Based on the European Commission’s draft, Cyprus will sell about 10.4 tonnes of gold, representing 4 percent of the Euro 10 billion bail-out package for Cyprus and about 2.6 percent of the maximum 400 tonnes annual gold sales by the European central banks. Gold reserves represent 62% of total reserves in Cyprus.
However, Barclays pointed out that other European central banks hold a much higher percentage of gold - 90.3% in Portugal, 82.2% in Greece, 72.2% in Italy and 69.2% in France. The potential sale of Cyprus’ gold triggers fear that other European central banks will sell their gold to meet their financing needs………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Wall Street is unhappy with the performance of ExxonMobil’s share price. In the race of Big Oil share prices, Chevron is clearly winning. The discussion of relative share price performance is recently focusing on two things that distinguish the two oil giants. Unlike ExxonMobil, Chevron opted to stay out of Iraq and hasn’t yet purchased a US shale gas company. This begs the question: Who was right?
Wall Street is notorious for taking a short term, even quarterly, view. ExxonMobil has made a business out of taking the long view……………………………………..Full Article: Source

Despite global economic uncertainty, Goldman expects gold to fall to $1,450 an ounce by the end of 2013, and to $1,270 an ounce by the end of 2014. While major US equity indexes continue to push into uncharted territory, commodities have taken a backseat so far this year. As investors keep pouring into stocks and increasing their overall risk appetites, safe haven assets like gold have faltered.
Year-to-date, gold has dipped just over 7%, while the S&P 500 has jumped over 11% during the same time period……………………………………..Full Article: Source

If you want a lesson on how to manipulate gold prices, you need only look at what Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) has been doing over the past few months. Goldman set the table by predicting a turn in gold prices back in December 2012, which no doubt contributed to the precious metal’s 5% decline in the first two months of the year.
At the end of February, Goldman issued a research report that said the big Wall Street bank had soured on the yellow metal, and dropped its three-month target for gold prices from $1,825 an ounce to $1,615, its six-month forecast from $1,805 to $1,600, and its one-year outlook from $1,800 to $1,550……………………………………..Full Article: Source

Lack of demand in the year ahead will dampen commodity prices, according to a senior economist. The S&P GSCI TR index of commodity prices – which incorporates energy, agriculture, and both industrial and precious metals – has fallen by 2.2 per cent so far this year.
For John Greenwood, chief economist at Invesco, there are no short-term factors that will reverse this slide, only ones that will aggravate it. ‘Looking forward,’ he said, ‘in contrast to previous business cycle upswings it is highly unlikely that in 2013 any of the major economies will see a surge of liquidity or a sudden upswing in business activity of the kind that would be needed to generate a sustained surge in demand for commodities.’……………………………………….Full Article: Source

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The swirling global economy has recently put significant pressure on gold and silver prices despite the continuing uncertainty that exists in Europe and elsewhere. Earlier this week, China announced figures for both its consumer price index and producer price index that suggest inflation expectations missed the mark fairly considerably. This has the effect of putting significant pressure on gold and silver prices throughout the year.
In the video below, Fool.com contributor Doug Ehrman discusses the potential impact of the report, how precious metals may be affected by the Chinese government, and developments in the world’s second-largest economy………………………………………..Full Article: Source

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Gold is 25% up in the last 3 months, but it’s up in Yen, not dollars. This is where currency wars and gold dynamics come together. When you think about cross rates it’s a zero sum game. Not every currency can go down against every other currency at once. Gold is always rallying somewhere; right now it is rallying in Yen.
It you want to be fancy, you are short Yen and buy gold. When the Yen gets to 110 then, you want to short sterling and buy gold. At the end of the day you will come back to gold in dollars. Gold is not going to do much in [US] dollars this year. I look for a dollar move late this year or in 2014. Meantime you can always make money in gold, as “it is always 5 o’clock somewhere………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The recent decline in gold prices and the much larger decline in gold stocks — particularly gold mining stocks — has many people thinking that the decade-long bull market in the yellow metal has ended.
Economist Nouriel Roubini can be included in this group. In fact, he displayed his glee about the drop in prices last night on Twitter. In a back-and-forth with economist and investment banker James Rickards about gold, Roubini said, “Gold-bug suckers found another irrational useless bubble fad, the Bitcoin, the bubble flavor of the day,” referring to the recent run-up in Bitcoin following the Cyprus bailout………………………………………..Full Article: Source

From a technical perspective, the price of silver is obviously breaking down. The market has been ‘trading heavy’ for a while. Furthermore, the entire commodities complex is trading in a downward trending channel, except for oil. The U.S. Dollar is also stronger because of the Euro aftermath.
Nevertheless, lots of silver longs are still holding their positions since open interest has remained high despite the move down from the 32 region. Open interest will usually fall on big declines like this, but many longs have hung on and some believe the big shorts want to force a real washout before covering a large portion of their positions………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Reading between the lines in a Barclays report on precious metals, silver investment demand needs to grow further this year to reduce the risk of price fall as there is a possibility of market surplus for 2013.
There have been signs of improvement in industrial demand with semiconductor billings recovering in January globally but weakness persists in Europe and Japan. Silver has endured the most downside pressure, which is unsurprising given the weak industrial demand and mixed investor interest………………………………………..Full Article: Source

As global growth and risk appetite picked up in the first quarter of 2013, commodity investors rotated out of exchange-traded products (ETPs) linked to gold and into more cyclical commodity ETPs such as silver, copper, palladium, platinum and broad commodity trackers.
As an aside, the term ‘ETP’ encompasses exchange-traded funds (ETFs), exchange-traded notes (ETNs) and exchange-traded commodities (ETCs). The latter, ETCs, are typically the preferred vehicle for commodities investment. Gold ETPs saw $9.2 billion of outflows during the quarter as improving US growth data drove up US interest rate expectations, increased speculation that quantitative easing might be ratcheted back and boosted the US dollar………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Silver prices are plunging, there’s no denying that. The technical picture in silver is indeed ugly, a point expertly made by my InvestorPlace colleague Serge Berger in his piece, “Silver: Ugly, and Getting Uglier.”
Yet I’m a contrarian by nature, so given the latest drop in silver prices, I start to ask myself how I can take advantage of the downtrend. Is there a “blood in the streets” buy here in the space? I suspect so. Earlier this week, I noticed that the Commitment of Traders report in silver continues to signal that there isn’t a risk of an impending washout. Here the “net long” position of speculators in silver is now at just 1k contracts, down from a high of 36k in October………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Factor # 1: Central Bank Buying: A recent Businessweek.com article highlighted that central banks are still purchasing gold even as the price has continued to fall and hover around the $1600 level. In the Businessweek.com article, two statements lead me to believe the price of gold is heading higher, or at the very least keep a floor under the price.
Factor # 2: Gold Miner Operating Expenses: With costs for gold miners rising, that could lead to production shutdowns, because mining will not be economical for gold miners at current prices. A recent Bloomberg article highlighted the increasing costs for gold miners in South Africa………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Believe it or not, the price of corn really does matter to the average investor. Commodities from industrial metals, silver and copper are also getting hit. Copper has been coined as having its PhD in economics. If copper goes up, the economy does well. Now, clearly something is amiss there.
Then, silver is the benchmark for liquidity. Typically, silver goes up and makes new highs, versus what it’s doing right now, which is making new lows. That’s because of all of the liquidity in the system………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The recent price action of gold has been frustrating for some people. The precious metal logged its second consecutive quarterly loss and remains in consolidation mode amid the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. However, there are still plenty of buyers around the world that are interested in gold.
Gold finished 2012 with a solid 7 percent gain, capping its longest steak of annual gains since at least 1920. Despite the performance, gold entered the new year on weakness. The fourth quarter was gold’s weakest quarter in four years and the decline has yet to stop………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Of my recent contrarian picks, it is worth noting that the only companies that lost substantial money were a couple of commodities companies: Kazakhmys and Vedanta. I have worked out that mining companies are different from other companies.
Because of the highly cyclical, supply and demand led nature of commodity markets, share prices can be extremely volatile. Kazakhmys’ price is a quarter of what it was in 2011. Rio Tinto’s share price is half of what it was a few years ago………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Resurgent confidence in the global economy has propelled equities higher in recent months, and investors have in turn shunned the safety of traditional flight-to-safety asset gold. Indeed, the yellow metal is set to record its worst quarterly performance in more than a decade following a 3.7% drop to around $1,600 per ounce.
However, I am convinced that a backdrop of rising inflation — coupled with enduring hiccups in the macroeconomic recovery, particularly in the eurozone — should send yellow metal interest higher as the year progresses. Gold bugs can latch onto rising metal prices through SPDR Gold Trust and Gold Bullion Securities, instruments that are designed to track movements in the gold price………………………………………..Full Article: Source

You no doubt have heard it said: A market requires buying, a lot of buying, to rise, but it can fall for any reason. Really; I hope you heard that before now because like so much of what passes for perceived wisdom on Wall Street, it is wrong, worthy only of the Annals of Unsubstantiated Musings, and therefore would not be said by me.
As a case in point, I recall a March 1989 conversation with a bond market technician who said, almost in passing, “There is not a lot for sale out there.” Yields have declined ever since then. Similarly, stocks have been able to rise in the face of continued outflows from mutual funds as buyers are willing, and indeed forced, to accumulate them at higher prices. Markets that do not sell off on bad news can rise with only minimal buying interest………………………………………..Full Article: Source

As a traditional investment product, gold has been favored by almost everyone. But this year, the gold market has been sluggish after the Spring Festival. Falling prices have disappointed some investors, while making others happy. Li Dong has the details.
In contrast to the gold market in the past, the price of gold this year after the Spring Festival did not rebound. In the global market, according to the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold futures ended last week with a loss of 0.7 percent, ended March with a gain of 1.1 percent, and ended the first quarter of 2013 with a loss of 4.8 percent………………………………………..Full Article: Source

A “doomsday scenario” drop to $1,000/ounce would “make half the gold industry worthless,” according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Despite recent hiccups in gold’s long bull run, gold is currently hovering at roughly $1,600 per troy ounce.
Gold stocks, however, have been unable to match the precious metal in performance over the past couple of years as “rising costs, expensive acquisitions and paltry dividends” have pushed investors away, wrote Tatyana Shumsky of the Wall Street Journal on Monday………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Bloomberg reported recently that Russia is now the world’s biggest gold buyer, its central bank having added 570 tonnes (18.3 million troy ounces) over the past decade. At $1,650/ounce, that’s $30.1 billion worth of gold.
Russia isn’t alone, of course. Central banks as a group have been net buyers of gold for at least two years now. But the 2012 data trickling out shows that the amount of tonnage being added is breaking records. Based on current data, the net increase in central bank gold buying for 2012 was 14.8 million troy ounces - and that’s before the final 2012 figures are in for all countries………………………………………..Full Article: Source

While the deal reached over the weekend to restructure the critical debt situation in Cyprus has been met with wildly disparate opinions from across the eurozone, it’s creating new standards that will affect both EU countries and the global economy.
As is so often the case when considering the global macroeconomic results of a situation like this one, the results are working to create competing forces within certain markets. Precious metals, including gold and silver, tend to be bolstered by weak economic conditions. Conversely, however, the turmoil in Europe is positive for the U.S. dollar — this is ultimately bearish for metals………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The Cyprus bailout deal left commodities traders scratching their heads. On Monday gold fell, silver rose, and key industrial metals and energy commodities were mixed. The news that dominated trading talk was that Cyprus reached an agreement that it will allow it to get emergency bailout loans from other European countries. But traders weren’t sure what happens next.
Normally an agreement like that would give stocks and industrial metals a lift, because it eliminates the immediate fear of a country’s disorderly breakdown. But Monday, stocks across Europe and the U.S. fell. So did copper and palladium, which can gauge how investors feel about the economy since they’re closely tied to manufacturing and industry………………………………………..Full Article: Source

From a president who seems to think energy comes from politics, yet another innovation emerged Mar. 15 in a speech at the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. “The only way to really break this cycle of spiking gas prices,” said President Barack Obama, “the only way to break that cycle for good is to shift our cars entirely—our cars and trucks—off oil.”
Like so many of Obama’s proposals for energy, this one is vacuous. If the demonstrated ability of the price of a major oil product to spike justified policies aimed at ending oil consumption, the same argument logically should apply to other commodities. Guess what: Prices of commodities other than oil spike, too………………………………………..Full Article: Source

For many months, I have witnessed a trend toward resource nationalism, which is taking a major toll on the potential supply of platinum (PTM) where more than 90% comes from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Russia. These are far from safe mining jurisdictions. Simultaneously, auto sales are rebounding to levels not seen since before the credit crisis in early 2008.
Despite global supply concerns, increase of resource nationalism and rising industrial and automobile demand, platinum is still undervalued compared to gold (GLD)……………………………………….Full Article: Source

London’s gold and silver markets face the possibility of a probe into price setting, putting a century-old practice under the spotlight after the Libor rigging scandal that exposed widespread interest rate manipulation by banks.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has started internal discussions on whether the daily setting of gold and silver prices is open to manipulation, the Wall Street Journal reported. The CFTC declined to comment, while the chairs of the London Gold Fixing Company and London Silver Fixing Company were not available for comment………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Speculators, both large and small,have been adding to their net long positions recently, with the most recent Commitment of Traders report showing a combined net long position by non-commercial and non-reportable traders of 5,964 contracts as of March 12th.
Some commercial traders have been using the recent rally as an opportunity to increase short hedges, which will need to be overcome in order for prices to breakout beyond the highs of the recent consolidation range………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Conventional wisdom holds that commodities and commodity stocks typically outperform the rest of the pack in the late stages of a bull market. But Margie Patel, managing director and senior portfolio manager at Wells Capital Management, thinks this time is different.
Why? By now, everyone is just beginning to realize new technologies for extracting oil and natural gas are going to stand the energy business on its head over the next decade. This has major implications for other related businesses, from corn to commodity chemicals………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Morgan Stanley has recently called for the return of the U.S. dollar. In his new report to clients, Morgan Stanley’s Adam Longson updates the firm’s global commodities projections with this in mind. As you’ll see, it’s not quite as simple as gold taking a hit.
Almost all commodities are expected to get more expensive as long as the global recovery picks up steam. But every commodity will also be impacted by its own supply and demand dynamics………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Investors increased wagers on a commodity rally by the most in eight months as signs of a U.S. economic recovery bolstered the outlook for demand and drove rallies in crude oil, cotton, copper and gold.
Hedge funds and other large speculators raised net-long positions across 18 U.S. futures and options in the week ended March 12 by 30 percent to 528,680 contracts, the biggest gain since July and up from a four-year low the previous week, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Money managers raised bullish bets on corn by 39 percent, cotton holdings were the highest since 2010, and gold wagers increased 9 percent………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Value seeking investors are increasingly returning to the precious metals market. Furthermore, many of them will undoubtedly gravitate toward using the more conveniently traded alternatives to self-storing the metals.
The idea of taking physical possession of gold or silver currently seems almost taboo in the mind of the mainstream precious metals investor, although many alternative minded investors tend to see personal physical possession as the only safe option in the event of a financial collapse scenario. With that noted, the various widely-traded precious metals funds have taken on the burdensome task of owning and storing physical metal for their investors………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Dambisa Moyo, international economist and best-selling author, on why the “commodity super-cycle” is not over. The commodity super-cycle – in which commodity prices reach ever-higher highs, and fall only to higher lows – is not over. Despite the euphoria around shale gas – indeed, despite weak global growth – commodity prices have risen by as much as 150% in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In the medium term, this trend will continue to pose an inflation risk and undermine living standards worldwide.
For starters, there is the convergence argument. As China grows, its increasing size, wealth, and urbanization will continue to stoke demand for energy, grains, minerals, and other resources………………………………….Full Article: Source

Commodity investors may have dramatically underestimated the length of cycles that commodity prices experience, a paper by a leading academic has claimed. In a paper entitled “From Boom to Bust: A Typology of Real Commodity Prices in the Long Run,” David S Jacks looks into the cycles the asset class have undergone in the past 160 years.
He found that the real value of 30 commodities studied - which represented $7.89 trillion in production in 2011 - had, by the end of 2011, rapidly increased since 1900…………………………………….Full Article: Source

In the world of commodities, the past couple of years should be viewed as an abrasive palate-cleanser between the first course of the supercycle — which ran from 2000 until 2008 — and the main course that is now being prepared.
To understand why, one first needs to re-examine the specifics of China’s recent nominal dollar growth in gross domestic product (GDP) — an extraordinary compound annual growth rate of 18.5% over the past decade. Even now, China’s nominal dollar GDP — that pool of demand that matters most to business — is still growing by about 13% a year…………………………………….Full Article: Source

When Prince Turki al-Faisal suggested last year that the House of Saud would join in the U.S.-led sanctions against Iranian oil, by seeking to displace Tehran’s oil exports from the global economy, he was not referring to a novel idea. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has led two prior oil wars against Iran.
As detailed in Andrew Scott Cooper’s The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East, the first Saudi oil war against Iran was intended to weaken the Shah’s modernization programs. The Saudis feared Iran’s rise as a regional power, and wanted to carve out space for independent decision-making in OPEC, which at the time was dominated by Iran…………………………………….Full Article: Source

While the “great rotation” into riskier assets has triggered a 4.3 percent fall in the price of gold since the start of the year, this is just a fraction of the losses seen in the shares of gold miners, which have fallen 15 percent on average over the same period.
Worries over the outlook for the precious metal and declining profitability of the miners have led to a continued selloff in their shares, which have struggled to find favor with investors over the past year. As a result, gold miners are now trading at their cheapest level in 25 years relative to the physical metal, according to Point View Wealth Management…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Some years ago the Wendy’s hamburger chain ran what was probably its most successful advertising campaign ever where the punchline – ‘Where’s the beef’ - was uttered by a little old lady.
How much more so might this be relevant to the gold and silver markets today where the volumes traded on the key markets exceed the amount of physical metal available many, many times over. As numerous observers have pointed out this opens them up to accusations of severe market manipulation and seems to be something the various financial authorities seem unable, or unwilling to take a serious interest in curtailing…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Union Pacific Corporation is one of the leading railroad companies in the United States. Its freight revenues grew by 6% annually in 2012, mainly owing to core pricing gains and higher fuel surcharges, which led to a 7% gain in average revenue per car in 2012. However, its freight volumes in 2012 were almost flat compared to 2011, due to weakness in the coal and agricultural markets.
Going ahead, we feel strong demand within the automotive, chemicals and intermodal segments will continue to fuel growth for the company in 2013. However, challenges in the coal and agricultural markets present headwinds for Union Pacific’s volumes………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Gold’s worst start to a year in a quarter century and the biggest sales by investors on record are increasing concern that bullion’s longest rally since the end of World War I is ending. Investors sold 106.2 metric tons valued at $5.4 billion from exchange-traded products in February, the most since their creation in 2003, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Another 26.1 tons was cut since then. Credit Suisse Group AG and Barclays Plc say the 12-year rally will peak in 2013 and billionaire George Soros reduced his stake in the biggest ETP by 55 percent in the last quarter. Prices are within 5 percent of a bear market after the longest run of monthly losses since 1997………………………………………..Full Article: Source

After trading sideways for several sessions, gold bullion jumped above $1,590 an ounce for the first time this month Tuesday morning in London, in what analysts called a “technical” move after gold broke through a key level following remarks from Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann.
“We see support at the bottom of the sideways range at $1,561 and resistance at the top at $1,586,” said a technical analysis note from Scotiabank. Gold rose above that level however shortly after Weidmann told reporters that the Eurozone crisis “is not over” and said that the Eurozone has “declining inflation risks”………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The view of the silver market from ten thousand feet away shows what is really going on behind the scenes. The manipulation of the market by deep pocket bullion banks with a hugely concentrated combined naked short position has become increasingly evident.
Furthermore, their market spoofing practices that involve dropping their bids to give the indication of a weak market and then quietly buying back their short positions for a profit are well known………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The latest commodity advice from Goldman Sachs suggests the current sell-off may be overdone. Here are the key points from Monday’s note: Shifting to near-term overweight as commodity sell-off overdone: Commodity markets declined sharply in February along with emerging market (EM) equities due to renewed concerns over China, which we believe is overdone.
Although our price targets other than gold remain unchanged, this pull back has pushed our near-term return forecast from 2.0% to 6.0%, making commodities the asset class within the ECS coverage universe with the most robust near-term outlook. However, our 12-month neutral recommendation remains unchanged as our returns forecast is still a more subdued 3.0%, as we continue to remain structurally neutral on long-dated oil and commodity prices due to the structural supply-side response to persistently high prices………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Some stability returned to precious metals this week, with gold rising $14 from $1,564 at last Friday’s low to Friday morning, London time, and silver rising $0.65 from $28. Predictably, on the back of recent falls in precious metal prices, technical analysts, who are basically trend-followers, have turned bearish.
An examination of market action tells a different story. Recent price weakness has allowed the bullion banks to reduce their short positions significantly. So here is a rhetorical question: Do you back the bullion banks’ judgement in closing their bears, or that of the trend-followers?……………………………………….Full Article: Source

This year’s commodity rally has ended and magically restarted in just five days, and it’s all because of China. Commodity prices dropped on March 1, with London copper hitting a three-month low of $7,659.50 a tonne, on concern that industrial production in China, the world’s biggest buyer of the industrial metal, was losing momentum.
This was because both the official and HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Indexes fell to five-month and four-month lows respectively. The gloomy feeling was amplified by Chinese authorities saying they will take steps to cool property prices, which was interpreted by the market as bearish for construction and, by implication, both copper and iron ore demand………………………………………..Full Article: Source

In the investing world, you can take a three-month view, a three-year view or a 30-year view. One person looking at one asset class might have a different forecast depending on the time horizon he is considering. In this article, I will look at gold through a 30-year lens.
I believe that structural forces will support gold and other hard assets over the long term. While current forces may be bearish for gold in the intermediate term, there are a number of underlying currents that demand a strategic allocation to the metal (either bullion or via an ETF such as (GLD), (IAU) or (SGOL))………………………………………..Full Article: Source

I’ve been saying for a while that investors should have more exposure to commodities. But resources like industrial metals, gas and oil aren’t that easy to tuck away in your investment portfolio. So, how do you get exposure?
Probably the most common approach is to buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs). You can buy them through your regular stockbroker, and they’re designed to move with various commodity indices – anything from aluminium, through to hogs, soybeans and zinc………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Coal has been beaten up in the media and the markets over the past year or so. Being outspoken against coal has been made easy by cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas, which has been produced in abundance here in the United States recently.
To tackle reductions in both demand and price, coal companies in the U.S. were forced to curtail production and capital spending in preparation for future production. Entering 2013, could the coal market finally have found a trough? To help answer that question, I turned to the conference calls of some of the biggest players in the business to see what their CEO’s had to say………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Gold peaked at just over 1900 dollars an ounce about a year-and-a-half ago and has been falling ever since. As of this writing gold hasn’t broken to new lows, but it may. The question is “why?” There are many reasons, but the first and foremost reason is due to an incorrect monetary assessment by most gold bugs and their followers.
Over the last many years, the gold community was divided into two camps: those who believed we were going to endure an inflationary depression, and those who believed we were in for a deflationary depression. During this great debate many first-time gold investors were attracted to both arguments and entered the market………………………………………..Full Article: Source

As everyone has been waiting with bated breath to see gold bottom, every drop has been viewed by many as THE bottom. But, I have been looking for lower levels for months now. In fact, weeks ago when many thought the bottom was in, I was still looking for levels in the 150-154 region. And, thus far, they have been attained, but have we seen the final bottom in gold?
Well, for those of you who have read my analysis before, you know that my primary perspective is market sentiment. So, allow me to present the arguments based upon that fundamental perspective………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Nicholas Brooks, head of research at ETF Securities, said investors may only be mid-stage in a bull market for commodities. This is primarily because the world’s two largest economies, China and the US, are recovering, he said. In the US, housing starts have improved and consumer confidence is high.
Unemployment is still at 7.8% but the Fed wants to reduce this to 6.5%, he noted. Meanwhile, business spending and retail sales are up in China, while the government has loosened its fiscal stance………………………………………..Full Article: Source