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May 27, 2014 - 02:40 PM Ned W Schmidt Agri-Commodities Prices Winning - Or, how long does it take the Street to identify an elephant in the room? Apparently the answer to that question is a time period longer than should be the case. Agri-Food prices have been rising fairly dramatically thus far this year. With an average gain of about 10% since the beginning of the year, eating is becoming far more expensive. Rather than a short-term phenomenon, higher prices for Agri-Foods over time are part of the future, an unavoidable one. Prices rise for Agri-Foods when demand grows...

With JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank having exited the commodities business (and numerous other banks discussing it ahead of the Fed and regulators' decisions over banking rules of ownership), it appears a few short months of regulatory scrutiny is enough to warrant more broad-based cuts across bulge-bracket banks historically most manipulated and profitable business units. As The FT reports, Barclays, one of the world’s biggest commodities traders, is planning to exit large parts of its metals, agricultural and energy business in a move expected to be announced this week. This comes on the heels of Barclays shuttering its power-trading operations...

Corn Prices Are Popping Rob WileMar. 31, 2014, 12:15 PM    Corn prices are surging after U.S. farmers said they expect to plant the lowest corn acreage since 2010. That's because inventories in the world’s biggest grower and exporter jumped 30 percent from a year earlier. Acreage is estimated to hit 91.691 million, down from 95.365 million a year earlier, according to a survey of more than 84,000 growers released today in Washington, Bloomberg said. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated 93.014 million, on average. Here's how corn reacted to the news:

Gold And Silver Go From Bearish To More Bearish Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014 Mar 27, 2014 - 03:16 PM GMT By: P Radomski CFA Commodities Briefly: In our opinion short speculative positions in gold (half), silver (half) and mining stocks (full) are justified from the risk/reward perspective. The decline in the precious metals sector continues, as indicated in the previous alerts. Gold, silver and mining stocks have declined once again and appear to be headed lower also today. Did yesterday’s price action change anything? Let’s take a look (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com). Today we will start with silver...

Why Food Prices Are Surging Matthew Boesler Mar. 25, 2014, 12:06 PM Since the beginning of the year, food prices have been on a tear. In a new report, Morgan Stanley commodities analysts led by Adam Longson attribute the surge in prices to a number of factors, "from weather (in the case of sugar, soybeans and coffee) to disease (in the case of hogs) to geopolitics (wheat and corn)." The Morgan Stanley analysts don't believe this will continue. "To date, weather concerns in South America have proven overstated, as evidenced in the recent declines in sugar prices," they say. "Tensions...

Why Chinese Copper Demand Could Come Booming Back Mamta BadkarMar. 23, 2014, 11:21 PM     Copper prices have been tumbling on concerns about China's economic slowdown and an unwinding of copper-backed loans. But Sijin Cheng at Barclays writes that grid spending could "help dispel" concerns about Chinese copper demand. China's grid companies invested 40 billion yuan (about $6.4 billion) in the first two months of the year, up 22% year-over-year. This comes "despite a high base; in January-February 2013, [when] investment rose 44% from a soft 2012." While some cable providers reported "sharp slowdowns" in the Jan-Feb...

Copper Is In Straight Up Meltdown Mode Again In ShanghaiJoe Weisenthal Mar. 11, 2014, 9:22 PMCopper prices — which are often seen as a proxy for the Chinese economy, if not the entire global economy — have been getting crushed. And they're in full meltdown mode tonight. Via Deirdre Wang Morris, here's the chart of Shanghai Copper prices limit down.

Copper Is Getting Smoked After Bad Chinese Data Mamta BadkarMarch 9, 2014, 7:56 PM  Copper futures are down 2.5% in early trading, to $3.0060 per pound. Copper has been taking a beating recently and it is likely that the recent decline in Chinese exports weighed on the data. Chinese exports were down 18.1% on the year in February, after rising 10.6% the previous month. Imports however were up 10.1%. While economists have warned about reading too much into Chinese data in the Jan-Feb period because of the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday, this has raised concerns about...

Renewed Indian Demand Driving Gold Prices Higher? Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014 Mar 06, 2014 - 02:04 PM GMTJulian_DW_Phillips Current Situation Since last August, the Indian government placed a stranglehold on gold imports into the country by requiring that 20% of all gold imported be exported as jewellery. This forced the amount of gold imported to drop to 30% of former levels until October of last year. Then the amount imported rose to 38 tonnes a month and has been at that level since then. The amount of gold that was expected to be imported for the year was...

JP Morgan Holds Highest Amount Of Physical Silver In History Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014 Feb 05, 2014 - 06:48 AM GMTBy: GoldSilverWorlds Commodities While everyone is focused on the massive outflows in COMEX registered gold inventories and the gold ETF, GLD, it seems that an important evolution in silver is passing unnoticed. In what follows, Ted Butler, precious metals analyst specialized in COT analysis, reveals a remarkable insight in the physical silver market. Butler’s calculations show that JPMorgan (JPM) has piled up the largest holding of physical silver in modern world. Since the silver price peak in May...

A Whole New Group Of People Is Going To Start Worrying About The Gold Crash Jow WeisenthalJune 26, 2013, 5:26 AMBack in the day, a few years ago, when gold was soaring, anti-Fed types saw this as indication that Bernanke was blowing bubbles and creating hyperinflation. Of course, the price of gold is just the price of gold, but it didn't stop people from making bold statements about how gold was "voting" against Fed policy so to speak. Well now gold is totally crashing. At the start of April it was near $1600/oz. This morning it's not much above $1200/oz....

The Floor Dropped Out From Under Gold Joe Weisenthal June 25, 2013 Gold is still looking like one of the sickliest assets in the world. The floor just dropped out of it tonight, sending it to a new low for this cycle.

What Kind of Fools Are Buying Gold? Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013 June 23, 2013 - 08:55 PM GMT By: Jesse On the whole, the world's central banks are now net buyers of gold, and have been for some time, after being net sellers for over twenty years. Russia is one example. Why do you think they are buying it? They don't understand money? They don't know what they, and some of their associated central banks, are planning to do to recapitalize the deteriorating global financial system and dollar reserve trade regime? Did they forget to watch CNBC to...

Gold And Silver - The End Is Near; Just Not In Sight Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013 June 22, 2013 - 04:00 PM GMT By: Michael Noonan Whatever expectation[s] you may have, expect the unexpected and unlike what you may expect. So far, that has been playing out quite nicely, and one of our expectations is that it will continue to unfold in the same manner, and to the ongoing surprise of most. "Gold will be at/above $2,000 by the end of the year." "Gold will reach $3,000 [$5,000, $10,000, etc] and silver $100, [$250, $500, etc]" "The central...

If the Economic Recovery Is Strong, Why Are Lumber Prices Falling? Economics / Economic Recovery Jun 04, 2013 - 07:05 PM GMT By: InvestmentContrarian Sasha Cekerevac writes: As we all know, the stock market is in record-setting territory. One would think that this must mean the economic recovery engineered by the Federal Reserve is surely in place, but it’s not. I believe that the economic recovery is far from being assured. The shocking thing to consider is how many trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve has pumped into the economy, and yet all we have to show for it is...

NOURIEL ROUBINI: 6 Reasons Why Gold Will Plunge To $1,000 Joe Weisenthal Jun. 1, 2013, 4:27 PM Gold has been getting poleaxed in recent months, though it remains just below $1400/oz. In a piece up at Project Syndicate, economist Nouriel Roubini says gold will fall to around $1,000 before the end of 2015. He gives six reasons why. We summarize: * Gold spikes during extreme crises. The crises are over. * Gold does well during periods when there's a risk of high inflation. That clearly is no longer a big worry, given how much central banks have unsuccessfully tried to...

One Critical Commodity Is Having A Worse Year Than Gold Sam Ro May 29, 2013, 7:59 AM Here's a chart that Deutsche Bank includes in its periodic "Equity View" report. It's the year-to-date and month-to-date returns of the world's most important asset classes. There aren't too many surprises here. Japan's Nikkei is leading stocks and the yen is lagging the currencies. High yield bonds are leading the credit markets as investors reach for yield. One area that may surprise some is commodities. Gold has experienced a very widely reported sell-off. But iron ore is actually having a worse year. Iron...

Riding A Copper Commodity Horse Commodities / Copper May 25, 2013 - 02:49 AM GMT By: Richard_Mills My last article, 'Give It A Doubt' was about population growth, urbanization in developing countries and the one billion people predicted to join the consuming classes by 2025. "One billion people will enter the global consuming class by 2025. They will have incomes high enough to classify them as significant consumers of goods and services..." McKinsey Global Institute, Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class Some of these new consumers are going to be Americans but the majority are in...

8 Currencies That Could Tank As Commodities Collapse Joe Weisenthal May 21, 2013, 7:20 AM A big story this year has been the decline in commodities. That's bad news for countries and currencies that are closely tied to commodities. In a note, Sebastien Galy has a quick rundown of what currencies are associated with what commodities: * Aussie Dollar : aluminum, coal & wheat * Canadian Dollar : oil and wheat * South African Rand : coal & platinum * Chilean Peso : copper * Mexican Peso: oil & silver * Russian Rubel: oil, nickel, platinum, wheat * Brazilian Real:...

Silver Has Now Had An Insane Day, And Is Actually Higher After Plunging 9% Matthew Boesler May 20, 2013 Silver got slammed last night when futures markets re-opened to begin the week. At its lowest level, the precious metal had fallen nearly 9% to $20.25 an ounce. Remarkably, it's already staged a big comeback, and it just turned positive on the day. In the past few minutes, it's screamed higher, and is now trading around $23.00, up 2.7%. Miller Tabak's Jonathan Krinsky offers some commentary on why the details of the sell-off may actually be positive for those bullish on...