Daily Close | Forex, Metals, Oil, Agriculture October 23, 2020

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Agriculture

Source: dlife The only hardware required is a tiny, all-in-one device that can test your blood sugar levels just from being plugged into your phone, as shown above. Other interesting features include a feature that helps to measure sugar levels in food, gamification and incentives, emergency contacts, and more. Large crops served included fruit & vegetable (F&V), soybeans, rice, and sugar, as shown below. EMEA sales for the quarter fell 10%, with hot and dry weather leading to unfavorable market conditions.

Currencies

It looks as though the United States still cannot decide on stimulus, so that could bring a little bit of bullish pressure into the US dollar in general. Keep in mind that the Australian dollar is getting a little bit of a boost due to the idea of stimulus coming out the United States. At a current price of $9.32, this equates to a dollar volume of $18.8M (trading volume multiplied by share price). With significant swings in sterling, the dollar, the Chinese yuan and more in the current year, that is a substantial drag when Reckitt comes to convert profits into sterling.
less The Australian dollar initially pulled back a bit during the trading session on Thursday, dipping below the 0.71 handle. If I wanted to buy the US dollar, I would find another currency to buy it against. Although this is driving down the value of the US dollar, we also have another major issue on the other side of the coin. By the end of the week, stocks were down, bond (prices) were down, oil was down, the dollar was down, and economic data was down…
Bayer writing down assets in the agricultural business in the mid to high single-digit billion euro range is not the most problematic aspect.

Metals

Fully 2.5 months have passed since the gold stocks were rocketing higher with gold last summer, generating great excitement. Gold stocks’ correction progress can be evaluated in this sector’s leading benchmark and trading vehicle, the GDX VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF. Gold stocks’ last upleg was massive, rocketing 134.1% higher in just 4.8 months per GDX! Those huge gains erupted from gold stocks being battered to fundamentally-absurd lows during March 2020’s pandemic-lockdown-spawned stock panic.
As everyone interested in buying in to gold stocks anytime in the near future gets fully deployed, capital inflows peter out. I warned about gold, silver, and their miners’ stocks getting very overbought in late July. More are abandoning gold stocks as weeks drag on into months. But gold threw a big one-bar reversal back in August and that still dominates the market. This same necessary and healthy corrective process is underway in gold itself, which overwhelmingly drives gold-stock price levels.
Since peaking in July gold has done nothing but trace a step-wise retracement. But to say that there’s any signal currently in gold prices is to be dreaming. While this year’s blistering post-panic gold-stock upleg was this secular bull’s fourth, the only other big-and-fast comparable one was its maiden upleg. Gold-stock speculators and investors are growing weary, wondering when miners’ next upleg will finally get running. When that starts to happen after uplegs see big-and-fast gains to major new highs, the prudent strategy is to ratchet up the trailing-stop-loss percentages on open gold-stock trades.
Silver’s more interesting simply because it’s more volatile.

Oil

Now China is probably the brightest spot in the oil market with declining US oil production coming in second place. This presents a headwind along with Libya oil production coming back, but fundamentally speaking, global oil inventories will continue to decline into year-end. We also write daily and weekly reports, covering key variables in U.S. natural gas market (supply, demand, storage, prices and more). My thesis is explained in detail in my article, “Tanker Market Outlook: Demand For Tankers To Drop With Oil Consumption.”
Last week we saw comments about how if China’s floating storage disappeared, it means lower Chinese crude buying.
Longer term, I expect the demand for tankers to drop with the demand for oil consumption. Jan’s final idea is Reserve Petroleum (OTCPK:RSRV), another oil play that basically trades at a market cap of $21.4 million. A long/short Model portfolio is continuously updated, along with on-going analysis of the oil market. The “cold season” is the time of high volatility in natural gas markets. Kpler Global Energy provided FreightWaves “with data on the percentage of unladen (empty) crude/condensate tankers versus the total fleet, based on deadweight tonnage, regardless of size category.
As of October 20, 2020, both the dirty (crude) and clean (products) tanker rates were far below their 2020 averages. Natural gas is primarily a winter commodity. It is also worth noting a scrubber system increases a vessel’s fuel consumption by around 2%. My outlook for tanker names is bearish in both the short and long term. Australia is building wind and solar energy for Asian markets in Pilbara, now home of LNG.

United States

With the election right around the corner, it remains that these significant Trump administration , also going almost completely unacknowledged among mainstream pundits’ election commentary. Since 2018, the company had been trading on the OTC market but, a year ago, it made its debut on the Nasdaq. Recently, I found a tiny company called DarioHealth (NASDAQ:DRIO) that had already increased 2-3x in the past few months. A year ago, it was able to make its debut on the Nasdaq after years of trading on the OTC market.
By trading on the Nasdaq and having B ratings with stable outlooks from major rating agencies, the company shouldn’t be considered a risky investment. The quote is going viral following the US presidential debate between Trump and Biden where both were asked how they would “stand up” to the China threat. After Workhorse (NASDAQ:WKHS) soared to $30 last month on excitement over its upcoming USPS deal, Ford’s self-driving solution for the commercial market deserves more attention.
Social media stocks, measured by the Global X Social Media Index ETF (NASDAQ:SOCL), gained over 6% for the week. One can only imagine just much scarier their tax returns would be compared to those of Donald Trump. Indeed it constitutes a major foreign policy success for President Trump with just two weeks away from the election. The sharp rise in the balance sheet means that Fed could be showing its concern about the pace and likelihood of fiscal stimulus arriving in the near term.
But the recovery is so uneven I doubt the NBER (the official arbiter of recessions in the US), would see it that way. Alpha TALKS Wall Street Breakfast is a weekly video covering what moved markets this week (WMMTW), featuring a panel of Seeking Alpha editors. After the close, President Trump and VP Biden held their last debate before the election. In the US, the NBER can declare a recession even before there is one quarter of contraction. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s account and a Trump campaign account were also blocked.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) blew past earnings but gave up 2% on the week.
Trump’s Arab-Israel peace rollout looks to be making rapid progress across the region, as on Friday , opening up diplomatic relations and political ‘normalization’. The narrative about an accommodative Fed continued even as they allowed the balance sheet to stagnate. One day Steve Mnuchin and Pelosi are close to a deal.

China

Chinese state media is widely circulating a new bellicose statement from President Xi Jinping made on a key Korean War anniversary for Beijing.

Europe

The next day Pelosi ‘won’t budge an inch.’ The bottom line is there will be no breakthroughs on a Brexit deal or stimulus until the election is over. Europe is also at risk from a collapse in a trade deal between the UK and EU following Brexit. That breakdown was the real market-driving action because it was the first instance where the market admitted the possibility of a No-Deal Brexit. One day Boris Johnson walks away from Brexit talks and odds of a No-Deal scenario rise.
Having said that, there will obviously be a reaction to the Brexit announcement if and when it finally comes. After all, we have no idea exactly how Brexit is going to work out. The European Union wants to recycle 77% of plastic bottles by 2025 and 90% by 2029. EU’s DAU grew by 7m (y/y) while North America added 6m (y/y).

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