Silver price up 16% overnight, gold up 14%

Gold is looking good. Silver is looking even more spectacular. Silver is trading in a different trend pattern to gold, but equally as promising. Using technical analysis we can see that silver has been very volatile. It pulled back to $10.50/oz, but it has since recovered to $12/oz, up 16% overnight. The reason is clearly due to the debasement of the USD and inflation.
The chart pattern shows that silver has previously made a succession of new higher highs, whilst basing out around the $10.50 support. The next move of course is for silver to rally to a new high.

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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

Gold going to $US1400/oz in the short term

Wow, I just picked up on something. I was looking for the gold price to fall back to $700-750/oz levels and is did that, but its since recovered to $US864/oz, thats a 11% increase overnight. Seldom do we see such volatility in the gold market, but its actually more significant than that because its actually preserving a certain chart structure that is very bullish for gold.
There appears to be a 'flag' structure developing between $800-1000 levels. The significance of this is that when flags are terminated on the upside, they tend to advance by the same amount as the flag pole. In this case the flag pole is between $400-800 levels, so I am expecting in the next gold rally for gold to break out above $1000/oz and to rally up to around the $1400/oz level. I am expecting it to do that very quickly before pausing. The 11% move I think signals its going to keep going unless we see a pull back overnight. The concern of course is that the USD is being debased at a time when the US will not have the confidence to raise interest rates to fight inflation.

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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

West Texas Crude Oil price outlook

Well we have been told for a long time that there is no oil shortage; that its speculative trading that is driving oil prices higher. The flipside is that given the current weakness on the (economic) demand side, there is very little to hold oil prices up except the promise of a resurging oil price. Crude prices have for a long time been a very volatile commodity. So where are prices going?
I point will be reached when traders say - it must be time to buy again. Some wind has been taken out of the market, but oil is still the most important commodity on the earth. So when might we expect oil prices to bottom. Well its still a little time off. Certainly we are not returning to the bad old days of the 1990s when commodities were under-appreciated. Oil will trade in a new, higher range. We will not see oil prices return to $9/barrel when there are large emerging markets like China and India around, and a large number of SUVs with a useful life of 15 years.
Oil prices are going back to around $US77.50s, though I would argue traders could take it as low as $70/barrel in volatile intra-day trading. I do however think there will be some resistance on the downside around $97-100/barrel. There are 2 reasons for this:
1. A weaker oil price is likely to give equity markets encouragement
2. People's standard of living expectations will adjust, resulting in an improvement in consumer confidence. Not everyone went out and bought a 2nd house, and speculated on US property. But some people did, and some people did buy at the top, fearing they were going to miss out.
3. Lower oil prices will give consumers more money to go out and spend
Nevertheless I don't see the market fully recovering for a while yet, but I do think the next 6 months will yield some stock bargains, particularly with property foreclosures and commodities. I think the nickel market will be the first to recover, followed by gold. The other metals will likely take a bit more convincing.
So the target price is $US77 level for a bottom in oil prices. This is a strong support having been resistance, though I have some suspicion that oil might fall to $70/barrel in the short term, so there is some reason to be cautious trading that position in order to get the best entry.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

Tin prices remain strong

Tin prices have remained one of the stronger commodities in the market. The reason of course are the solid fundamentals for tin. Supplies of tin are relatively tight, and there is evidently some success by the Indonesian government to rein in illegal mines. But as a traded commodity tin is likely benefiting more from a delayed rally in prices. Being one of the most volatile and illiquid markets, it seems destined to have a correction at some point. I don't see tin prices benefiting from a proposed substitution of lead for tin in ammunition on environmental grounds. Realistically, I don't see this as a huge market, since the dispersion of lead in the soil is small. Also the damage tends to be inflicted on other countries, so I don't see a great deal of support for this proposal, least of all when tin prices are 9x higher than lead.

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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

Zinc prices support at $1450/tonne

Zinc prices have fallen from a peak of over $4500/tonne to around $1800/tonne. You might wonder whether they have any further to fall. I believe they will at some point fall back to the $1450/tonne support. This level was an important resistance during the ascension of zince prices. The weaker economic outlook paints an unattractive outlook for zinc, but there will be a recovery in zinc demand with a resumption of building demand in the medium to long term.

Expect demand mainly from developing countries, plus Australia in short term, other Western nations in the long term. Australia will come out of this economic weakness faster than any other Western nation because of strong iron and coal prices, and a recovery in food prices. Of course it will also benefit from stronger base metals and gold in the medium term. Nickel and gold will do the best in the short-medium term.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

Copper prices close to support

It will be interesting to see if copper prices hold their current levels in the coming weeks. I have less confidence of that than I do in nickel. Nickel prices have fallen far more, and I think the outlook for building construction and consumer items would have to be more secure than copper use. The dynamics for copper supply are a little tighter though, however I would not be surprised to sell a short term sell off to $5,1oo/tonne. Its a huge fall, so its not a position I would trade. It might well stay above $7,000/tonne. I dont have any empirical evidence to suggest this market will fall, just that its vulnerable. The other reason for caution is the extent of trading in copper as a financial instrument.

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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

Nickel prices have reached support

Thje nickel market is one of the better commodity exposures you can take, and best of all the market price for nickel has reached low levels. This makes a great period to buy nickel as a commodity exposure, though I would not be surprised if the metal pulls back again to test its support once again, particularly as other metals are still yet to bottom. I would caution that nickel miners will also take some time to shine, even if nickel prices are the first to recover among the base metals.

I don't see downside below the red line on the chart because its a very firm support. There is a number of reasons nickel is good:
1. There are a number of attractive projects to invest in WA
2. The market is set for a good rally
3. Nickel is used in stainless steel, and a recent development is the use of stainless steel in the external and internal facades of most buildings. Buildings being BIG, mean that the intensity of consumption in most countries, but particularly developing countries like China, is really taking off. Of course there is a lot of nickel around as well, but there are supply constraints as well.
4. Its a volatile commodity. Once it falls back to support once more I can see it rallying to $25,000/tonne, previous support acting as resistance. It will reach $33,000/tonne in 2009, and I suggest a few years later it will reach that previous high around $54,500/tonne. I don't see this commodities boom over by any means.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com