Daily Close | Forex, Metals, Oil, Agriculture August 28, 2020

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Agriculture

In the soybean market, as a commodity market, the price is formed on the basis of the balance between supply and demand. Judging by the relationship between the global stock-to-use ratio and the soybean futures price, we can state that the price is undervalued. Therefore, in the long run, there is the relationship between the values of the stock-to-use ratio and the average price of the soybean futures. The current soybean futures price is above five-year average.
Source: WSJ (Aug. 24, 2020) Over the past four months, the USDA has increased its global forecast for soybean production and consumption in the current season approximately equally. Source: Goodfon The Teucrium Soybean Fund (NYSEARCA:SOYB) provides investors unleveraged direct exposure to soybeans without the need for a futures account. Good exports and funds, in my opinion, are capable of pushing the soybean market even higher. Funds’ current net position on soybean (CBOT) is the highest in 52 weeks.
Therefore, the decision to invest in this fund should be made after analyzing the soybean market. Perhaps this is the most striking characteristic of the soybean market at the moment. For the last 30 days, the correlation between corn and soybean has exceeded 80%. So, I think that the Soybean ETF will rise to $15.4 in September. By the way, in my opinion, the corn market is bullish now.

Currencies

One crucial element that influences earnings is the exchange rate ZAR/$US: The dollar is getting more robust compared to the SA currency called the Rand. The extensions of these facilities will help sustain recent improvements in global U.S. dollar funding markets by maintaining these important liquidity backstops. Since April there has been marked US dollar weakness against the Swiss franc, and the present exchange rate is at 0.9059. The stimulus and a falling dollar have lifted the prices of gold, crude oil, copper, and many other raw materials since they reached significant bottoms in March and April.
A lower dollar means lower prices for American exported goods. Stocks hit another record and the dollar weakened to a more than two-year low amid the fallout of the Fed’s new inflation policy. One critical element that should be factored in your investing strategy is the currency fluctuation between the US dollar and the SA Rand ZAR. A weaker dollar also means that American industry has better chances of competing internationally.
The US dollar has recently lost ground against the Swiss franc. As a result, the dollar is weakening and we see yields in the ten-year moving lower. This is an essential level for the dollar, and not what I had been expecting would happen. For this analysis, we’ve chained in today’s dollar for the inflation adjustment. With the bulk of its revenues coming from the US, Alaris remains vulnerable to a rapidly depreciating US dollar.
The dollar is sinking today after Shinzo Abe said he’d resign from his post as Prime Minister of Japan. The COVID-19 correction in March left its mark, but the dollar quickly recovered to 0.98. It is reasonable to assume that the SNB would intervene in Forex markets should the euro weaken excessively against the Swiss franc. It is important to understand the interplay between the Swiss franc and the euro in order to appreciate what has happened to the USD/CHF pair.
New York would reap $35 billion from the Pelosi Bailout Bill – as in California, nearly a dollar-for-dollar bailout of their generously compensated employees.
California would reap $48 billion from the Pelosi Bailout Bill – nearly a dollar-for-dollar bailout of its highly compensated employees. less Euro area economic and industrial sentiment picked up in August, beating expectations and underpinning an already strong EURUSD.

Metals

At this stage of gold’s bull-run, it is all about EPS growth.We penned an article on how we view gold’s long-term and short-term cycles at present. The company produces palladium, platinum, and rhodium in the USA (with a little gold) from direct mining and also recycling (which provides a much lower profit margin). At present, we believe gold is trying to confirm a new daily cycle which will most likely be the last daily cycle of this broader intermediate cycle.
One such stock in this space, which is ripe for selling option premium as this bull market matures, is Gold Fields (GFI). SBSW can be used as a gold play but also as a PGM play with palladium, platinum, and rhodium. Therefore, let’s delve into Gold Fields to see if there are potential downside risks here over the medium to long term. Most recently, Mr. Buffett’s company purchased shares in Barrick, one of the leading gold producers. This number rose in the low teens starting in the mid-1970s (or right after the Nixon Shock ended Bretton-Woods and closed the gold window).
Although Gold Fields continues to generate plenty of cash flow, its assets (P/B of 3.84) and sales (P/S of 3.14) are well above the averages in this sector. This profitability metric is essentially a read on how well Gold Fields has been converting its capital into profit. These are excellent expectations as gold finishes its bull run. Gold Fields though is up 90% since the start of the year and 96% over the past 6 months alone.
From a profitability standpoint, Gold Fields also compares favourably with its peers. Our focus remains on liquidating positions at gold’s 8-year cycle high. What this makes perfectly clear is that a run to gold is starting. Sibanye Stillwater is producing gold, platinum, palladium, and rhodium. Thus, it isn’t easy to draw any conclusion about gold production going forward. Now, silver is finally starting to catch up to gold. But Gold ended the month unchanged… People are seeking safety, and it is virtually fueling a run to gold.

Oil

Warren Buffett’s purchase of natural gas assets just as the price fell to a quarter-of-a-century low in late June likely gave the natural gas a much-needed boost. The most direct route for a risk position in the natural gas market is via the futures and futures options that trade on the NYMEX division of the CME. We also write daily and weekly reports, covering key variables in U.S. natural gas market (supply, demand, storage, prices and more). BOIL and KOLD provide double short-term leverage compared to the natural gas futures market and are short-term trading tools.
Natural gas prices are falling today as the market reassesses the fundamental supply and demand outlook going forward. The price of nearby natural gas futures rallied by 91.6% since late June. A move above the $2.905 level, the November 2019 high, would be a significant technical event for natural gas futures. The natural gas futures market has ignored the level of inventories. Natural gas waited until late June to hit its lowest price of this century and since 1995 at a time when many other commodities were already rallying.
The continuous natural gas futures contract moved from $1.432 at the end of June to its most recent high of $2.743 per MMBtu on Friday, August 28.
The trend is always your friend in markets, and at the end of last week, it remained higher in natural gas. I continue to expect a correction in the natural gas futures market. Natural gas broke through its level of technical resistance at $2.162 in early August and rose to a new high for 2020. Crude Value Insights offers you an investing service and community focused on oil and natural gas.
In the overnight electronic session, the October natural gas is currently trading at 2.720, which is .010 higher. For example, over the past few months we have witnessed the largest decline in the history of natural gas production. With that said though, we believe the correct play is to be long natural gas in the coming months. I have been selling natural gas at each new high over the past weeks. However, I believe we have a bit of a shortcut to this analysis in that most of the commodities (all but natural gas) are highly correlated with each other.
On the Natural Gas front, the damage control verdict here is still out and the assessments will be trickling in.

United States

Put simply, that means the Fed can keep rates lower for longer, even if inflation passes 2% at any given time. Bank loans have floating interest rates – which means that as the Fed raises interest rates the yield on an LP fund will go up and vice versa. The interest rate on the short-term Treasury bills is not much because these securities were issued after the Fed slashed interest rates. Implicitly, Fed officials are arguing that they could have achieved faster economic growth if they had not been constrained by the “legacy” interpretation connected with the inflation rate.
Starting in fourth quarter of 2015, the Fed embarked on rate hike program that raised the federal funds rate from near zero to a range of 2.25% to 2.50%. However, I will contend that the Fed’s major policy shift announcement effectively should tilt Monetary conditions toward a very bright shade of green. However, I will contend that the Fed’s major policy shift announcement effectively should cause monetary conditions toward a very bright shade of green.
Instead of the two rate increases in 2019 the Fed actually reduced them three times (25 bps each time) over the course of the year. The general takeaway from the Fed’s new policy stance: easy money is here for the long run. It’s still all about prices today but now the Fed is admitting that the economy runs on the time preference of individuals rather than arbitrary definitions of full employment. The standard measure of GDP in the US is expressed as the compounded annual rate of change from one quarter to the next.
The rise in input costs hints that inflation is with us again, along with new Fed tolerance for price hikes.
But, even if the current recession does not get any worse, there are still “unintended consequences’ of the Fed’s actions. I wrote at that time, The Fed has been creating a big tidal wave of liquidity through the financial markets… and it has just been pushing in one direction. Powell changed the way the Fed views inflation from a hard target of 2% to an average target of 2%. The results of the past twelve years have left Fed officials with the feeling that they could have done better.
Opinion The Fed’s monetary policy revision may not be sufficient, Bloomberg Opinion’s editors write. Going into 2020, 85% of the US economy was in the service economy. Well the Fed had been engaging in a policy of quantitative easing… for more than four years. Even the US VanEck Vectors BDC Income ETF (NYSEARCA:BIZD) sports a rather weak total return over the last 5 years.

Europe

According to The Times, EU officials have laid down an ultimatumof two weeks in order to clinch a breakthrough in trade and security talks. That means that the Swiss franc is weaker, and that makes it easier for Swiss companies to export to the EU. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency will send pilots to Canada to get around travel restrictions on the U.S. because of the pandemic. His feature articles have been published on: FXstreet.com, Thestreet.com, Action forex, Forex TV, Istockanalyst, ForexFactory, Fxtraders.eu, Insidefutures.com, etc.
Apart from the damp weather, Britain is probably edging closer to a no-trade-deal Brexit.

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