Commodity Chart of The Week

Each week longleaftrading.com will be providing us with a commodity chart of the week as analyzed by a member of their team. We hope that you enjoy and learn from this new feature.

Often times it is easy to get carried away with looking at what is front of us to forget what is around us.  Let’s begin this today acknowledging the price action of late in the corn market has been lackluster at best.  After such a robust market move this summer, where we saw record corn prices at $8.41/bushel’ the market has been consolidating that move since.  The threat of the extreme dryness ended as we moved into harvest in the late fall and that sent a huge percentage of long specs to the sidelines.

We now sit at $6.85/bushel and most of the news flow remains negative.  Commercials are not anxious buyers of corn and the demand numbers of late have been week.  Calendar spreads (March/May) do not provide elevators an incentive to sit on their stocks looking for a time to sell in the future.  This has pushed a lot of grain forward to the cash market, suppressing the price.

Weekly export sales have also been very slow.  Last week came in at 49,100.  Because the market needs to see sales at 464,000 tonnes to reach the USDA forecast, this leaves the market in need of a lot of foreign buying to get back on track to meet that forecast. Continue reading "Commodity Chart of The Week"

Gold Chart of the Week

Each Week Longleaftrading.com will be providing us a chart of the week as analyzed by a member of their team. We hope that you enjoy and learn from this new feature.

Weekly Gold Report (January 7th through January 11th)

Welcome everyone to trading in 2013, where not much has changed from last year. While we are only a few days into the New Year, traders are already expecting the same type of market activity to continue for at least the next two months. Why two months? Because only a portion of the much anticipated “Fiscal Cliff” negotiations were completed at the end of 2012, so the saga will continue.

Politicians in the US knew for over ten years that they were expected to make a monumental decision by the end of the year in 2012 regarding taxes and spending, and in the eleventh hour a final decision was made to raise taxes and “kick the can” on spending for another two months. The idea was to come up with something fair and balanced, but it wound up being a  one-sided victory for one party. Despite the delay on fifty percent of the decision, it was enough to avoid a broad based panic sell.

All markets, including Gold will have to not only price in everyday news, they will also have the upcoming taxes vs. spending debate to consider. Overall, it is nothing new. Continue reading "Gold Chart of the Week"

Gold Chart of the Week

Each week Longleaftrading.com will be providing us a chart of the week as analyzed by a member of their team. We hope that you enjoy and learn from this new feature.

Weekly Gold Report (December 24 through December 28th)

What a week in the Precious Metals! While the drop in Gold and Silver caught me off guard, I suppose I was not totally surprised. Every year around this time, global markets get thin and it leaves price action vulnerable to unexpected, directional movement.

There were a few factors outside of light volume that may have played a role in the drop. First of all, Washington continues to overpromise and underperform on their Fiscal Cliff negotiations. One of the main points that will remain in limbo without a compromise is taxes. I believe that a large part of the selloff in the Metals was due to traders and investors continuing to book gains on long positions ahead of a potential tax hike next year. Furthermore, these drops invite new sellers to the market that are hoping for a larger scale setback. Second, it was rumored that a large position in the Metals was adjusted after Morgan Stanley decided to drop Paulson and his Metals based investment strategies. Continue reading "Gold Chart of the Week"

Gold Chart of the Week

Each week Longleaftrading.com will be providing us a chart of the week as analyzed by a member of their team. We hope that you enjoy and learn from this new feature.

Weekly Gold Report (December 17th through December 22nd)

 As far as I am concerned, “Holiday Markets” took control last week and it is the best way to describe what we witnessed in Gold. In Europe, a deal in Greece was reached which underpinned the Euro and dropped the US Dollar. Later in the week, the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates at close to zero until unemployment falls below 6.5%, which is new to their monetary policy. It is the first time ever that Interest Rates were pegged to one area of the U.S. Economy. Initially after the news broke, Gold Futures rallied and closed in the upper end of the range for the week. But it was not long before early profit taking began and suddenly the market found itself over $30 lower and back at the lower end of the range on lighter volume. And who could forget all of the “Fiscal Cliff” nonsense? Every day (sometimes multiple times a day), through television or social media, the President and the Speaker of the House report to the world that while they are negotiating, nothing is really being accomplished. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but personally I can not wait for the final decision, not because it will provide a direction for major markets, but because I am tired of reading about both of them and their sophomoric behavior. It seems like suddenly the highest political offices in the U.S. have confused their roles with the highest offices at US (Weekly). Continue reading "Gold Chart of the Week"

Gold Chart of the Week

Each week Longleaftrading.com will be providing us a chart of the week as analyzed by a member of their team. We hope that you enjoy and learn from this new feature.

Weekly Gold Report (December 10 through December 14th)

I am not sure if I have ever been so happy to close the books on a week of trading, as I was last week on Friday. You wouldn’t think that it was that bad if you look at the daily chart today, but it was not easy to sit through either a short or a long position in the Metals last week. I will explain why.

The week began with Gold and Silver dropping below the support trendlines that were held from early November. They also were dropping alongside a weakening Dollar. I understood the selling from a technical perspective, but fundamentally I was a bit puzzled in the short term. Once support was found, Monday’s decoupling from the usual relationship to the US Dollar made holding new long positions a bit difficult. Furthermore, the rangy trade over the next four days had a “Groundhog’s Day” feel to it. It seemed as though Metals prices opened around the same price each day, closed the European Markets at the same price each day, closed the pit traded session at the same price each day, and closed the electronic session at the same price each day. Short option traders long for weeks like those, but futures traders had to be a bit uneasy. I know I was. Continue reading "Gold Chart of the Week"