Tag Archives: futures

Carbs to make a comeback?

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Trader sentiment on the grain complex (corn, wheat, rice and especially oats) has been very bearish for weeks, but prices have stabilized and RSI is turning up. This could be the set-up for decent rally, especially if general risk appetite comes back for a couple of weeks.

Here’s a chart of wheat going back to 2003, weekly scale:

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And here are oat futures:

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You can see in these that the grain complex went through a mania in 2007 and early 2008 with the rest of the commodities, but that froth was quickly blown off in the crash. Prices are in rather neutral territory on a longer-term basis, which you can see for yourself by checking 25-year charts on indexmundi.com or futures.tradingcharts.com.

Enough sell-off for now?

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SPX futures are looking pretty oversold here, and you could say there’s a bit of negative divergence on the hourly:

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The US markets are actually among the least oversold around the world. Japan, Australia, China and lots of Europe are down a lot more, which tells me there’s room for a corrective bounce here.

Here’s Australia’s main stock index, for example:

Bloomberg

Of course, I think all stock indexes are going to make deep new secular lows in the not-so-distant future, and the land down under will finally be welcomed to the depression as its real estate bubble pops and commodities decline again.

Bill Fleckenstein, gold and silver bull, says no manipulation conspiracy

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Here’s the interview with Eric King.

Fleckenstein makes excellent points about the “jihad” against the bullion banks, explaining the ridiculousness of the GATA-type theories. He points out that they are often net short futures simply to hedge their long positions in physical, and that lots of people who work on those desks are PM bulls. He knows a few market makers at the big banks, and says they have been bullish all the way up.

Despite the supposed manipulation, gold is up 4-5X since these theories took hold in force. Why haven’t the supposed shorts “blown up”? As for the central banks, they thought gold was worthless and sold tons near the lows, but now they supposedly think “it’s so magical” that they have to keep the price down?

The futures manipulation theories are just a “loser’s lament,” as Jim Grant says. Get this: he says that big-time short seller Jim Chanos is on the PPT! I can’t confirm that, but would be very interesting and put to bed a lot of nonsense if true.

The discussion of manipulation starts about 3/4 of the way through (to jump to it, place the marker over the “t” in Fleckenstein).

Fleckenstein seems to be a huge silver bull, expecting physical demand to soar. He entertains the possibility of silver reaching some “silly” price level. The wealthy have not taken big physical positions in silver, but if they did, the market could go “wacko.”

Also discussed: the US health care bill, inflation, bailouts, Greece, and home foreclosures.

Commodities running out of steam.

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The trend was smartly broken back in January, and now this bounce looks like it’s exhausting right about where the old support line would be. These are the various popular commodity indexes, from Bloomberg:

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You can see this loss of momentum in the former leaders: gold, silver, oil, copper, sugar and cocoa have all failed to make new highs as stocks have surged over the last month.

This is a strong sign that the urge to speculate is fading. Without that, there is nothing to keep prices up, since demand is very low for everything from oil to wheels of parmesian cheese (remember the cheese bailout in Italy?) compared to the 2008 commodity peak. When commodities fall, they often drop straight down. No class of assets declines faster. See this weekly chart of sugar for a case in point:

futures-tradingcharts.com

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If you are looking for short ideas among commodity stocks, this is a neat tool: miningalmanac.com (I think so anyway, but then I’m part of the team that’s building it).

Select the exchanges you trade on, then look for stocks without a lot of “burn time,” in other words those that may be running out of money. Or look at the “financial strength” tab to see who has too much debt and too little cash. Right now this beta version has mostly Canadian companies, but it’ll have almost every mining stock in the US, Canada and Australia before long.

The power of technical analysis. (repost from 3.3.10)

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(First published 3.3.10, 1:27PM EST)

I’ve noticed lately how well the 60-min RSI (relative strength index — a measure of oomph in price movement) has been doing, so today I decided to quantify it. The result is simply spectacular, even with a mechanical buy/sell decision that always had you in the market either long or short.

Here is a 60-day chart of the Dow, by 60-min bar. The circles are negative RSI crosses (red arrows on the bottom) and the boxes are positive crosses (green arrows). The numbers are the Dow points one might achieve by riding Dow futures from the previous signal using the signals alone, with no stop-losses. Additional signals do not add to the position, and the trade is reversed on the next opposing signal.

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I tried to be conservative with those point totals (not buying or selling top or bottom tick), and some of those moves may have been missed due to opening gaps (where the price has already moved so far by the time of the opening bell), but you get the idea. It comes out to 1425 Dow points, even having been short for the whole 500 point drop in late January, which a stop-loss could have prevented. A single mini-dow futures contract, symbol YM, requires a margin of $6825 and is worth $5 per Dow point.

Now, this is hardly a perfect reflection of actual trading, but just mechanically trading a simple signal is infinitely superior to trying to outguess the crowd based on mumbo-jumbo like the Greek situation, Barney Frank, Obama this or that, oil prices, GDP, consumer data, or any other nonsense.

Now, I don’t have to tell explain any further why I think the market will probably fall by early next week.

Short-term strength in copper?

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Nothing to do with the earthquake of course — by late Monday, Sunday night’s spike was retraced to where copper closed on Friday, once traders calmed down and actually read the news reports that copper production and transport facilities were fine.

In the 3.29 – 3.35 range this morning, it was trading about where I’d expect given the action in stocks, oil and other metals. There ended the rational for my short from 3.45 Sunday evening, and I closed the trade at 3.34, noting the neutral trend of RSI and a bullish MACD cross on the hourly bar:

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I’ll now be looking to re-enter for a longer-term short, since I think the pending implosion of Chinese, Australian and Canadian real estate and the general resumption of the deflation trade will not be kind to industrial commodities.

What comes after a sugar high?

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Sugar futures are down about 20% in one month (ahem):

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Look at that contracting triangle last fall — it is a thing of beauty and foretold higher prices, especially since DSI was only 20% by the end.

Let’s put this in perspective:

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I was stopped out of my short from 29 cents at 24 last week after tightening the stop too much. Once more the market schools me to let my winners run. I’ll be looking for a re-entry before long since there is a lot of dowside left.

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Here’s an earlier post from last fall with some historical charts.

Earthquake in Chile spooks the copper market

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Reports indicate copper mines and ports are in good shape. The futures market seems to be overreacting.

Copper futures just opened an hour ago with a 6% pop from Friday’s close, up to just under $3.50 per pound. Traders are concerned about a supply pinch, since Chile produces 36% of the world’s copper. Bloomberg reports that four mines representing 16% of the country’s supply have been at least somewhat impaired:

Santiago-based Codelco, the world’s biggest copper producer, is restarting operations at its El Teniente mine after output was halted by the quake, which also closed its Andina mine. The two projects produce about 600,000 tons of copper. London-based Anglo American Plc said Feb. 28 power had been “partially restored” to its Los Bronces and El Soldado mines in Chile, which produce a combined 280,000 tons a year. The two mines stopped output on Feb. 27.

The mines were closed because of power outages, the two companies said. A rockfall also caused damage to a slurry duct at the Andina mine, Codelco said.

Codelco said the quake didn’t cause any significant damage to installations at El Teniente and it may open its Andina mine “in the coming hours.”

Power to the two Anglo American mines was “partially restored,” spokesman Pranill Ramchander said in e-mailed comments that didn’t give further details.

Ports Closed

Chile’s earthquake also severed the country’s main highway and destroyed bridges and apartment buildings.

The central Chilean ports of San Antonio and Valparaiso remain closed after the earthquake, TVN reported, without saying where it got the information.

Expanding copper inventories provide a cushion for supply disruptions, said Eugen Weinberg, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt.

“The exchange stocks worldwide are still very high and the market was in oversupply before the earthquake,” he said. Prices may still rise $200 a ton as traders switch focus from demand to “supply risks,” he said.

Also see this report from Reuters with much more detailed info on particular ports and mines.

It sounds like the miners have things under control and that the market is probably overreacting. This is Chile — they can handle earthquakes. The market isn’t going to be short of copper. It seems like we’re talking about 5% of world supply being down temporarily.

Demand is slack, and London warehouses are chocked full of the stuff (as are those in China), with the equivalent of almost a year’s worth of Codelco’s production:

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Technically, the market looks weak, and a blip like this is probably not going to jump-start the bull unless the Chilean situation is much worse than it appears:

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I view this as an opportunity, and I have taken a short position tonight.

(UPDATE): Codelco says it will meet its delivery contracts

Pre-open Dow futures

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It would be very predictable if stocks just rolled back over and had a very bad day:

Interactive Brokers

The caveat of course is that yesterday was a powerful move up, hinting that there could be more to come. That’s what stops are for, and we’ve got plenty of clear ones here.