Daily Close | Forex, Metals, Oil, Agriculture December 15, 2020

Stock_Market_Closed_01-740x431

Agriculture

image source On the Corn front, corn export intentions rebound as China volumes grow. The reports showed a significant drop in production of US Cotton and much reduced the US ending stocks levels. We did see some weakness on the December corn as it expired to the cash market. less General Comments: Cotton closed higher on follow-through buying tied to the USDA reports.

Currencies

The government’s borrowing (and printing) pushes down the value of the dollar, which increases the value of gold in respect to the dollar. Investors who, in the past, might have considered gold an alternative to the dollar or safe haven against fiat currency now have choices that previously did not exist. A weaker dollar and higher commodity prices should also provide support to the price of gold. less The Australian Dollar eased lower against its US counterpart as a mixed bag of Chinese economic data registered broadly in line with market expectations.
The Euro Stoxx Banks index is down more than 20% this year, compared with a 6% fall in the Euro Stoxx 50 blue-chip index. That’s not to the Euro’s discredit; traders are looking for higher-yielding and growth-linked assets like the commodity currencies (EUR/AUD, EUR/CAD, EUR/NZD).

Metals

Holding GLD does not entitle you to actual physical gold and does not always exactly track the price of gold bullion due to its design. You do have other choices for gold ETFs should you want the actual backing of physical gold. An increase in debt is correlated to an increase in gold price via demand, especially as the Fed pushes down interest rates to allow for easier debt accumulation. If the stories about massive commodity acquisitions by the Chinese government are correct, it makes perfect sense that copper and oil would outperform gold.
With other commodities like oil and copper showing strength in recent weeks, gold has been a notable laggard. I re-ran my data going back to the inception of the SPDR Gold ETF (GLD) to double-check and found no significant difference from the results in my last article. less Gold often begins a significant seasonal rally around the time of the Fed’s December meeting. I think one difference in our analyses could be that Franke based his analysis on gold futures, which are slightly different from GLD.
Gold and oil peaked, while copper continued its advance. These seasonal rallies are likely related to Asian buying for Chinese New Year celebrations, and Goldman’s physical gold ETF announcement is timely. The bottom line: Gold and silver look solid from a seasonal, technical, and fundamental perspective! Both of those conditions have been in place in recent months, yet gold continues to decline.
I believe the emergence of cryptocurrency is suppressing the rise of the value of gold, and thus GLD. The conditions for a stronger gold price were in place in August. On the bearish side, Bitcoin remains a significant competitor to gold. The next Fed meet begins today… and gold is up nicely this morning! Sprott Physical Gold ETF (PHYS) is one option. Yet gold continued the downtrend that began in August. Gold is not (despite being an excellent electrical conductor). The downdrafts in oil and copper were far more dramatic when global economic activity ground to a halt.

Oil

The oil trading portfolio is designed to take advantage of short-term long/short oil trades in the market. The Iranians “need to sell oil, and we need energy,” said one official in Italy, formerly a top customer for Iranian crude. Meanwhile, SVB International in Washington said Iran exported 585,000 barrels of crude oil a day in November, up from 230,000 earlier in 2020. As mentioned earlier, NTG has performed poorly this year but moving forward, as the natural gas market’s fundamentals improve, the fund’s performance will likely get better.
(NTG) has performed poorly this year but will likely recover as the natural gas market rebalances in the near future. This alongside the rest of Europe likely remaining in lockdown territory poses the biggest risk to oil price recovery in the near term. Several firms that monitor the global oil trade say shipments from Iran have roughly doubled from the low levels seen earlier this year, although estimates vary widely.
Also, note that so far, we haven’t witnessed an increase in natural gas drilling activity, measured in terms of drilling rigs.
In its monthly oil-market report, the IEA cut its forecast recovery in demand for 2021 by 170,000 barrels a day to 5.7 million barrels a day. The natural gas sector was also hit hard by the downturn, marked by weakness in prices and production. The natural gas NYMEX futures hit $2.20 per MMBtu in January but traded well below $2 throughout the subsequent six months, frequently hovering in the $1.50-$1.60 range. Oil prices climbed on Tuesday, breaking nine-month highs, along with broader risk assets on hopes for a U.S. pandemic-relief package, according to Edward Moya, an analyst at broker Oanda.
An adviser to a large Chinese oil company said Iran was offering rebates of as much as $1 a barrel for crude. NTG’s portfolio, therefore, is heavily tilted towards those companies and MLPs that own natural gas and NGL logistics assets. The cartel and its allies including Russia agreed earlier this month to increase oil production on Jan. 1 by only one-quarter of the volume initially set.
Industry watchers said the actual totals were likely much higher and included oil transshipped through other Asian countries. But the sharp increase seen across the three market trackers suggests Tehran has been more successful recently in selling its oil. Synchronized demand recovery will be needed for oil prices to soundly push above $50/bbl. The US dry natural gas production also fell from 2.947 trillion cf in Jan-2020 to 2.68 tcf by Sep-2020. Most of the physical oil spreads have already priced in strong physical dynamics, so a further increase in timespreads is unlikely given underlying conditions.

United States

In addition, the company appears ideally positioned to benefit from a shift away from Chinese manufacturing and into the company’s facilities in Vietnam, Mexico, and the US. The only company with a higher valuation is Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX), which is the company AMD is buying. Less than 7% of the company’s manufacturing capacity is done in a leased facility in China, with the vast majority of capacity in the US and Mexico. The company’s revenue declined -3% y/y to $215.0 million, missing Wall Street’s expectations of $221.3 million (flat y/y).
The PCAOB is a US regulator that sets accounting and reporting standards for all publicly-traded companies listed in the US. Furthermore, a wholesale delisting could jeopardize the US’s status as the world’s financial center. In my prior Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) update on iPhone sales in China, I predicted that November 2020 iPhone sales would be extremely high. The New York Fed kicked off the slate of December manufacturing data this morning with the release of the Empire State Manufacturing Survey.
Unlike many previous directors of his division, Mr. Redfearn isn’t a lawyer and instead had spent much of his career on Wall Street trading desks. Majesco had then said that the proceeds from the sale will be distributed to shareholders because 99 per cent of the revenue earned was from the US subsidiary. With vaccines now being distributed, Wall Street is likely to place a low value on profits from drugs like Lilly’s antibody treatment for Covid-19.
NYSE, Nasdaq and Cboe Global Markets Inc. CBOE 3.14% sued to block the pilot, saying it would harm market functioning.
After acquiring Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) smartphone modem business, this should shortly be within reach. He has been quoted in a variety of financial news publications, such as CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. Iranian traders and some prospective buyers said they were expecting U.S. pressure to ease once Mr. Trump leaves office. NYSE, owned by Intercontinental Exchange Inc., ICE 2.90% and Nasdaq reject such criticism and say their fees are fair and reasonable.
)After a wild 2020, UBS is trying to peg the top performers of the new year. In that investing environment, exposure to big pharma should help Wall Street keep a steady pulse. Research from our team of in-house analysts has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, USA Today, Kitco, Reuters, US News & World Report, CNBC, and more. This year has seen many successful tech IPOs such as Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB), but PubMatic is somewhat different in its success.

Europe

Last week ECB President Christine Lagarde unveiled a fresh round of bond buying, plus a slew of cheap lending programs aimed at helping banks funnel credit into the economy. While the ECB calls these instructions recommendations, the banks treat them as rules since going against them would likely lead to serious regulatory reprisals. The ECB and other regulators have urged banks to keep close checks on their loan books, renegotiating with borrowers and assuming losses if they see trouble.
The ECB also said it sent a letter to banks asking for moderation in their bonus policies. The ECB move follows a lifting of a ban by the Bank of England last week. Despite the ban lift, the ECB remains worried about the health of the region’s banks. Internally at the ECB, the issue of dividends has been divisive.

0