Daily Close | Forex, Metals, Oil, Agriculture December 24, 2020

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Agriculture

less General Comments: Winter Wheat markets were higher and held higher prices all day. less General Comments: Cotton closed higher in range trading. Minneapolis Spring Wheat contracts also closed higher.

Currencies

EBITDA on a dollar basis was $4.1 billion, up 18% Y/Y.

Metals

Silver’s definitive fundamental read is only published once a year by the venerable Silver Institute in its World Silver Survey. So this American silver ETF dominates its space, and silver ETFs are increasingly silver’s main driver. So the only way ETFs can maintain price parity with silver is to shunt excess silver-ETF-share supply and demand directly into silver itself. When SLV-share demand exceeds silver’s, those share prices will decouple from silver’s to the upside.
The silver investors’ resoluteness is very bullish for this metal, keeping silver high which fuels growing interest. If such high silver prices can be sustained, that would be a game-changer for the long-struggling major silver miners. These far-higher prevailing silver levels are resulting from silver investors’ resolve. Silver ETFs’ mission is to track and mirror the underlying silver price. Last spring when they were preparing their latest WSS, its analysts forecast major growth in silver demand through ETFs this year.
These huge positions that sure looked speculative initially have largely stayed deployed since even riding out a silver correction. That requires making these ETFs actual conduits for stock-market capital to flow into and out of real physical silver bullion. But the supply and demand for silver-ETF shares is independent from silver’s own. In the 4.4 months since its latest upleg peaked, silver has averaged an impressive $25.00 on close. That suggests they believe silver’s secular bull will keep powering even higher on balance.
Then they immediately plow the proceeds from those new-share sales into buying more physical silver bullion for their vaults. The resulting $11.96 nadir was brutal, well below the world’s silver miners’ all-in sustaining costs of production. Over the next 4.8 months into early August, silver skyrocketed 142.8% higher to $29.04!That proved its best level in 7.4 years. Despite its enthusiast following, silver is a tiny global market with a dearth of reliable data.
They projected this silver demand soaring 46.9% YoY to 120.0m ounces in 2020. But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, silver’s rebound out of those extreme lows was incredibly violent.

Oil

*Google GOOGL announced that it has sold a cloud system which may earn as much as $10 bn to Saudi Aramco, the now listed oil company. The trade balance has improved because import costs for oil and gas have been low.

United States

Relisting on the Nasdaq opens the company up again to many new investments especially as it turns around its revenue picture as legacy drags trend towards $0. Moreover, U.S.Treasuries have historically provided a positive nominal return in all U.S. recessions over the past five decades. The fate of that package is now unclear following criticism from President Trump. When Trump threatened veto there arose such a clatter, even Nancy Pelosi agreed on some of the matters.
Late-day ramp pushed Nasdaq and Dow back into the green… Tyler Durden (pseudonym) is the lead writer at ZeroHedge. I had a college classmate who was a stockbroker in Lahore, but she moved to the US after her husband died. less It was the Last Energy Report Before Christmas and Trump shakes up the House.

Europe

In a press conference this morning, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson noted the deal as covering £688 billion in trade per year. The final deadline for Brexit was set as January 1st, 2021, and today’s deal comes just in time to avoid an uncertain exit. less The EU and the UK have officially reached an agreement on the terms of a Brexit deal today. Luckily across the pond, the British and the EU did manage to craft a Brexit deal and sterling rose a tad under 0.8% to $1.36, a 2020 high.
London’s financial markets prospered in the last four decades as the U.K. capital became the pre-eminent EU hub for lending, trading and investing.
The UK and EU Parliaments must still vote to approve the deal. Now outside the EU, the future size and influence of the city’s finance industry is in question. Britain left the European Union on Jan. 31 but kept EU legislation during a transition period this year. In June 2016, UK citizens voted in a referendum to leave the EU. EU law will no longer apply in the U.K. from Jan. 1.

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