Oil prices rallied today adding to gains made since the beginning of the week. Front-month WTI is now up over 6.5% from its low on Monday while Brent is up 4%. Israel rejected Hamas’s latest ceasefire deal and has begun an offensive on the southern border city of Rafah. Despite this, talks are continuing. Both WTI and Brent are back above resistance at $75 and $80...
US stock indices rallied again yesterday. Tech led the gains with the NASDAQ 100 up just under 1%. The S&P 500 ended up 0.8% and is on the cusp of breaching the 5,000 level. But the broader market was unable to join in the fun as the Russell 2000, the US’s ‘small cap’ index of domestically-focused companies, ended the day a fraction lower. Investors are taking a...
Precious metals just can’t catch a break at the moment. The dollar goes up, gold and silver go down. The dollar goes down, so do gold and silver. Now that could be a signal that the recent negative correlation between dollar-denominated precious metals and the dollar itself, is breaking down. If so, then investors can get back to studying the individual charts of...
Yesterday, US stock indices sold off sharply soon after the open, but quickly recovered most of their losses ahead of the European close. Investors were spooked by a sharp jump in bond yields which saw the 10-year Treasury close at 4.16%, having been at 3.86% just a few days ago. Investors have been repricing everything since Wednesday’s Fed meeting and Friday’s...
Friday saw the release of blow-out Non-Farm Payroll data. Payrolls rose 353,000 in January, way above the 180,000 expected, while prior updates were also revised significantly higher. The strong jobs data provided more evidence of the robustness of the US economy, despite the Fed continuing to hold interest rates at their highest levels since 2001. The news made...
Oil prices have spent this week pulling back from the two-month highs hit on Sunday night. Yesterday saw a big move lower which took both front-month WTI and Brent back below significant technical levels of $75 and $80 respectively. These levels acted as resistance for the first three weeks of this year, forming the upper band of a range with support at $70 for...
Precious metals swung about yesterday in the aftermath of the Fed’s decision to leave rates unchanged, and following Fed Chair Powell’s hawkish press conference. Mr Powell made the Fed’s position abundantly clear, telling investors that their expectations over the timing and size of rate cuts this year were both too soon, and too much. But gold and particularly...
Oil prices continue to pull back from the two-month highs hit on Sunday night. Despite this, front-month WTI and Brent are still above prior resistance (now support) levels of $75 and $80 respectively. These levels marked the upper end of a trading range which had developed since the beginning of the year. But prices broke above here last week, helped by fears...
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Gold was firmer first thing on Tuesday, but had given up most of its early gains by midday. It was a similar story for silver which hit its highest level in two weeks this morning, but then proceeded to weaken steadily. Gold has been rangebound for the best part of a fortnight now, having spent yesterday’s session once again stuck between $2,010 and...
At the end of last week, Brent and WTI crude hit highs last seen around two months ago. Earlier in the week, both contracts broke above resistance levels of $80 and $75 respectively. These gains came after news of two attacks by Ukraine on Russian energy infrastructure. The first target was the Russian Ust-Luga oil terminal and the second was a Russian oil...
There’s a bit of life coming back into precious metals with both gold and silver firmer in early trade on Thursday. The weaker dollar is providing a bit of a catalyst for the upside move, although it’s worth noting how the Dollar Index bounced sharply yesterday afternoon, and it remains in consolidation-mode rather than indicating the start of a turn lower. Silver...
Oil prices were modestly lower this morning, and continued to pull back from the highs hit on Monday. Crude continues to trade within a relatively narrow range, mainly between $70 and $75 for front-month WTI (the USO ETF as above), and has yet to find a catalyst to help it break out significantly in either direction. Prices did gap higher this afternoon following...
The three major US stock indices eked out modest gains yesterday to mark fresh record highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended above 38,000 for the first time ever. But the best performance came from the Russell 2000 which closed up 2.0%. This is the US’s ‘mid cap’ index. It is a broad-based look at smaller US companies covering a wide range of businesses...
Crude was little-changed in this morning’s trade. Oil prices continue to hold within a relatively tight range which has established itself since the beginning of this year. The front-month WTI contract has failed to break convincingly above $75 per barrel, or below $70, while front-month Brent has mainly held between $80 and $75 per barrel. Chart-wise, there’s a...
US stock indices are building on yesterday’s tech-driven gains today. Last night, the NASDAQ 100 closed up 1.4% helped by a 3.3% jump in Apple’s stock price, following an upgrade from Bank of America (BoA). Apple has struggled recently after it hit a record high just a tad below $200 in mid-December. It fell close to 10% over the next three weeks, so this vote of...
There’s a widely held belief that gold is inversely correlated to the US dollar. The thinking goes that the stronger the dollar, the more expensive it is for non-dollar holders to buy dollar-denominated commodities such as gold. In addition, if US interest rates/bond yields are rising relative to other countries (currencies) the dollar will also go up as it...
US Stock indices are all weaker today compounding yesterday’s losses. Investors continue to cut back their long side exposure as they reassess the possible timing of rate cuts through 2024. The Federal Reserve has repeatedly warned market participants to temper their expectations for looser monetary policy, warning that inflation may not yet be beaten and citing...
Gold and silver have come under a renewed round of selling pressure today, principally on the back of dollar strength. There’s been a sell-off on bonds following yesterday’s Martin Luther King holiday with the yield on the US 10-year Treasury note back above 4.0%. Rising yields imply that the market feels that rates could stay higher for longer and this increases...
