It’s a bit of a tradition among market commentators to come up with a list of ‘surprises’ for the new year. Some of us like to combine both macro/geopolitical events with market events. I have decided to limit my 6 surprises to market events as that is my area of expertise and the primary focus of… Continue Reading

Gold posted an impressive one day gain on Friday and is once again closely gravitating to the $1200/oz level: The $1200 level holds significance for a number of reasons as we enter the final 3 trading sessions of 2014: The 2013 closing price for gold was $1204.80 – whenever a market is ending near the… Continue Reading

Looking over several investor presentations from some of the senior gold producers I came across two interesting slides which both relate to the idea of peak global gold production. The first slide, from Newmont Mining, shows global gold mine supply at a key turning point with supply falling in 2015: This slide shows a roughly… Continue Reading

Over the weekend we pointed out this would be a crucial week for markets. This week’s volatility hasn’t really cleared anything up although there are some notable observations to be made after today’s trading session: Equities found support at an area of previous resistance and a key Fibonacci level Today’s large rally in interest rates is… Continue Reading

The big news across financial markets this morning is the huge sell-off in the Russian ruble overnight. The Ruble was trading below 60 vs. the US dollar early Monday morning and surged to over 80 rubles to the dollar overnight – there are even reports of currency brokers asking 100 rubles for a greenback on the streets… Continue Reading

The 5-year break-even inflation rate fell below 1.2% for the first time since the summer of 2010: This level of inflation expectations is certainly testing the lower bound of the FED’s comfort zone. In fact the last time that the 5-year break-even fell below 1.2% the FED began floating the idea of QE2 and former… Continue Reading

The massive decline in the price of crude oil turns out to be a significant net positive for multinational miners. Not only are the lower oil costs are a huge positive on the costs side, but the resulting currency moves (big drops in AUD/USD and CAD/USD) also turn out to benefit miners whose revenue comes… Continue Reading

What would you say if I told you that gold is up on the year?  Yes that’s right, despite all the doom & gloom surrounding gold and the seemingly incessant bearish media coverage the yellow metal is actually up on the year – gold ended 2013 at $1204.80/oz and is now trading a little more than… Continue Reading

Renowned portfolio manager Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Funds gave his latest presentation on the state of the market this afternoon. Here are the key takeaways: Economist forecasts are always too optimistic with regard to growth and inflation Oil could continue falling in yet another sign that global economic growth is weak Bond yields have more risk… Continue Reading

Gold mining shares have been hit with just about everything imaginable during the past couple of months; lets recap some of the ‘bad news’: US economic data continues to impress with a blowout jobs report last week Large declines in commodities across the board The consensus is that the Fed will begin hiking rates next… Continue Reading

The CFTC Commitments of Traders data which came out yesterday showed a couple of surprising things: Speculators (both large and small) aggressively covered short positions while the commercials drastically reduced longs resulting in a significant drop in open interest. This behavior was likely due largely to Monday’s huge upside reversal following Sunday night’s commodity futures bloodbath… Continue Reading

With the gold price waffling near $1,200/ounce, close to the ‘fully loaded’ cost for many gold producers (Dundee’s definition of fully loaded cost = the sum of Total Cash Costs (incl. royalties) plus, cash G&A, exploration, cash taxes, cash interest and true sustaining capital costs), the #1 topic of conversation among gold mining investors & analysts are costs.… Continue Reading

After a relatively placid afternoon of oscillating in the $19.70-$19.90 range the #1 trading vehicle for gold producers, the GDX, experienced a ‘flash crash’ during the final minute of today’s trading session: Click to enlarge 5 million shares traded during the final minute of today’s session which included 1.25 million shares during a 2-second burst… Continue Reading

The gold miners as represented by the GDX have seen some noteworthy technical developments recently: Despite the hugely bearish sentiment swing in the commodities complex, primarily due to Thursday’s OPEC meeting and the subsequent crash in crude oil, neither gold nor the miners made new lows Friday’s holiday shortened session had all the characteristics of a… Continue Reading

If the Sunday night futures market was to be given a movie title it would have been dubbed the “Commodity Catastrophe”; we saw WTI crude futures fall below $64/barrel, silver traded with a 14 handle ($14.43 low), and copper fell into the $2.70s. Thus far this morning we are witnessing a bevy of “V-bottoms” across… Continue Reading