Sunday, August 27, 2006

Time to short commodities ???





The end of the Fed's rate hike escapade has brought about serious debate as to whether they've truly paused , or if they may raise at some later date.
With the Fed Funds futures contracts for September and October showing less than a 10% chance of further rate increases , the Treasury market has voted with their $$$ . With yields below 5% for the whole curve , they seem to feel comfortable with curve inversion.
Intermarket relationships show interesting action in the commodities markets as well . One of the Fed's unstated goals is to keep commodities in check , with some Fed watchers calling for Gold prices to be $450/oz. as equilibrium ( quite a bit away from where we are now ) . Recent selloffs in key commodities indicate that the Fed has accomplished some of its ambitions . Gold has fallen 14% from its $732/oz. high , the CRB index has fallen 8% from its highs , Silver is 18% off its highs , Copper is 17% off its highs , and Crude is 8% off its highs . The question now is , how much further can these commodities fall .....
Taking short positions in any market is always tricky , especially in markets as Hot as commodities have been the past three years . The key to being short the commodity groups is knowing 1) inflationary expectations 2) demand/supply 3) commodity trader activity .
If we judge correctly that the Fed is done raising rates , and weakening global demand coupled with increasing supplies , are in the future , then we should look at shorting commodity indices ( DBC , USO , SLV in the ETF world ) or outright commodity contracts .

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