I am sure SAJ will be able to cite bigger /CL moves than this, but this is pretty big!
The story is copper. IMHO, this is actually bullish for gold...gold should be down $50-60 if it was really correlated to the commod complex. $20-25 down? Bah!
The real question is if/when the American dollar tanks and people will feel a lot better then with their commodity investments. The rest is just noise.
How can I say this? Easy. In the great crude crash that started 20 August 2008, crude dropped more than five per cent in a single day not less than 12 separate times between 20 August and the end of the year. The largest single-day drop was 8.74% on 9 October.
Now, should crude continue its slide -- and if the economic numbers keep coming in so horribly, this is quite possible -- at some point we will see a day or two of capitulation selling, whereon the traders just say "MARKET!" and take whatever price they're given. On such days, I should not be at all surprised to see a 7-8% daily drop.
For this commentary, I only analysed the June futures, which are the "front-month" at this time. Nevertheless, it is essentially inarguable that, on crash days, the behaviour of prices all across the strip was more or less identical.
I agree with ASD that copper is telling us more about the state of the world economy than crude. As noted in a previous post, we have a simply untold supply overhang, particularly in China. I should imagine that copper prices over the next 6-12 months will venture considerably lower.
No view on gold prices, because that mkt is supremely manipulated and price signals of the "ordinary" sort have been invalid for some time.
Good trading to you!