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After the Bloomberg commodity index crashed overnight, having tumbled for each of the past 4 years, this happened: BLOOMBERG COMMODITY INDEX SLIDES TO LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 1999 Said otherwise, the lowest level in the 21s centiry. Yup, rate hike any minute now.

August 18, 2015 By: Rambus_Chartology Copper is an important commodity when it comes to the health of the world economies and how it does often reflects how strong or weak the economy is. Its been awhile since we took an indepth look at Dr. Copper to see how healthy it is so tonight we'll look at a few charts starting with a daily look.(snip)

Bob BryanAugust 17, 2015Oil prices have hit six-year lows, and Cumberland Advisors' David Kotok thinks the worst may be yet to come. "We could go back to $15 or $20, this is a downward slope, we don't know a bottom," Kotok said in a Monday morning interview on Bloomberg TV. WTI crude oil futures are trading near $42 a barrel while Brent futures are just above $48 a barrel. Kotok said that despite the oil industries apparent belief that things will get better, there is little reason for anything to change. "Hope is not a strategy, it’s a myth," he...

China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations It is only a matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty expectations and record valuations. Photo: Reuters When the banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy room to heal. Time is now rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control and at the same...

Michelle Dunstan and Henry S. D'Auria August. 16, 2015 Commodities haven’t been kind to investors in recent years. But we believe that shifting the frame of reference away from underlying price trends of metals and raw materials can reveal surprising opportunities in select commodity stocks. The MSCI ACWI Commodity Producers Index has declined by 28% from the beginning of 2013 to the end of July 2015. Nonenergy commodities have fared even worse—the MSCI World Metals and Mining Index has dropped nearly 50% over the same period. Prices have plummeted because of concerns about slowing Chinese demand, coupled with continued supply...

Akin Oyedele August 10, 2015The pain is far from over for commodity prices. Gold, crude oil, copper, and aluminum have all had ugly plunges this year, especially in July. And as far as analysts at Macquarie see it, it's only going to get worse.In a note to clients on Monday, the firm writes that the plunge in prices is not just a story of oversupply in commodities but also an undersupply of the dollar. And so as dollars become more scarce, the dollar gets more expensive, meaning that on a gross basis, fewer dollars buy more commodities, making it hard...

China’s loss is India’s gain. International investors are pulling out of China and plowed $705 million into India since June 12, sending the Sensex Index 7% higher. But does India have any near-term catalysts? The buzz on Narendra Modi‘s landmark reform Goods & Taxes Bill is back. An important panel in the Upper House of the parliament, which Modi’s political party does not have majority in, already approved the GST bill. Now Modi just needs to get this bill passed in the Upper House. But worryingly, the monsoon session of the parliament, which opened on Tuesday and will end on...

Akin Oyedele July 23, 2015Copper is at a six-year low. On Thursday, copper fell nearly 2% to as low as $2.385 a pound, the weakest level since 2009. This is part of a big sell off in commodities. Iron-ore prices have plunged, crude oil is trading below $50 per barrel, and gold is far from recovering after Sunday's flash crash and this week's continued weakness. Each market has its own set of factors motivating traders to sell. However, concern about China's slowing economy is something that is working its way across a few markets. (snip)

If we were going to see a stock market crash in the United States in the fall of 2015 (to use a hypothetical example), we would expect to see commodity prices begin to crash a few months ahead of time. This is precisely what happened just before the great financial crisis of 2008, and we are watching the exact same thing happen again right now. On Wednesday, commodities got absolutely pummeled, and at this point the Bloomberg Commodity Index is down a whopping 26 percent over the past twelve months. When global economic activity slows down, demand for raw materials...

Last month Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman and matriarch of Perth’s Hancock mining dynasty delivered an unwelcome shock to her workers in Western Australia: accept a possible 10pc pay cut or face the risk of future redundancies. Ms Rinehart, whose family have accumulated vast wealth from iron ore mining, has seen her fortune dwindle since commodity prices began their inexorable slide last year. The Australian mining mogul has seen her estimated wealth collapse to around $11bn (£7bn) from a fortune that was thought to be worth around $30bn just three years ago. This colossal collapse in wealth is symptomatic of...

Robert Oscar Lopez is an associate professor of English and Classics at Cal State-Northridge. He specializes in American literature and loves Michel Foucault. He identifies as bisexual and is married [to a woman] and the father of two children. And in August 2012, he published “Growing Up with Two Moms” in Public Discourse, which described his life growing up with a lesbian mother and her partner. Because he shared his story, he was labeled a homophobe and became the target of a silencing campaign that worked to keep him off the air and off college campuses. Professor Lopez talked...

In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the government defend its kleptocratic behavior while administering an indefensible law. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 is among the measures by which New Dealers tried and failed to regulate and mandate America back to prosperity. Seventy-eight years later, it is the government’s reason for stealing Marvin and Laura Horne’s raisins. New Dealers had bushels of theories, including this: In an economic depression, prices fall, so a recovery will occur when government compels prices to stabilize above where a free market would put them. So Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “brains trust”...

Akin Oyedele March 23, 2015 Copper just spiked. Copper futures by more than 5% rose to as much as $2.1945 a pound after the closing bell on Monday. That's the highest its been all year. There was no immediate news related to the rapid increase. Prices had been sliding, as China's economic woes meant that it was in less demand for construction. (snip)

March 2015 David Petch This article is an update of Gold’s Obituary published back at the end of October 2014. Nothing has changed since that forecast, except the passage of time to arrive at where we are today. Analysis will cover a few currencies and different markets, which should provide a flavour of where things are heading over the next 6-8 months. As a hint, being long commodities as a whole is not recommended in the slightest. I was going to start things off with the Canadian Dollar which should find support no sooner than 72 cents, but since it...

February 26, 2015 Austin Galt This analysis will cover the CRB Continuous Commodity Index, the US Dollar index and one of the main commodity currencies, the Australian dollar. We’ll begin with the CRB Continuous Commodity Index which comprises a mixture of components from sectors including energy, metals, soft commodities and agriculture. (snip)If this analysis is correct, it means a big deflationary spiral is dead ahead that will see market participants wide-eyed with fear. However, there should be a significant rally before then which will allow many to get their houses in order. And once this deflationary spiral has run its...

February 22, 2015 By: Austin Galt Copper got a bit of press attention recently with headlines of a plunge in price. This was in early January and I hadn't looked at the copper chart for a few days and I was gobsmacked when I did. A plunge they say?! What a load of baloney!! If that was a plunge then they are in for a big shock later this year if my analysis is correct. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the small picture and then come back to the big picture which will reveal the...

February 18, 2015 Jeff_Clark Some of you may be aware that investment guru Harry Dent has publicly stated that gold will fall to $250-$400. He specifically predicted: Around $700/ounce is a certainty in gold by 2015 to 2016, and $250 is a possibility well down the line by 2020–2023. His forecast is largely based on his belief that deflation will prevail. Governments are fighting deflation. If government stimulus fails, we will have deflation, not inflation. (snip) As a gold analyst who’s spent every day of the last seven-plus years watching this market, I can’t let this pass. I’m sure gold...

Net income for farmers is expected to fall by nearly 32 percent this year as corn and soybean prices remain low and expenses creep higher, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report. While some farmers renting land at higher prices will find it an unprofitable year, the statistics are not as dire as they may sound for farmers in general, since just two years ago income was at a record high, farm economists said. "It's neither happy times nor is the sky falling in terms of agriculture incomes," said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of...

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken. Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done. Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the...

Tyler Durden 01/21/2015 While Crude Oil and Dr. Copper are often cited as economic indicators, as @Not_Jim_Cramer notes, in fact Lumber prices are the most correlated with ISM and GDP of all industrial commodities. That is a problem. Lumber prices are tumbling and are breaking the 6-year up-trend that has 'proved' the recovery. With no CCFD manipulation and less financialization than crude, perhaps Lumber is the real canary in the economic collapse coalmine... Lumber is the most correlated to ISM and GDP of all the industrial commodities... and that is not good for the US economy...