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December crude oil finished higher for the sixth consecutive day Monday. Oil settled at $87.06 a barrel, a 21 cent gain from Friday, as traders contemplated positive U.S. employment numbers. On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department announced that nonfarm private sector employment increased by 151,000 jobs last month. The country's official 9.6 percent unemployment rate remained unchanged, though.
Also applying upward pressure on the oil futures price was a stronger dollar. The euro lost ground to the greenback amid market concerns about mounting sovereign debt problems in Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Crude oil traded from $85.96 to $87.49.
For the second time in as many weeks, front month natural gas settled above the $4.00 mark, $4.09 per thousand cubic feet, to be exact. Despite an ongoing high inventory environment, predictions of below normal temperatures in the Northeast spurred speculation that demand for gas-fired electricity will increase over the next two weeks.
Natural gas for December delivery peaked at $4.10 and bottomed out at $3.94. December gasoline remained flat at $2.18 a gallon Monday. It traded within a range from $2.15 to $2.19.
The reality is, the world is in a whole mess of debt and it's all coming due at the same time.
Make no mistake about it, the situation in Europe is dire. The problems with Greece are well known. The problems in Spain are growing, and the problems in Ireland and Portugal are about to rear their ugly heads.
We are not going to rhapsodize about the problems in Europe, they are well known and are manifesting themselves in the price action of the world markets, however, in this short video on the euro we want to show you how monthly charts and our "Trade Triangles" tell the story and show the trend very clearly. We also show you a simple method that you can use in your everyday trading to estimate how far a move can go.
My hope is that this new video will highlight some of the reasons why we believe we could be seeing some strong opportunities in this market.
Just click here to watch the video and as always it is available for viewing now and there is no charge or registration requirement. Please feel free to leave a comment and let us know what your thoughts are on the video and the future of the Euro.
Crude oil fell to near $76 a barrel on concern that Europe’s almost $1 trillion bailout may not be sufficient to end the region’s sovereign debt crisis. Oil pared an increase of as much as 0.8 percent earlier today after the euro dropped against the dollar and investors questioned whether the European plan will reduce deficits accumulated by Greece, Spain and Portugal. U.S. crude supplies probably rose for the 14th time in 15 weeks, reinforcing concern that demand in the world’s biggest consumer is lagging.
“The package will just buy Europe some time,” said Clarence Chu, a trader at options dealers Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. “Portugal and Spain now have a safety net so there is less incentive for them to cut their budget deficits.” Crude oil for June delivery fell as much as 62 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $76.18 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $76.20 at 2:22 p.m. Singapore time. The contract earlier rose as much as 59 cents to $77.39. Yesterday, it gained 2.3 percent to settle at $76.80.
Leaders of the 16 European nations using the single currency agreed yesterday to lend as much as 750 billion euros ($957 billion) to the most-indebted member countries. The euro declined to $1.2727 as of 6:46 a.m. in London from $1.2787 in New York yesterday, when it reached $1.3094, the highest level since May 4.....Read the entire article.
It’s been an interesting week with Spain being downgraded as Europe debt crisis widens. This has investors looking at the US dollar in a new light thinking that maybe it’s not that bad of an investment after all. This sent the US Dollar higher along with the price of gold so far this week.
The past 7 days we have seen both the US Dollar and Gold rise together which is not something that happens often. With financial crisis’s popping up around the world I think the US dollar and gold will continue to strengthen (with corrections along the way). I think it will take another 12-24 months before another wave if issues arise in the financial markets and until then we just continue to focus mainly on buying the dips and corrections with the occasional short play in the larger corrections.
SP500 – Daily Chart
On April 14th we saw an extreme level of selling which sent the broad market sharply lower. This sell off was followed by value buyers pushing the prices back up to new 2010 highs.
Well this week we have seen the same extreme selling volume and the question we all want to know is will there be buyers this time around?
ETF & Futures Trading Conclusion
Gold is in a bull market but it was setup for another round of selling but this Spain issue has been a pain. If we had another downward word move on gold to the $1115 – 1120 area it would have washed out the majority of gold bulls resetting it’s self up for a big rally.
The Europe debt crisis has thrown a twist into the picture helping boost the price of gold. Gold could still head lower washing out the weak positions but the picture is fuzzy. Silver did not react much to this news as it’s not really seen as the safe haven gold or the US Dollar are.
As for stock picks and the broad market, it looks and feels like we are about to start a correction. But this week we saw fear in the market again with the VIX and selling volume surging higher to levels which have triggered temporary bottoms in the past. The problem I see here is that some key price levels have been taken out, so the odds are pointing to lower prices in the near future. But Tuesdays panic selling has pushed the market into an oversold condition so we should see a drift upwards for 1-4 days before sellers get active again as they want to sell and short the market at premium prices.
In short, precious metals are not giving any clear price action to take advantage of yet, and the SP500 looks like it’s on its last legs before heading lower for a meaningful correction which should provide a short setup and then a nice long setup once it bottoms out.
When I go down on the trading floor and talk about pigs, normally I am referring to hogs or pork bellies. But this week is something different. We'll focus our attention on Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Or you can exchange or add another I if you want to throw in Italy. In this case PIGS - or PIIGS - is not the other white meat, but a cause of great concern on the global economic scene.
Portugal now seems to be the main epicenter of the constantly shifting risk factors in the ongoing global economic crisis. Even casual observers of the global market place have been aware of the recent problems growing in the Eurozone particularly with Greece. The massive debt in Greece has roiled the global market for most of the year and now there are fears that their problems may be spreading throughout the region. Oh sure, the other countries within the designation PIGS or PIIGS if you prefer, did not want to be coupled together with Greece perhaps because they did not want to be part of something called PIGS or because they were fearful that the association with Greece and their problems could spread to them faster than a winter cold. Spain’s Finance Minister Elena Salgado was one of the first to speak out and said that Spain's situation is not like that of Greece. Yet earlier this week it seems that when one of these little PIGS’s went to the market and found that things were not that good.
The market really got fearful after Portugal basically had a failed bond auction. The Portuguese treasury and Government Debt Agency tried to sell €500 million in 12 month bills but was only able to sell €300 million. This raised concern that buyers of debt are getting tired of getting low rates of return when sovereign countries credit worthiness is not what should be. Last year Portugal’s debt was 9% of its GDP and with a potential softening in the EURO zone, bond buyers think that their chances to be paid back might not be that good. Obviously that means that bond buyers will demand a higher rate of return to take on more risk thus ultimately driving up interest rates in Portugal and throughout the region as debt strapped nations vie for capital to fund their out of control spending.....Read the entire article.
