Open: New York Session | Forex, Metals, Oil, Agriculture August 19, 2020

Domestic demand for sugar is estimated at 25-26 mt, which leaves an annual surplus that translates into consumer-friendly sugar prices. Commodity traders are closely watching the tour to see how recent dry weather and a severe storm will impact this fall’s massive U.S. corn and soybean crop. Data of last 25 years would suggest that cane output and in turn sugar production was inconsistent. The NITI Aayog recommendation to cut cane acreage, however well-intentioned, is most unlikely to be embraced by the sugar mills.
These variations resulted in wild swings in sugar production. Flour power | The global wheat trade is being shaken up again after extreme weather hurt crops in the European Union while harvests are booming elsewhere. Arabica coffee futures gained almost 3% on Tuesday on short covering by funds as a strong polar air mass moves into top producer Brazil.

Dollar indexThe dollar index, that was consolidating within 92.5 and 94 since the beginning of August, closed below the lower limit of the range yesterday. The dollar is softer against most of the majors, with the dollar bloc and the Norwegian krone leading. In dollar terms, the jump of $62 billion compared to Q2 last year was the largest ever in the data going back to 2001. MARKET NEWS Gold fell below $2,000 an ounce as the dollar steadied, with investors awaiting minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting.
It was sold to new lows for the year yesterday against the euro, sterling, the Swedish krona, and the Australian dollar. continues to benefit from a weak US dollar and this morning made a new yearly high at 1.3267 before the pair drifted lower. Gene comments on stock, bond, dollar, oil & gold markets, with a particular emphasis on monetary policy, technology issues and S&P intraday action. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq set new all-time highs yesterday, but the continued outperformance of US equities have failed to lend the dollar much support.
Traders are reluctant to buy into the dollar amid concerns about the growth prospects of the US economy as well as gridlock surrounding the new fiscal relief bill. Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback’s strength against a basket of six currencies, fell 0.04 per cent to 92.23.

Source: Manitoba gold website 1911 Gold is the owner of the True North gold project and the Apex Property. “Today’s high real price of gold suggests that gold is an expensive inflation-hedge with a low prospective real return. To emphasize this point, they noted that the rise in the real price of gold has been highly correlated with the rise in demand from buyers of gold ETFs. The Laguna gold mine has been optioned to Kinross Gold, who has the potential to earn 70 percent ownership in the project by spending $5.5 million.
The Alamos Gold Lynn Lake project has attractive economics at today’s gold prices, with an NPV of over $570 million and 38% IRR. Source: 1911 Gold website The True North Project currently has an indicated and an inferred resource of 1 million ounces of gold. Although Manitoba has some mines that produce gold, the province only accounted for 1.9 percent of Canada’s gold production in 2019. Alamos Gold became the owner of the Lynn Lake gold project since 2015 when it acquired Carlisle Goldfields.
Negative real rates are important because, as you can see in the following table, there has historically been a negative relationship between real interest rates and gold prices. However, in both 1980 and in 2011, high real gold prices coincided with widely held views that future inflation would be significant.

An industry body estimated US crude oil inventories to have fallen by 4.3 million bbl, higher than the Reuters poll forecast of 2.7 million bbl. These reforms come in the wake of low oil prices and reduced interest from oil majors. Ahead, crude oil prices are awaiting an online meeting between OPEC+ ministers as participants review output and compliance goals. The listed arm of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp said on Wednesday net profit totalled 10.38 billion yuan ($1.50 billion), missing analysts’ forecasts for 12.6 billion yuan.
Sentiment-linked crude oil prices were little changed over the past 24 hours despite an optimistic conclusion to the Wall Street trading session.
Oil eased from a five-month high as API data indicated surging U.S. gasoline inventories and OPEC+ prepared to meet to assess supply. The fund’s portfolio of energy companies were the weakest performers, with those stocks down by at least a third due to plunging oil prices. A long-awaited bill for reforms in the Nigerian oil and gas sector are said to be ready and awaiting to be submitted to the Nigerian President for sign off.
Crude Value Insights offers you an investing service and community focused on oil and natural gas. In other words, Verisk is becoming less and less dependent on heavily cyclical industries, which means its immunity to recessions and the oil market shocks is getting stronger.

President Trump said he called off trade talks with China last weekend, raising questions about the future of the deal. The surge in revenue is expected to continue in the coming years with annual revenue growth of 46% surpassing the projected 9.5% annual revenue growth in the US market. Joshua Brustein If you read one thing SenseTime, a Chinese company blacklisted last year by the Trump administration, is doing just fine by focusing on its home country.
I think that Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it.” Earlier this month, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said it was holding acquisition talks with ByteDance and the White House. President Trump called it a “terrible situations”, while senior admin officials said the US is closely watching the developments. Trade talks between the USA and China were postponed as per the US President Donald Trump. The US president refuses to make concessions to the Democrats and the ensuing gridlock has exerted an adverse impact on the fixed income market.
“The labor market continues to improve, but unemployment remains a huge problem for the US economy,” notes Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services. The Trump administration has yet to make hundreds of political appointments across the federal government and has left vacant slots on dozens of boards and commissions. Overall, the U.S approach is one of the reasons why cases shot up as high as 70,000 a day after the lockdowns, while those in Europe tumbled, he said.

less Beijing is stepping up the drumbeat toward the eventual launch of CanSino’s adenovirus-vector COVID-19 vaccine by lowering China’s standards for vaccine efficacy. London’s concern is that Beijing will try to claw back Hong Kong pro-democracy activists seeking refuge in Britain, if the extradition treaty remains in place. Taipei said groups, likely backed by Beijing, hacked into the systems of Taiwanese companies that provide information services to government bodies.

In a new round of talks this week, however, Downing Street announced a post-Brexit trade deal could be done with the EU next month. Banks thus receive particularly large subsidies from the ECB if they take out additional loans from the ECB and pass them on to companies and households. Last Friday, EU Foreign Ministers agreed to commence work on sanctioning Belarusian officials responsible for the electoral results alongside those behind the violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.
One EU diplomat noted that sanctions are unlikely to be agreed until the end of this week at the earliest. Thus, the ECB does not seem to follow a country distribution according to her capital key when granting longer-term loans. Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya appealed to European Union leaders meeting today on the post-election crisis in her country to reject the victory claimed by longtime ruler Alexander Lukashenko. The government is currently identifying investment and reform projects that line up with EU support, he says.
As collateral requirements are softened, the ECB transfers a premium to the banks, which lend to enterprises.
The UK will “continue to engage” with China, Boris Johnson says, hinting there will be no US-style sanctions imposed on the regime. This implies a credit limit for (T)LTRO loans of around €3,000 billion (Lagarde 2020).