Commodities

Lower gilt yields should help high yielding UK equities By Mike Lenhoff on 15/08/2008 11:05 What was significant about this week’s UK inflation figures, which were higher than expected, was the response of the gilt market. Yields all round continued to fall. Index-linked have now recovered all the ground they lost last month and conventionals are continuing to rebound.

Trader or speculator? By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 30/06/2008 12:58 I was trying to concentrate on giving a presentation on global markets last week whilst staring out over the stunning St Aubyn’s Bay in Jersey, and I found myself having to answer a similar question several times – on the lines of “are speculators ruining our markets?”

Dow Jones tumbles yet again… By Sandy Jadeja on 27/06/2008 12:08 After failing to hold the support level of 12208 – 12111 the Dow Jones index tumbled lower to lose -464 points.The trigger came through when the index broke below 12076 and very quickly saw the bears take control again to drive stocks lower just when traders thought we were on the verge of a rally.

Needles in Haystack By Bobby Rakhit on 11/06/2008 10:02 Have the good times rolled by? Low inflation, soaring house prices and a lucrative job market seem to be disappearing, while the outlook for the pound is even more bearish.

The US dollar and oil...Clouds of war gathering for a perfect financial storm By Greg Smith on 10/06/2008 15:52 Prior to the oil price going through the roof on Friday, something unusual occurred last week - the US dollar rallied, albeit briefly.

Maybe not just a passing problem? Inflation By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 28/04/2008 12:02 Damn statistics and damn politicians don’t blend well together. After highlighting some of the obfuscation around the unemployment numbers recently, it makes sense to move onto another vexed question – what exactly is the rate of our inflation?

Please Sir, Can I have some more? By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 14/04/2008 12:26 What do Chinese pork, Indian rice, Australian wheat and U.S. corn have in common? Unfortunately right now, a great deal!

Just go with the grain By Merryn Somerset Webb on 18/03/2008 17:13 THERE is now little getting away from the fact that the good times are gone.

Gold is the ultimate safe-haven By Merryn Somerset Webb on 12/03/2008 15:49 THERE is chaos in the jewellery markets.

Bull or Bear? By Greg Smith on 05/02/2008 11:26 So far, 2008 has been an extraordinary year for investors. Sharp falls in December and January, which culminated in last Tuesday morning's panic selling, saw the FTSE100 down more than 20 percent from October highs.

Food, profitable food By Merryn Somerset Webb on 21/01/2008 11:35 TIMES are tough in Japan. Not only do its residents have to put up with regular doses of bad economic data and a stock market that – unjustly – has spent the year so far in freefall, but now the prices of most of their favourite foods are soaring too.

Winning with Africa By Merryn Somerset Webb on 23/12/2007 17:54 THIS is a tricky time of year for anyone who writes about money - the time to flick through the year’s columns and admit what went wrong and why. But let’s start with what went right.

Avoid City rip-offs By Merryn Somerset Webb on 12/11/2007 12:24 WORKING in the City is mostly boring. Analysts fiddle with balance sheets, wondering what might happen if you moved a number here or there; brokers tell clients much the same stories about the same stocks every day; fund managers buy and sell the same stocks as they go up and down; and traders do much the same – just faster. Apart from the money, not many of these jobs have a lot going for them.

Powerless By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 06/11/2007 11:34 Powerless in the face of the water companies, powerless in the face of the cable companies and in fact shortly - just powerless altogether.

Hedge Funds – Can they really beat the Market? By Investors Chronicle on 26/10/2007 10:32 On this week's Market Programme we take a look at hedge funds and ask David Aldrich why they are increasingly performing in line with the wider stock market.

Piggy in the middle between the grain speculators and the supermarkets By Martin Vander Weyer on 18/10/2007 13:39 The concentrated aroma of — how shall I put it — deep piggy doo-doo that wafts through your car window as you motor up the A1 through North Yorkshire is, in normal times, nothing more nor less than the smell of money.

In a class of its own By Richard Hunter on 01/10/2007 10:58 “You have a choice between the natural stability of gold and the honesty and intelligence of the members of government. And with all due respect for those gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, vote for gold”. - William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Index commodity funds By IFAs with Unbiased.co.uk on 19/09/2007 11:00 The dominant asset classes which most private investors use in their portfolios are likely to be cash, fixed interest and equities.

Gold By David Linton on 11/09/2007 12:19 Last week’s close above $700 mark for the yellow metal is highly significant. It activates the Point & Figure upside targets, giving us high conviction trades to $750 and more likely $835.

Bond market vigilantes – they’re back! By Mike Lenhoff on 02/07/2007 00:00 Yikes - just look at that chart! Although the central banks have not made a big deal of rising commodity prices - apart from their reference to the increase in the cost of energy - it’s no wonder they are worried that ‘inflation will fail to moderate as expected’, to quote the Fed.

Finding the silver lining By Merryn Somerset Webb on 14/06/2007 11:14 I have been reading two interesting publications this week. The first comes from Capital Economics and is called Global Inflation Watch.

Food Glorious Food By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 04/06/2007 09:20 Whilst Justin is away on business speaking to investors in the sunnier climbs of Luxembourg, he has once again bravely asked me to provide a view on what’s been happening in the financial world this week for his regular weekly column.

Love is a ring from Argos By Merryn Somerset Webb on 23/04/2007 00:00 My engagement ring has a platinum band on it, so my husband and I agreed that my wedding ring would also be made of platinum.

Not Again! Oils in the Limelight By Bobby Rakhit on 11/04/2007 00:00 Highlights: Tensions continue to run high globally which are having a direct impact on the oil prices. The oil majors are the ones that are expected to profit. Expectations have managed to stay flat after having massive downgrades the 1st quarter of this year.

A hot tip from the Antarctic By Merryn Somerset Webb on 11/03/2007 00:00 Regular readers will know that I am oddly interested in fish farming. I’ve written here before about the resurgence of the salmon trade.

Beat the field and put shares into ploughs By Merryn Somerset Webb on 05/03/2007 00:00 THE odd thing about the mini-crashes across the markets over the past week is the way nobody can make up their mind exactly about the cause of it all.

Crude Oil A Case For Confusion By Sandy Jadeja on 23/01/2007 11:18 Over the last week there has been much speculation as to the direction of Crude Oil.

Down for the count – not likely? By Greg Smith on 19/01/2007 00:00 Crude oil has made a rather inauspicious start to 2007 to say the least, plunging from US$61 to around US$50 in the first half of January.

Metals take a hammering By Sandy Jadeja on 09/01/2007 00:00 Across the board the metals have declined over the last few weeks and Copper certainly deserves some attention.

Opportunities in Commodities or Indices? By Sandy Jadeja on 12/12/2006 00:00 Traders are looking for opportunities to trade in both Commodities and the Indices but are struggling to make sense of the recent moves.

A Silver lining in commodities By Sandy Jadeja on 05/12/2006 00:00 This year has seen commodities explode to the upside and the Silver market is no exception.

Trade of the week: Crude Oil February 2007 By Sandy Jadeja on 28/11/2006 00:00 FURTHER WEAKNESS EXPECTED in Nymex Crude Oil basis the February contract.

Diamond shortage cuts no ice with me By Merryn Somerset Webb on 23/11/2006 00:00 I HAVE not been in the Tiffany store in London's Sloane Street since its launch party a few years ago.

Trade of the week: commodities Wheat December 06 By Sandy Jadeja on 22/11/2006 00:00 Volatility has picked up in this commodity and after a 43% rise we were expecting a pullback for an opportunity to climb on board.

Trade of the week: commodities Soybeans January 07 By Sandy Jadeja on 14/11/2006 00:00 Many traders are ignoring spectacular moves in the commodity markets.

Gold, Oil and patience By Greg Smith on 02/11/2006 00:00 All successful investors operate within a framework. Such a decision making process is crucial to maintain focus and discipline with regard to investing.

Oil is still a long-term buy By Merryn Somerset Webb on 02/10/2006 00:00 I’ve just come back from a two-week holiday during which I read no newspapers, watched no television, listened to no radio and had absolutely no conversations whatsoever about the world’s financial markets. It was an absolute delight.

A new way to gain from grain By Merryn Somerset Webb on 03/09/2006 00:00 THIS column is not known for its readiness to praise the financial-services industry, so readers may be surprised to find that today I bring good news.

FTSE Mining Companies Continue at a Blistering Pace By Bobby Rakhit on 01/09/2006 00:00 Clearly we are in times of fundamental shifts in economic power. Commodities continue to spiral upwards with no hints of slowing down.

A very liquid investment By Merryn Somerset Webb on 21/08/2006 00:00 I’M IN the mountains in the south of France. I’m supposed to be on my summer holidays, but I can’t go outside because the rain is so heavy I’d be drenched in seconds.

I still predict a golden age By Merryn Somerset Webb on 11/06/2006 00:00 When I was at university, one of the biggest complaints from professors and the non-finance companies that turned up on the milk round looking for graduate trainees was that the best students wanted to go into the City.

On the slopes of Mount Merapi By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 22/05/2006 00:00 If you had been an Indonesian farmer on the slopes of Mount Merapi in Java, you would have been all too aware of the build up of tension around this volcano. From local tremors and minor earthquakes through to spewing smoke and pumice, the situation has been getting progressively more dangerous with now lava flowing out from its cracks and crevices.

Defying Gravity? By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 15/05/2006 00:00 If ever there were indicators or tell-tale signs that things might be going too far with commodity prices it was usually either people enthusiastically stating that the huge Canadian oil and tar sand deposits were now financially viable, or that the Welsh mining pits might now be reopened.

The Cookie Starting to crumble: Underweight Basic Resources By Bobby Rakhit on 25/04/2006 00:00 The basic resource sector has done exceptionally well! Gold, copper, silver - almost anything that you can think of as a metal has outperformed.

A Commotion in Commodities By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 18/04/2006 00:00 For those of a certain age, the world of commodities used to bear more resemblance to the 1980’s Eddie Murphy film “Trading Places”, with a jolly tale of the manipulation of orange juice commodity prices.

The coming liquidity crisis By Merryn Somerset Webb on 27/02/2006 00:00 Ask any fund manager what liquid is the most important to the global economy and he’ll tell you oil. The tight supply-and-demand situation has pushed prices up to a level that threatens economic growth and is kicking off inflation around the world, he will say.

Just a blip in the metals markets By Merryn Somerset Webb on 20/02/2006 00:00 What’s the difference between a boom and a bubble? The answer is a simple one. A market is showing signs of being in a bubble when prices reach levels that are entirely unjustified by the fundamentals. But it is booming when prices are rising fast but those price rises are justified by the fundamentals.

Soft commodities for 2006 By Merryn Somerset Webb on 10/01/2006 00:00 In December most City analysts were assuring us that oil prices wouldn’t be anything to worry about in 2006. The bull run was to be firmly left behind in 2005 and oil would soon fall back to the $40 range, a level at which it could safely be ignored as being both no threat to anyone’s inflation or interest rate forecasts and of no investment interest.

Oil Continues to Bolster UK markets By Bobby Rakhit on 21/07/2005 00:00 Unbelievably oil continues to ride the wave. Although Europe continues to be the favoured market, it’s the energy sector that’s really leading the way!

How much for the Nanny State? By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 06/12/2004 00:00 Last week was supposed to be the week when we concentrated our concern on what Gordon Brown was going to say about the nanny state: instead the news appeared to be dominated about the level of state support for somebody’s nanny.

Mining Sector: Digging Up Important Data By David Schwartz on 01/11/2004 00:00 Volatility is a fact of life in this fast-moving sector. Here are some clues to help you to intelligently invest in mining shares.

Just when you thought…… By Justin Urquhart Stewart on 12/07/2004 00:00 That air of complacent confidence caused by an easing oil price was easily reversed last week as the markets fretted about Russian, Nigerian and Iraqi production problems.

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