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<p>UPDATE: The minutes from the Federal Reserve's April 30-May 1 FOMC meeting on monetary policy are out.</p> <p>The main headline: many on the Committee said more progress is needed before tapering back any bond purchases under the Fed's quantitative easing program.</p>

Proof That The US Housing Market Is Finally Starting To Look Normal Mamta Badkar May 22, 2013, 11:53 AMAP Photo/Ric Francis Earlier today we saw that existing home sales climbed 0.6% to a rate of 4.97 million units in April. This missed expectations but was the highest pace since November 2009. But the best news in the report was that distressed sales, which includes foreclosures and short sales, only accounted for 18% of sales. This was down from 21% in March, and 28% a year ago. Foreclosures accounted for 11% of sales and sold for an average discount of 16%...

Inflation Is The Lifeblood Of A Healthy Economy Stock-Markets / Inflation May 21, 2013 - 08:41 AM GMT By: I M Vronsky Inflation Is To An Economy What Blood Pressure Is To The Human Body It is a well-known medical fact that more people die from LOW BLOOD PRESSURE then from high blood pressure. Therefore, if one accepts the premise that Inflation is to an Economy what Blood Pressure is to the Human Body, it then logically follows that low inflation rate over a protracted period will eventually and inevitably destroy a heretofore healthy economy. The best, most effective 'medicine'...

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:...

Home Depot Crushes Earnings On US Housing Market Recovery Matthew Boesler May 21, 2013, 7:51 AM Home improvement retailing giant Home Depot reported strong first quarter earnings this morning, citing the recovering housing market as a key driver. Earnings per share were $0.83 versus analysts' consensus prediction of $0.77. Revenues came in at $19.1 billion, topping estimates for $18.69 billion. U.S. same-store sales rose 4.8% during the quarter. "In the first quarter, we saw less favorable weather compared to last year, but we continue to see benefit from a recovering housing market that drove a stronger-than-expected start to the year...

6 Reasons Bernanke Is Wrong, And The Future Is Going To Be Bleak Rob Wile May 20, 2013, 10:10 AM Saturday morning, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told graduating Bard College students why he believes the future will be better. In theory, this is a pretty banal argument, especially in a graduation speech. But it looks a little different coming from an conscientious academic. Halfway through the speech, Bernanke presents the evidence of those who argue against this view — that actually, our best, most innovative days are way behind us. In a footnote, Bernanke discusses the folks he's really...

Caterpillar North America Sales Collapse Suggests US Economy Back To 2010 Levels Tyler DurdenZero Hedge 05/20/2013 11:50 -0400 While we have wondered on numerous occasions previously if the collapse in lumber prices is the far more accurate indicator of end demand for housing (as confirmed by the recent collapse in multi-family housing starts), perhaps an even better indicator of trends in housing (and by implication the broader economy) is private sector intermediate end demand, such as Caterpillar North America sales, which unlike government data, are far less subject to political intervention, interpolation, guesswork, seasonal adjustments and otherwise, general manipulation. And...

Here's The Latest Look At The 'Real' Mega Bears Joe Weisenthal May 20, 2013, 5:51 AM This is a chart that people don't much look at these days. It's updated semi-regularly by Doug Short, and it compares the great US bear market (starting in 2000) with the great Nikkei bear and the Great Depression bear. For awhile all 3 were looking very similarly, but at this point it's clear. The US has broken away from history, and with stocks hitting new highs, doesn't even vaguely resemble the past ones.Doug Short

The Fading 2008 Stock Market Doomsday Scenarios Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2013 May 18, 2013 - 07:30 PM GMT By: Sy Harding Stock-Markets The gloom and doom theorists swarmed out of the woodwork during the 2008 financial meltdown in reaction to government actions taken to prevent the ‘great recession’ from morphing into the next great depression. The blame fell on both political parties. The Bush administration began the bailout efforts in March, 2008 and by the time its term ended it had provided $29 billion in loan guarantees to allow JP Morgan Chase to take over collapsing Bear Stearns, the...

Suicide rates are tied to the economy. The Boston Globe reported in 2011: A new report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the overall suicide rate rises and falls with the state of the economy — dating all the way back to the Great Depression. The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that suicide rates increased in times of economic crisis: the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982). Those rates tended to fall during strong economic times...

The UK Has Just Had One Lost Decade, And It's About To Enter A Second Philip Aldrick, The Daily Telegraph May 18, 2013, 3:42 PMHSBC’s chief global economist has written a compelling but dark account of the challenges facing the West. Philip Aldrick considers the chilling claims. Bleak does not begin to describe the latest tome on the economic crisis by Stephen King, the HSBC chief global economist who appropriately shares a name with the best-selling horror writer. When the Money Runs Out is the economic equivalent of post-apocalyptic fiction, charting “the end of Western affluence”, and gives the author...

The Economy Continues To Send A Ton Of Bearish Signals Comstock Partners May 18, 2013, 5:59 AMFlickr / ucumari Comstock Partners is a New York-based hedge fund It has long been our underlying thesis that the huge amount of household debt accumulated during the housing boom would inhibit consumer spending and economic growth for some time to come, and this is what has been happening over the last few years. The errors recently found in the famous Rogoff-Reinhart (RR) book do not change this view. Simply put, household debt averaged 77% of disposable personal income (DPI) over the 61-year period...

CREDIT SUISSE: 'Gold Is Going To Get Crushed' Sam Ro May 17, 2013, 12:41 AM Bearish sentiment toward gold has prices for the yellow metal tumbling again. On Wednesday, George Soros revealed through a regulatory filing that he cut his gold exposure during the first quarter. In a new note to clients, Credit Suisse's Ric Deverall forecasted that gold would plunge to $1,100 this year and eventually to $1,000 within five years. This according to Bloomberg's Maria Kolesnikova. More from Kolesnikova: “Gold is going to get crushed,” Deverell told reporters in London today. “The need to buy gold for wealth...

Remember This Moment (The 'Black Swans' Have Had Their Necks Broken) Joshua M Brown May 16th, 2013 “There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.” - Jean-Paul Sartre It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia." -Frank Zappa I want to you stop, take a breath and consider this moment we're in. Because you will look back on it and realize how amazing it was - how amazing it is! The Black Swans we'd been guessing at have had their...

Economists Continue To Get The Biggest Economic Story Of The Year Wrong Sam Ro May 16, 2013, 8:41 AM Minutes ago, we got the April reading of consumer prices. Not only did the numbers reflect a complete absence of inflation, they also showed that economists continue to overestimate inflation. Headline CPI fell by 0.4% which was more than the 0.3% decline expected. This was largely due to the drop in energy prices. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, climbed by just 0.1%, which was also more modest than the 0.2 % expected. "The big story this year is...

EMPIRE FED MANUFACTURING UNEXPECTEDLY SINKS INTO CONTRACTION Matthew Boesler| May 15, 2013, 8:30 AMThe New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Survey for the month of May is out. The headline index fell to -1.43 from 3.05 in April, defying economists' prediction for a rise to 4.00. The new orders sub-component fell to -1.17 in May from 2.20 in April. The shipments sub-component fell to -0.02 from 0.75. Below is a summary of the data from the release: The May 2013 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions for New York manufacturers declined marginally. The general business conditions index fell four...

France Double-Dips As European Recession Is Now Longest On Record Tyler Durden 05/15/2013 07:42 -0400 Confirming that in a world in which either commercial or central banks have to be constantly be churning out debt, and in a world in which Europe is doing neither (with European commercial loan growth posting sequential declines across the board, and the ECB's balance sheet still declining although likely not for long), "growth" as defined by conventional standards, is impossible, we got today's European Q1 GDP data. Not only was it bad, but it was even worse than most had expected. And while Germany...

U.S. Economy Staring Into The Abyss! Only Gold Is Worth Buying Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2013May 12, 2013 - 07:38 PM GMT By: Robert M Williams "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) A number of important figures are now talking about the possibility of increasing the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing given the “decline in inflation.” In March we heard comments from Fed Presidents Eric Rosengren and Narayana Kocherlakota calling for QE well into 2014 while Chicago Fed President Richard Evens thought the Fed needed to do more. Then in April the St....

The "Labor Hoarding" Effect Lance Roberts Thursday, May 09, 2013(Click to the site to see the charts. I could not transfer them) Just recently the April employment report was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) which showed a surprise jump in employment for the month of April of 165,000 jobs. The general consensus for the report was 153,000 jobs so the "better than expected" news was credited to the surge in the financial markets. There has been much analysis of the data since the report with views that ranged from ebullient to dismissive. However, the reality is that,...

The Case Against Economic Deflation Economics / DeflationMay 06, 2013 - 06:54 PM GMT By: Alasdair Macleod Regular readers will know I am in the inflation, possibly hyperinflation camp; but there are those that think the future is more likely to be deflationary. In the main this is the view of neoclassical economists, Keynesians and monetarists, who generally foresee a 1930s-style slump unless the economy is stimulated out of it. Rather than repeatedly go into the errors of their ways, we must accept that they are in charge. They have decided that prices must not fall, and they see moderate...

The US Economy Is The Envy Of The World Again, And Just Like That The Bears Have Been Annihilated Joe WeisenthalMay 7, 2013, 4:44 AMJust two and a half weeks ago, the bears were starting to feel good. Markets around the world seemed to be rolling over. Commodities were falling. People were talking about deflation. And then, the market turned, and then we got Friday's strong jobs report. Now the market is back to making new highs again, and the market bears are crushed. A new note from Olivier Korber at SocGen is titled "US payrolls annihilated 'sell in May.'"...

ROSENBERG: The Fed Is Trying Like Crazy, But Nothing It's Doing Can Save The Economy Sam RoMay 5, 2013, 9:28 AMDavid Rosenberg, the veteran Wall Street economist and and bearish strategist at Gluskin Sheff, gave an intense presentation on Friday at John Mauldin's Strategic Investment Conference. Titled "Bernanke: The Wizard Of Potemkin," this presentation offers a sobering look at the anemic U.S. economy, the labor market mess, and the Federal Reserve's controversial efforts to get everything back on track. Before you can even think about getting bullish, you must consider the eye-opening charts from Rosenberg's presentation. Thanks to Gluskin Sheff...

This Car Won’t Move Jeffrey TuckerMay 3, 2013 The latest unemployment data reveal the hope and tragedy of the American economic plight. Cheers went up for a modest increase in hiring, one that: • barely keeps up with population; • features mostly temp workers; • leaves out prime-age males and all young workers; • and keeps labor participation rate at a low level from 1979. This is good news? Hmmm… But the central bank will save us, right? So say economic journalists. They love metaphors. Actually, professional economists love them too. The latest phrase being tossed around is that world...

Gasoline Is Saving The Economy Joe WeisenthalMay 3, 2013Today's jobs report was a big sigh of relief. Unemployment fell. Retail jobs were added in solid numbers, and there were big upward revisions to March and February numbers. America seems to be avoiding recession, even with the hit from the sequester. So how are things chugging along? Part of it may be expansive monetary policy, but there's another factor that's starting to turn bullish for the consumer: Gas prices. Here's a look at the year-over-year change in the cost of the average gallon of gasoline. The drop of close to 10%...

Lumber Sales Forecasting Stronger U.S. Housing Market Housing-Market / US HousingMay 03, 2013 - 12:13 PM GMT By: DailyGainsLetterMirtchell Clark Mitchell Clark writes: Reflecting the strength in the U.S. housing market, Weyerhaeuser Company (NYSE/WY) reported very good financial results in its first quarter. The company’s 2013 first-quarter revenues leapt to $1.95 billion, way up from $1.49 billion in the same quarter last year, on solid demand from all its business lines. Net earnings grew significantly to $144 million, way up from earnings of $41.0 million in the same quarter last year. On the stock market, Weyerhaeuser is expensively priced, but...

Europe will take longer to recover from its economic crisis as it tackles a worse-than-expected recession in the eurozone and unemployment at record levels, the European Union warned Friday. In its spring economic forecast, the EU said that gross domestic product in the 17 member countries that use the euro will shrink by 0.4 percent this year; better than the 0.6 percent contraction in 2012, but 0.1 percentage points worse than the EU had forecast back in February. The report also had bad news for the wider 27-country EU: it now expects the region’s economy to shrink by 0.1 percent...

GREAT JOBS REPORT: UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FALLS TO 7.5%, BIG UPWARD REVISIONS, 165,000 NEW JOBS Joe WeisenthalMay 3, 2013The April number is out and it's good all around! This is a major relief for the economy, as people have been worried about slowing data. The 165,000 new jobs was above the 140,000 that was expected. The unemployment rate fell to 7.5%. It was expected to stay flat at 7.6%. And there were big upward revisions to last month, which was originally really weak. Here's what the announcement says about revisions, which were strong for both March and February. The change in...

ALBERT EDWARDS: The Party Is Over, The US Is Just One Recession Away From Japan-Style Doom Joe WeisenthalMay 2, 2013 Here's your happy thought of the day from SocGen strategist Albert Edwards: Over the last 15 years most investors have refused to contemplate that events in the West are playing out in a similar fashion to Japan in the 1990s. But the latest inflation data out of both the US and eurozone should ram home the fact that we are now only one short recession away from Japanese-style outright deflation. Similarly, investors refuse to believe that equities can fall in...

Sorry, Doomers: The Stock Market Isn't Divorced From Reality New Deal democrat, The Bonddad BlogMay 2, 2013, 4:59 AM Lately I've just been ignoring the Doomers. They've been so wrong for so long that it just isn't worth the time to debunk their periodic Pastisches of Pessimism (tm) in which they prove that they can string together a random assemblage of graphs going down. The canard that the stock market has become divorced from reality, though, has recently been bubbling up in the fevered Doomer imagination in multiple places and hasn't been given a good spanking, so I guess it's...

Financial Collapse - Is Bernanke Preparing To Jump Ship? Interest-Rates / US Interest RatesMay 01, 2013 - 06:30 PM GMT By: Graham Summers The Fed meets today and tomorrow. The ECB meets on Thursday. Those will be the defining market forces for the next three trading sessions. There is little if any point in trying to trade this week (at least until Thursday). The Fed is notorious for leaking info to the well-connected. The most recent “accidental” sending of a report a day early is just the latest example. In simple terms, the market will be even more of an...

FED: WE MAY DO MORE Sam RoMay 1, 2013, 2:10 PMThe Federal Reserve has completed its Federal Open Market Committee meeting, and it has just published its statement. For now, the Fed is on hold with its month purchases of $85 billion worth of bonds in its efforts to keep interest rates low. However, one of line that was new this time around was this: The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes. In determining the size, pace, and composition...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Chicago PMI slumped to a three-and-a-half year low of 49.0 in April, down from 52.4 in March and at a reading indicating contraction. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a 52.5 reading. Order backlogs were particularly weak, falling to 40.6 from 45.0.

American Rail Traffic Growth Has Nearly Ground To A Halt Cullen Roche, Pragmatic CapitalismApr. 28, 2013, 1:28 PMAfter a big first quarter rail traffic has come out of the gate extremely soft in Q2. The average pace of year over year expansion in intermodal traffic was a very healthy 5.3% in Q1, but has averaged just 0.08% so far in the first 4 weeks of the second quarter. This is a trend that has been developing since early March as the pace of expansion has averaged just 2.11% since the first week of March. Overall, that brings the 12 week...

The growing underground economy may be helping to prevent the real economy from sinking further, according to analysts. The shadow economy is a system composed of those who can't find a full-time or regular job. Workers turn to anything that pays them under the table, with no income reported and no taxes paid — especially with an uneven job picture. "I think the underground economy is quite big in the U.S.," said Alexandre Padilla, associate professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. "Whether it's using undocumented workers or those here legally, it's pretty large." "You normally see underground...

LAKSHMAN ACHUTHAN: Yes, It's Possible To Be In A Recession With GDP Growth At 2.5% Sam RoApr. 26, 2013, 10:37 AMEarlier today, we learned that real GDP grew at a 2.5% rate in Q1. While this was much lower than the 3.0% growth rate forecasted by economists, it still seems to be a clear indicator of economic growth. But not everyone sees it that way. Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute has long argued that the U.S. economy slipped into a recession in mid-2012. And he is convinced that we continue to be in a recession now. We...

The nearly 3.7 million American babies born in 1982 weren’t special, except to their families. But in the eyes of demographers, they were categorically different from the 3.6 million Americans born in 1981. They were the first members of a new club: Generation Y.This so-called millennial cohort, the largest generation in American history, landed in the cradle during an awful recession, learned to walk during the Reagan recovery, came of age in the booming 1990s, and entered the labor market after the Sept. 11 attacks and before the Great Recession, the two tragedies of the early 21st century. They’ve...

The Noose On The Economy Is Getting TighterComstock PartnersApril 26, 2013Last week we enumerated the overwhelming majority of economic reports that declined or fell short of expectations. These included payroll employment, the ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing indices, retail sales, the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey, the NAHB housing market index, single-family housing starts, the NFIB small business index, the Empire State index and manufacturing production. Since then, additional releases have shown a meager 0.2% increase in March core capex orders following a drop of 8% in February. The Philadelphia Fed Index dropped in April, while the Richmond Fed index...

DAVID ROSENBERG: 12 Signs The Economy Is Weaker Than You Think Cullen Roche, Pragmatic CapitalismApril 24, 2013 * Household employment (-206k in March, the steepest decline in well over a year). * Real retail sales (-0.3% in March, down for the second time in three months). * Manufacturing production (-0.1% and also down in two of the past three months). * Core capex orders (-3.2% in February, and again, down in two of the past three months). * Single-family housing starts (-4.8% in March and negative for two of the past three months as well. * New home sales (-4.6%...

The Economic Depression Is Deepening Economics / Great Depression IIApril 23, 2013 - 05:47 PM GMT By: Bill Bonner Gold seemed to be stabilizing at the end of last week. Commodities remained weak. Steel has fallen 31% this year. Brent crude is off 17% since early February. And copper is down 15%. Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything – houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft.At the start of last week, the conventional analysis of the gold sell-off was that the central banks' efforts to revive global...

The Theory Of Deflation Economics / DeflationApr 23, 2013 - 06:13 AM GMT By: Andrew McKillop CLASSIC THEORIES This holds that deficiency of aggregate demand leads to over-production and unemployment, further depressing demand, and deflating the economy. By aggregate demand, this means personal and business as well as State consumption spending, and aggregate investment expenditure. Staying with classic theories, private investment is governed by the marginal efficiency of capital and the real rate of interest. Deflation will occur when investment declines, for three main reasons, which are low marginal efficiency of capital, low profitability of capital and high real rates...

Gold seemed to be stabilizing at the end of last week. Commodities remained weak. Steel has fallen 31% this year. Brent crude is off 17% since early February. And copper is down 15%. Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything - houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft. At the start of last week, the conventional analysis of the gold sell-off was that the central banks' efforts to revive global growth were working. The feds had the situation under control. So who needed gold? By the end of...

Retail Demand For Gold Is Going Nuclear In Asia And Shops Can't Keep It On Their Shelves [PHOTOS] Joe WeisenthalApril 23, 2013, 7:42 AMThe recent drop in gold has created a huge surge in Asian gold demand. It's happening in India, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. From Josh Noble at FT: Asia is witnessing one of the strongest waves of physical gold buying in 30 years, with bargain hunters using the drop in prices to secure jewelry and gold bars. The feverish buying has left many of Hong Kong’s banks, jewelers and even its gold exchange without enough yellow metal to...

Bernanke Cancels Jackson Hole Appearance Four Months Out Due To 'Personal Scheduling Conflict' Matthew BoeslerApril 22, 2013 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke won't be attending the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in August due to a "personal scheduling conflict." The event, held by the Kansas City Fed every summer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, usually features a keynote speech from the Chairman of the Fed. In recent years since the financial crisis of 2008, the speech has been used to signal important monetary policy shifts as the Fed has experimented with unconventional monetary policy tools. As MNI's Steven Beckner points...

CATERPILLAR: Here's What The World Will Do This YearSam Ro April 22, 2013 Global economic bellwether Caterpillar just announced Q1 revenue and earnings that fell short of analysts expectations. Management also reduced its guidance for the year. Because CAT is so closely tied to the economy, it has unparalleled insight into what's really going on. Fortunately for us, CAT provides a pretty comprehensive and granular outlook for the global economy with its earnings announcements. Here are a few key points: Global GDP will grow 2.5% this year. Central banks will lower interest rates further. Copper prices will average $3.25 per...

Gold Is On A Tear Today Joe WeisenthalApril 22, 2013 After getting its butt kicked last week, gold is bouncing back a bit. It's up over 2% today, surging to above $1430/oz. At one point last week it was in the low $1300s.

SocGen: Everyone's Worried About The Economy Slowing Down Again — But This Time Will Be Differen Joe WeisenthalApril 21, 2013The weekend is over, and so analysts are coming out with their notes on what people will be talking about for the week ahead. In the US, the big question is whether the economy is flagging again (whether there's a 'spring swoon' to use the popular parlance). If the economy were to fade again, it would mean that this was just the latest in a series of false-dawns since the crisis, where we thought that we'd finally broken out of the...

Committed To Ruining The Economy By Joel BowmanApril 20, 2013 The Central Planners are at it again, Fellow Reckoner. Greasing the gears…feeding the engines…and speeding headlong and strapped to their seats towards the next crisis. Leaders of two of the world’s largest criminal organizations gathered in Washington, D.C. this week for the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings. The Mob fête was attended by all the usual suspects…central bankers…trade secretaries…finance ministers…policy wonks and assorted other rapscallions and reprobates. Their wooden pledges sounded nice enough… U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew called for “universal women’s empowerment.” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim called for...

EL-ERIAN: It's Official — The World Needs To Worry About The Damage Caused By QE Mohamed El-ErianApril. 20, 2013, 10:05 AMIt is now official: "We will be mindful of unintended negative side effects stemming from extended periods of monetary easing." This is how the G-20, the most important country grouping today, put it in the communique they issued Friday night. But what exactly are they talking about? It all started with the difficulties that most advanced economies faced in generating adequate growth and employment after the 2008 global financial crisis. Rather than catalyze the political system into action, this "new...

Obamacare's War On Full-Time Jobs Will Sucker Punch Economy Politics / EmploymentApril 19, 2013 - 12:12 PM GMTDavid Zeiler By: Money Morning David Zeiler writes: Obamacare's rules regarding hours worked and employer-sponsored healthcare coverage have entire industries looking at cutting down on their number of full-time employees in favor of more part-time employees. Large industries affected include hotels, restaurants and retailers, as well as small businesses of all stripes. In essence, the hefty financial burden imposed by Obamacare for having too many full-time employees is creating a huge incentive for many employers to cut workers' hours, or, in some cases,...

Copper Is Getting Slammed Rob WileApril 19, 2013 Copper futures are down more than 2.5 percent and are poised to see their largest decline in 16 months, Dow Jones' Francesca Freeman writes. The sell-off came after a report that Zambia, Africa's largest producer, resumed shipments after a two-week halt because of a railroad accident, she says. Investing.com Other commodities were mixed. Gold and oil were trading slightly higher, while natural gas was down.