the government and foreign currency to import what is not produced at home — which, in these places, tends to be most things.

The Iraqi and Libyan governments said they would help Egypt cope with its economic crisis by offering up crude oil exports. The Egyptian government of President Mohamed Morsi is trying to right the economic ship more than two years after the country’s revolution.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase crude exports this month as refiners boost processing ahead of the peak summer travel season, tanker tracker Oil Movements said.

Gold traders are divided on whether surging demand for jewelry and bullion coins will sustain the rally in prices as a slump in holdings through exchange-traded products extends to the longest in more than eight years.

The results of Thomson Reuters GFMS’ Platinum & Palladium Survey 2013 are in, and the news looks good for palladium investors. According to the precious metals consultancy, palladium recorded its highest deficit in 11 years in 2012. Specifically, supply of the metal fell to 8.19 million ounces, a 4-percent decline, while usage grew 5 percent, hitting 9.32 million ounces. That created a 1.12-million ounce gap between supply and demand, a sizeable increase over 2011′s 279,000-ounce deficit.

Futures regulators are close to an agreement that would end a months-long standoff over a central plank of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law and finally bring more transparency to the trading of swaps, the complex financial contracts at the heart of the financial crisis.

Emerging Asian currencies such as the Malaysian ringgit have come back with a vengeance, and their gains might not be done yet. The Malaysian ringgit has gained more than 2% against the dollar so far this month, after the country’s ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Najib Razak won recent national elections.

Carbon-market supporters from China to California will push for emissions trading even as they prepare for the end of the United Nations Kyoto Protocol in seven years, Europe’s top climate negotiator said.

China’s voracious demand for every conceivable raw material — oil, steel, soybeans, gold, to name a few — once seemed to spell a future of endlessly rising commodity prices and falling living standards in developed nations. This was a Malthusian vision of scarcity: rising demand from the growing economies of the emerging world would couple with shrinking supplies to drive up the prices of natural resources. Gas prices would never come back down; gold would cost thousands of dollars an ounce.

The commodities hedge fund industry is bleeding money. The average fund lost 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year, according to a closely watched index compiled by brokerage Newedge.

Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who returned an average of 30 percent a year from 1986 through 2010, said the long rally by commodities is over as China switches to consumption-led growth rather than investing in infrastructure.

Don’t think of the commodities swoon as just a correction after years of outsized gains. The party’s over and the decline is just starting, according to Stanley Druckenmiller. In his Sohn Investment Conference presentation, Druckenmiller said the 2002-2011 gains for commodities were an anomaly and that the declines of the past couple of years are the norm.

The best investment idea at Ira Sohn 2013 could be all about shorting everything that’s associated with the voracious Chinese demand for commodities, a symptom of policies that attempted to quell–but really just put on hold–the effects of the financial crisis.

While child labour remains a cause for concern in coffee and cocoa production in the developing world, global buyers of these commodities are also worried about the ageing workforce. Many smallholder farmers are growing older and their offspring are abandoning rural areas, and the question is how to make commodities farming appealing to younger people.

Change in regulation causes UK asset management firm to shut its doors to Ucits investors. UK-based global macro manager Cantab Capital Partners is set to close its $320 million commodities trading strategy due to concerns over the impact of new investment restrictions.

US crude oil inventories are increasing across the board. Commercial crude stocks in the US are sitting at 395 million bbls, an all-time high level and only 37 million bbls away from what Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates to be tested maximum storage capacity.

Is the U.S. holding too much crude oil in its rainy-day reserve? After the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the major industrialized nations agreed to build emergency stockpiles to guard against supply shocks and prolonged price spikes.

Things are upside down in the gold market. Valuations are irrationally low, while global consumerism fuels demand and supply comes up short. Lawrence Roulston, editor and publisher of Resource Opportunities, advises people to trust their guts as well as the numbers when weeding through prospective investments.

Britain is blessed in having an integrated economy and the ability to depreciate sterling. The eurozone, by contrast, is cursed by its fragmented nature, internal contradictions and fixed exchange rates for individual members.

The $1.4 billion worth of tax relief had been planned for July 2015 as compensation for the fixed carbon tax converting to a market-based emissions trading scheme.

The Australian, Canadian and New Zealand dollars may be set for a decline, dragged down by a slowdown in China and a sharp fall in commodity prices. Tuesday’s 0.8 percent slide by the Aussie versus the U.S. dollar, prompted by a rate cut, was just a foretaste.

Jim Rogers gave us the scoop on his latest interests in agriculture. Rogers pointed to several factors he believes will push agricultural commodities prices much higher in the years ahead.

Imagine an island on which magic trees grow. These trees, as it turns out, are exactly like the trees everywhere else, except for three things. First, these trees never die. Second, the trees always grow to exactly 100 feet tall eventually.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries raised its oil output in April to its highest level in five months, the U.S. government said.

OPEC has appointed a Saudi Arabian candidate as its head of research over an Iranian, OPEC delegates told Reuters on Tuesday following a meeting at the organization’s headquarters in Vienna.

Many investors study supply and demand statistics to figure out where they think the oil price is going. But by far, the biggest factor that determines the oil price is the US dollar, says Donald Dony, who pens The Technical Speculator investment newsletter.

If one is to believe the hype and the optimism going around Lebanon these days, one would think that every Lebanese citizen, or at least those residing in Lebanon, is going to strike the jackpot and join the ranks of the Gulf Arab millionaires once drilling in the newly discovered offshore oil and natural gas fields begins.

There’s not much to suggest the European natural gas market will make dramatic gains any time soon, the International Energy Agency said. The IEA said in its monthly journal that European countries consumed 8 percent more natural gas in 2010, erasing the 6 percent decline that coincided with economic crises in 2009.

These past few weeks it seems like paper gold is out and physical gold is in. The fall in the price of gold has triggered a new run on physical gold that shows no sign of abating. Record amounts of money have exited ‘paper,’ i.e. futures and ETFs, and headed straight to the bank or the mint to be exchanged for coins and bullion bars — that is, if one can get them.

John Paulson’s Gold Fund lost 27% in April, according to a report on Bloomberg Tuesday, citing someone familiar with the matter. That’s a chunk of change, and explains why the SPDR Gold fund GLD keeps heading south, says Tyler Durden over at ZeroHedge.

Even though gold is said to have entered a bearish phase there is no respite for Indian consumers. They may end up paying more for the yellow metal if the RBI’s recent move to restrict banks’ bullion imports becomes effective.

Silver in India, the poor man’s gold, is witnessing a reverse trend compared to the world market where a slump in silver prices has spurred demand.

The commodity ETF space has seen only a few winners so far this year, thanks to a strong dollar and weak demand. Some products in the energy or soft commodities space (like natural gas, cotton or cocoa) have added double digits but others have seen significant weakness in the year-to-date period.

Cantab Capital Partners LLP, the $5.5 billion hedge-fund firm led by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) quantitative traders, will shut a pool that is regulated like mutual funds because of restrictions on commodity investments.

Brazilian exporters are facing a major crunch when it comes to both cost and revenue, according to Murilo Ferreira, president of mining giant Vale, Brazil’s largest single exporter.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has confirmed the 2015 tax cut associated with the carbon trading scheme will not go ahead because of the drop in the carbon price in Europe.

China may introduce tougher taxes on emissions and use of resources, after Vice-premier Ma Kai said more reforms are needed to achieve greener industrial development. In an article for Qiushi Magazine on Thursday, Ma called for an increase in the funds needed to tackle pollution “via taxation measures”.

Gold has cratered into bear market territory. Ditto for silver and copper. Aluminum is in a big downtrend too, along with its metallic cousin nickel. The price of oil has been moving sideways and agricultural commodities are well off last year’s drought-induced highs.

Sometimes following where money is being invested is a solid course of action. Other times, a better opportunity lies in going the opposite direction.

China’s main commodity imports are expected to rise in April from a month ago, supported by a seasonal recovery in demand, but the pace of growth in the second quarter will likely be capped by constraints on manufacturing.

Maybe it’s the gloomy Seattle weather that has made investment manager Jim Hansen and his son and partner, Kevin, at Ravenna Capital Management immune to oil and gas industry hype about the supposed U.S. shale gas “revolution.” More likely it is thorough research focused on making their clients money and keeping that money out of harm’s way.

The price of oil edged higher Monday as tension increased between Syria and Israel. The benchmark oil contract for June delivery rose 55 cents to close at $96.16 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the third straight day of gains for oil, and the first close above $96 since April 2.

If oil prices across the globe don’t seem to square with what one would expect in a free market system, there’s a reason for that. The OPEC cartel, according to a new published by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE):

A raft of mergers in the US oil sector has been predicted as smaller companies will find it difficult to comply with new regulations introduced after BP’s Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Though credited with stabilizing gold price, the recent gold-buying spree in China reveals a lack of investment options for Chinese households looking to retain asset value. Despite a new price swing, the precious metal will stay buoyant at 1,542 US dollars per ounce for 2013, thanks in part to strong retail demand from China and India, predicted HSBC recently.

Gold-buying fever continued unabated among the untutored masses worldwide last week. Imports to India, the biggest gold consumer by far, were running at five times average levels, according to investment bank UBS.

Behind the recent gold crash is no central bank manipulation, at least that is what one can gather from the words of the contrarian investor and the author of ‘The Gloom, Boom, & Doom report’, Marc Faber.

Barclays, in its latest report on gold has projected Q2 13 price of gold at $1350/oz and 2013 price at $1483/oz.

The usefulness of sentiment’s stealth crystal ball is about to be revealed to the litany of unsuspecting precious metal bears and skeptics who have convinced themselves that gold’s bull market is either over or, at the minimum, in need of lengthy ongoing retesting, restructuring and consolidation.

The recent declines in the gold and silver markets have prompted some soul searching among even the more dedicated precious metals investors. A rational investment approach would involve considering the likelihood of various scenarios that could hurt precious metal prices even further.