For gold bugs, 2013 was certainly a year to forget with the precious metal continuing its remorseless journey lower, a journey punctuated with minor rallies which promised much, but delivered little. To say it was a gloomy end to the year would an understatement.
With markets having been given a more or less clear roadmap for the future of QE, and so removing a degree of uncertainty, it now only remains for us to monitor closely our benchmark charts, namely the USD index and the VIX , whilst keeping a close watch on price action and volume.
Crude oil continued its bearish tone once again last week, closing the oil trading session on Friday at $94.61 per barrel for the December futures contract. With the fundamental picture now calming, the technical element is taking center stage, and in the last few weeks crude oil has breached several key levels, as outlined in previous posts.
The last two weeks have been positive ones, and not just for equities, as gold bugs finally found something to celebrate with a return of some much needed bullish momentum.
An interesting phase of price action for two of the most precious commodities over the last few days, with both gold and oil, testing key tipping points on the daily chart.
With so much media focus on shutdown & the debt ceiling crisis in the US, I thought that today I wouldn’t add further to the thousands of words being written and spoken. Instead, I want to tell you a story.
This week was always going to be a tricky one for both traders and investors, with the market’s primary focus being the FOMC meeting on Wednesday. The meeting at which the FED is likely to signal the beginning of the end of its bond buying program. Well, that’s the theory anyway, but given the less that stellar NFP data, this is far from certain.
With the long summer days now coming to an end, it’s time to re-visit that perennial gauge of market risk, the VIX for a view of whether the equity market is indeed over bought, and likely to reverse dramatically.
The WTI September crude oil futures contract is now building into an interesting phase of price action, and in many ways is mirroring a similar period between May and July 2013, where the commodity oscillated between $92 per barrel to the downside and $98 per barrel to the upside, before finally breaking out.
As mentioned in the previous post, the Yen index can give us an excellent perspective of market sentiment, given the Yen’s unique position within the forex market as both a currency of safe haven and a gauge of market risk.
