A Review of the Commodities Crash Playbook As Another Phase of Selling Ends

This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) Commodities across the board have suffered mightily during the stock market’s recent correction. In the first phase of the sell-off (from late July to early August), a few commodity-related stocks triggered buys by erasing all … Read more

Australia Remains Attractive As RBA Quietly Opens Door to Dropping Rates

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) The Australian dollar has fallen so far, so fast over the past month that I failed to notice a major change in tone from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on monetary policy until now. … Read more

Profiting from Physical Assets in a Resource-Constrained World – Rules and Picks (Part 2 of 2)

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) {snip} This piece is a follow-up post to “Preparing for Profits in a Resource-Constrained World” (Part 1) in which I discussed the implications of Jeremy Grantham’s fundamental thesis of a new world where resources are … Read more

The British Pound’s “Quiet” Sell-Off Continues Nearly Unabated

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) Almost a month ago, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King spoke at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet for Bankers and Merchants of the City of London at the Mansion House, and I wrote afterward that the … Read more

Chart Review: AAPL, EWZ, EWA

The stock market is oversold, so I am hunting for bullish setups in the charts. Apple (AAPL), the iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund ETF (EWZ), and the iShares MSCI Australia Index Fund ETF (EWA) are a few of the charts that have caught my interest. Apple (AAPL) plunged through dual supports and bounced right back … Read more

T2108 Update – June 13, 2011

(T2108 measures the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages [DMAs]. To learn more about it, see my T2108 Resource Page.) T2108 Status: 21% and “almost” oversold. General Trading Call: Continue covering shorts. Add more small long positions. Commentary T2108 dropped to 21%, right on the edge of the official 20% oversold … Read more

Even Central Banks Are Buying Australian As the RBA Plans Higher Rates

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released its minutes from its last board meeting, May 3. I reviewed these minutes curious to understand the bank’s expectations for commodity prices given the on-going sell-off in commodities. The meeting occurred just as commodities started their current sell-off, so these pressures were not salient at the time. However, … Read more

Intervention Sticks As the Yen’s Recent Weakness Persists

It appears that coordinated currency intervention has accomplished what unilateral intervention could not – initiate a sustained weakening in the Japanese yen. When the Bank of Japan promised “powerful monetary easing” I quipped: The wordsmiths were working overtime. The BoJ clearly wants to fire as strong a warning as possible to those who insist on … Read more

Coping with Destabilizing Coffee Prices

Coffee prices have soared along with most other commodities over the past year and more. For example, the iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee Total Return Sub-Index ETN (aka JO) is up 70% since the end of 2009. The last earnings results from Starbucks (SBUX) demonstrated the stress from these higher coffee prices. The company slightly lowered … Read more

Skeptical the British Pound Can Sustain A Breakout Versus the U.S. Dollar For Now

After scanning through the latest quarterly release of the “Statement of Monetary Policy” from the Reserve Bank of Australia, I was reminded that currency traders are trying to prepare for eventual rate hikes from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE): “While financial markets continue to expect the US federal funds … Read more