Chart Review: Amazon.com Triggers Post-Earnings Short, Freeport Hits QE2 Price, Cliffs Hits 200DMA

Amazon.com (AMZN) The day after Amazon.com (AMZN) reported earnings, it soared in typical fashion after faking out traders with a lower print. I was able to once again execute the post-earnings AMZN trade successfully. It has been all downhill for AMZN since then. On Tuesday (August 13) the stock finally closed below the intraday low … Read more

Plunging Iron Ore Underlines Coming Monetary Policy from the Reserve Bank of Australia

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on June 2, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) {snip} …Iron prices have plunged almost as severely as they did last August as steel rebar prices have fallen. From Reuters on May 31st: {snip} These price declines would seem to … Read more

Don’t Overplay the Recovery In Iron Ore Prices

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on January 7, 2013. Click here to read the entire piece.) Back in September, one of the big stories was the plunge in iron ore prices to three-year lows around $87/ton. With prices down over 50% from the record high of $191/ton … Read more

Chart Review: Autozone Comes Back, Cliffs Abandons

I watched Autozone (AZO) this morning stage another incredible comeback from post-earnings selling. In pre-market trading, AZO was down over 3% around $345. By the time trading opened, AZO rushed out the gate at $355. While it looked like a bottoming move, I failed to give the trade a try (with a stop below the … Read more

The QE2 Reference Price Identifies the Strongest Iron Ore and Metallurgical Coal Plays

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on September 16, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) Last week, I demonstrated how the timing of QE2 provided a useful reference point for buying Freeport-McMoran (FCX) as part of a coming revision of the commodity crash playbook. In this … 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

Steel Stalls

The massive and historic floods in Australia have driven coal prices up. This is particularly important for steel since Australia exports 2/3 of the world’s coal used for making steel (coking coal). Steelmakers have already been struggling with increasing input costs, so the Australian floods are sure to pinch profits further. At the close of … Read more