Thursday, October 21, 2010

Crude Oil Consolidates Some of Wednesday's Rally Overnight

Crude oil was lower overnight as it consolidates some of Wednesday's rally. Stochastics and the RSI remain bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term.

If December extends this week's decline, trendline support drawn off the August-September lows crossing near 77.85 is the next downside target. Closes above the 10 day moving average crossing at 82.67 would confirm that a short term low has been posted.

First resistance is the 10 day moving average crossing at 82.67
Second resistance is this month's high crossing at 85.08

Crude oil pivot point for Thursday morning is 81.67

First support is Wednesday's low crossing at 79.90
Second support is the uptrend line drawn off the August-September lows crossing near 77.85


The "Super Cycle" in Gold and How It Will Effect Your Pocketbook in 2010

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What is Next for the Dollar, SP500 and Gold

The equities market reversed to the upside Wednesday posting a light volume broad based rally. Remember light volume tends to have a neutral to upward bias on stocks, But it was mainly the sharp drop in the dollar which spurred stocks and commodities higher.

Today’s bounce was not much of a surprise for several reasons…
• Overall trend is up, one day sell offs are generally profit taking
• Panic selling on the NYSE tipped us off that the market was oversold
• I don’t think they will let the market fall before the November election
• Intermediate cycle is turning up this week, 3 weeks of upward momentum…

US Dollar Index – 4 Hour Chart
The dollar put in a big bounce this week filling its gap window… Remember most gaps get filled with virtually every investment vehicle so when you see them remember this chart....


SPY ETF – Daily Chart
SP500 has been riding the key moving average up and Tuesday’s sell off tagged the 14MA along with extreme market internal readings telling intraday traders that a bounce is about to take place.


Gold Futures – Daily Chart
You can see gold has done much the same… A sharp profit/stop running sell off, which took the price back down to support. We took a long position to catch this bounce and hopefully a larger move going forward.


Market Sentiment Readings
Tuesday’s pullback was a great reminder of just how over extended the equities market was. These heavy volume sell offs are typical in a bull market. Without regular pauses in price, traders tend to place trailing stops moving them up each day. With traders chasing stocks higher bidding them up instead of waiting for a pullback we get a very large number to stop orders following the price up each day. Then, it’s only a matter of time before a key short term support level is broken at which point the flood gates open and everyone’s stops turn to market orders flooding the stock exchanges with sell orders causing a rapid decline and panic selling. This is exactly what happened on Tuesday which I show in the chart below.

Understanding how to read market internals provides great insight for short term traders looking to make quick high probability trades every week… Market internals are just part of the equation but very powerful on their own with proper money/position management. Both of these intraday extremes were bought on Tuesday in the advanced chatroom (FuturesTradingSignals.com).. We quickly booked profits and moved our stops up in order to protect our capital as the market surged higher.


Mid-Week Market Trend Analysis:
In short, the US Dollar is still in a down trend overall. The Fed’s I would think will continue to hold the market up into the election. It works well for them… they print money which devalues the dollar, and in return boosts stocks and commodities, plus they get trillions of dollars to spend… I’m sure its like kids in a candy store over there.

While everyone is trying to pick a top in this over extended market I think it is crucial to stick with the overall trend and to not fight the Fed. Using the key moving averages on the daily chart as shown in the charts above, continue to buy on dips until the market closes below the 20 day moving average at which point you should abandon ship.

Get My Reports and Trade Ideas Here for Free at The Gold and Oil Guy

Chris Vermeulen


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Crude Oil Declines After Dollar Climbs, Chinese Economic Growth Slows

Crude oil declined as investors sold contracts against a rising dollar and the Chinese economy grew at the slowest pace in a year, potentially crimping demand in the world’s biggest energy consumer. Futures dropped as the U.S. currency rose against most of its counterparts, limiting the appeal of commodities as an inflation hedge. China’s economy grew 9.6 percent in the third quarter, according to government data. U.S. gasoline stockpiles increased unexpectedly last week, a report showed yesterday.

“Inventories of crude and products are still high so there is no fear of a global shortage,” Ken Hasegawa, a commodity derivative sales manager at broker Newedge in Tokyo, said in an interview. “The currency markets are key for every market at the moment.” The December contract lost as much as 64 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $81.90 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and was at $81.93 at 1:03 p.m. Singapore time. Yesterday it advanced $2.38 to $82.54 a barrel.

Crude for November delivery surged $2.28 to close yesterday at $81.77, the biggest gain in 11 weeks. Prices are up 3.7 percent this year. The increase in China’s gross domestic product from a year earlier compared with economists’ median estimate of 9.5 percent. Consumer prices rose 3.6 percent last month, the statistics bureau said at a briefing in Beijing. China’s monthly crude oil processing volume increased the least in......Read the entire article.


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Hot Markets and Commodities, Yet the Small Investor Continues to Miss The Run!

From guest analyst David Banister at Market Trend Forecast.Com.....

All investors can recall the horror during the five months from October 2008 through early March of 2009 as day after day the markets continued to make new lows. That type of catastrophic drop leaves many psychological scars and probably spooked millions of investors out of the stock market for good. To wit, since the March 2009 lows and throughout this new Bull Market Cycle, Investors are pulling money out of equity funds in droves and piling into Bonds. This is the fight or flight mentality taking hold of the herd, and as they continue to disbelieve in the new bull cycle in stocks, the market continues to power higher.

I’ve long been a believer in Elliott Wave Theory, which was developed in the 1930’s by R.N. Elliott. He was a man decades ahead of his time, and to this day his work remains revolutionary in tracking and forecasting market and commodity trends and cycles. This theory forms the basis of my work for market forecasting and trading and investing. While the crowd continues to wait for the next crash, the Elliott wave patterns I’ve been outlining have continued to foretell a bullish move possibly of historic proportions. Taking advantage of this type of move means you need to tune out the noise from CNBC, all of the jobs data, and the negative mantra. Everyone knows that stocks climb a wall of worry, but you have to have a method to let you know to stay long and where best to invest during a super cycle Elliott Bull Wave pattern as we are in now.

My theory back in late February 2009 was that the market was about to bottom and nobody knew it. I wrote an article on 321Gold.com at the time to outline my reasoning and had a chart showing 1200 on the SP 500 as a likely target. At the time the SP 500 was trading around 720 and had not yet completed it’s drop to 666, but was within a few weeks. Interestingly to me anyways, at 666 the SP 500 bottomed and not randomly at all! That 666 figure was an exact 61.8% Fibonacci re-tracement of the 1974 lows to the 2000 highs Bull Cycle. Often crowds act in patterned behaviors that are formed around Fibonacci mathematics. Typical re-tracements are 38%, 50%, 61.8%, or even 78.6%. Combining Elliott Wave patterns with Fibonacci sequences allows me to confirm or help firm up a forecast. That drop over five Fibonacci months completed a multi year cycle from the 2000 highs to the 2009 lows, and it did so right at a clear Fibonacci pivot point. This is why I believe the next many years will be very bullish for stocks, and most investors will not be on board.

Those Fibonacci and Elliott Wave patterns gave me the heads up to start turning bullish, coupled with the sentiment readings which were equally as bearish as the October 2002 bottoms. In addition, there was way too much discussion about deflation. The rubber band in essence was stretched so far to one side on the sentiment gauges and deflation talk, that it would only take a slight shift towards inflation to move stocks much higher.

Fast forward to October 2010, and we now see the ravages of inflation becoming very apparent some 18 odd months later. Gold is at $1350 per ounce, Silver is at $24, the SP 500 is heading back to 1200, Corn, Sugar, Coffee, Copper are all at huge highs. What investor’s don’t understand is stocks are one of your best asset classes in the earlier periods of an inflationary shift, what I would call an inflationary period of prosperity worldwide. Elliott Wave patterns most recently that I outlined on my market forecast service alerted my subscribers to prepare for a massive bull run once the 1094 area on the SP 500 was crossed to the upside.

Given the understanding that inflation would become the new trend, we took multiple positions in Gold stocks and Rare Earth metals stocks ahead of the curve. Some of our recent picks included Hudson Resources at 63 cents in August, now trading at $1.30. Others include BORN at $8, a Chinese Corn based producer of Alcohol that ran to $19 within 7 weeks. We were investing in Rare Earth stocks almost 12 months ago, including REE at $1.80, and it’s now trading over $13.00 a share! Even up to the present time, my ATP service has been positioning our subscribers into Tasman Metals at $1.54, now $2.28 and Quest Rare minerals at $4.10 now $5.50. These moves are happening in stunningly quick periods of time, so being positioned ahead of those moves is crucial.

Gold and Gold stocks have obviously had a very strong move to the upside. Back in August of 2009 I forecasted a massive five year advance in Gold and Gold stocks. This again was entirely based on Elliott Wave patterns I recognized and crowd behavior. Investors will recall the 13 year bull market in tech stocks that started in 1986 when Microsoft went public, and ended in 1999 when AOL was sold to Time Warner for 150 billion. Well, the first five years of the Tech Bull nobody participated except the early investors. Intel and Dell also went public, along with EMC and others. By the time 1991 rolled around, investors kind of woke up and start buying. The problem was they were late, missing the first five years. At that point Tech stocks bucked and kicked up and down with no net gains for three years. Investors gave up again in 1994, and then we began a torrid 5 year rally to 1999. It was not until the last 12 months of that rally that everyone piled in, herd behavior in it’s finest form. Well, we are seeing the same patterns now in the precious metals areas of the market. The final 5 years started in August of 2009, kind of like 1994 in tech stocks. The first 5 years were 2001-2006 where Gold funds returned 30% compounded per year, by the time everyone got on board the funds did nothing for then next three years. Everyone gave up and lost interest, and that was the August 2009 buy signal.

Bringing us full circle, investors continue to shy away from this stock bull market following the five month crash of nearly two years ago. This is exactly the psychology present in an early stage bull market. Going forward from here, I look for the SP 500 to hit 1220 at the top of an Elliott Wave three from the 1040 lows in the summer. That will be followed by a correction pattern and then we will resume the advance to new highs on this bull market stretch from March of 2009. Gold should work it’s way up to $1480-1520 if I’m right on it’s bull move from the $1155 lows this June. Below we have a chart of the SP 500 on a long term basis, and it is currently in the third wave up from the 1010 lows on July 1st. This wave pattern is powerful and should run to at least 1220 intermediately. In time, this multi-year bull market could power to all-time highs and really upset the Bears.


Inflation is taking hold around the world, and stocks are one of your best asset classes to participate. You can follow along by registering for free weekly updates at Market Trend Forecast.Com.




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Brian Shactman: Where is Crude Oil and Gold Headed on Thursday?

CNBC's Brian Shactman discusses the day's activity in the commodities markets, and looks ahead to where oil and gold are likely headed tomorrow.



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Stock Market and Commodities Commentary For Wednesday Evening Oct. 20th

The U.S. stock indexes closed solidly higher today and saw Tuesday's losses quickly erased. The stock index bulls still have the overall near term technical advantage as price uptrends are still in place on the daily bar charts. Stock index bulls have been very pleased with price action so far this autumn, a time which is normally not favorable to market bulls. My bias is that prices will trade mostly sideways, but with a slight upside bias, into the end of the year.

Crude oil closed up $2.28 at $82.44 a barrel today. Prices closed near the session high today after hitting a fresh three week low early on. Sharp losses in the U.S. dollar index and higher stock index future prices today boosted crude.

Natural gas closed up 0.8 cents at $3.903 today. Prices closed near mid range today and saw tepid short covering in a bear market. Prices hit a fresh contract low this week. The bears still have the solid overall near term technical advantage.

Gold futures closed up $9.10 at $1,345.10 today. Prices closed nearer the session high and were supported by a sharply lower U.S. dollar index. Bargain hunters once again stepped in to buy weakness in the gold market, to now suggest Tuesday's low is just another "reaction low" in an overall 2 1/2 month old uptrend on the daily bar chart. Bulls have the overall near term and longer term technical advantage.

The U.S. dollar index closed down 100 points at 77.41 today. Prices closed near the session low today and quickly gave back most of Tuesday's big gains. Dollar index bears still have the overall near term technical advantage and regained some downside momentum today.

Today’s Stock Market Club Trading Triangles

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How to Buy Risky Energy Stocks

Dan Dicker, senior contributor at TheStreet, reveals how to buy energy stocks in your 20's.



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Crude Oil Surges on Decline in Dollar, Smaller Than Projected Supply Gain

Crude oil climbed as the dollar tumbled to a 15 year low against the yen and a government report showed a smaller than forecast gain in U.S. stockpiles. Oil increased as much as 2.6 percent as the U.S. currency fell on concern the Federal Reserve’s regional business survey will show a slowing economic recovery. A weaker dollar bolsters the appeal of commodities to investors. An Energy Department report showed that supplies rose 667,000 barrels last week, less than half what was projected in a Bloomberg News survey.

“It’s all the dollar,” said Richard Ilczyszyn, a market strategist at Lind-Waldock, a broker in Chicago. The dollar will probably remain weak until after the Federal Reserve meeting and the congressional elections in November, he said. Crude oil for November delivery rose $1.90, or 2.4 percent, to $81.39 a barrel at 12:07 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil traded at $80.18 a barrel before the release of the inventory report at 10:30 a.m. in Washington.

The November contract expires today. More active December futures increased $1.82, or 2.3 percent, to $81.98. Brent crude oil for December settlement gained $1.91, or 2.4 percent, to $83.01 a barrel on the London based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Futures in New York tumbled 4.3 percent yesterday, the biggest drop since Feb. 4, after an unexpected rate increase by China’s central bank raised speculation that fuel demand will drop in the world’s biggest energy-consuming country......Read the entire article.


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Phil Flynn: Shanghai Surprise

Did China’s surprise interest rate increase rebalance what seemed to be an out of balance global economy? Will this interest rate increase take the heat off the Chinese who are under increasing US pressure to set their currency free? China crushed the runaway commodity complex when it raised its benchmark deposit and lending rates by 0.25 percentage point yesterday for the first time since December 2007. The move was to stem domestic inflation but it could be the first of a series of rate increases could also be seen as a move gesturing to the US for our restraint by not declaring them a currency manipulator.

In the real world a currency that is allowed to float would normally increase the value of its currency. The Chinese, by raising interest rates, it was almost like a de facto increase in the value of their currency. By doing that it raised worries that even a slight slowing in the Chinese economy could slow the growth of neighbors and the uncertainty surrounding their next move improved the value of our beaten down greenback. It also reduced the price of commodities that threatened to derail the global economic recovery. We all know that the US is pressuring China to increase the value on their yuan and that commodities have......Read the entire article.


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New Video: The #1 Reason Why Gold Collapsed

Following the gold market as we do, it was amazing that nobody, and I mean nobody, was bearish on this market. This always creates a problem as the markets tend to reverse when everyone is on one side and there’s no one else left to buy.

Another tip off was on Fox Business News and also on CNBC indicating that gold was going to hit $1400 almost immediately. Well after Tuesday, we know what was to happen to the price of gold. If gold were so strong, should it really have gone down almost $70 in 4 days?

This is where technical analysis and Japanese candlestick charts really shine in my opinion. What happened in gold was a classic candlestick formation that any trader, whether they trade gold or other markets, should be aware of.

In this short video, we illustrate how this formation occurred and how it was confirmed the next day, and I don’t mean on Tuesday. We also have a free candlestick book that I’m making available along with this video.

As always there is no need for registration and the video is with our compliments. Please feel free to leave us a note on this or other videos in the comments section of this blog.

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Crude Oil Signals Sideways to Lower Prices Possible

Crude oil was higher due to short covering overnight as it consolidates some of Tuesday's decline but remains below the 20 day moving average crossing at 81.33. Stochastics and the RSI are bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term.

If December extends Tuesday's decline, trendline support drawn off the August-September lows crossing near 77.75 is the next upside target. Closes above the 10 day moving average crossing at 82.52 would confirm that a short term low has been posted.

First resistance is the 20 day moving average crossing at 81.33
Second resistance is the 10 day moving average crossing at 82.52

Crude oil pivot point for Wednesday morning is 81.30

First support is the overnight low crossing at 79.90
Second support is the uptrend line drawn off the August-September lows crossing near 77.75

Watch: The Ultimate Price Target For Gold!

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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It

“Beware of geeks bearing formulas”....Warren Buffett

In March of 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them. They were accustomed to risking billions.

At the card table that night was Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip smart whiz kid who’d studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT…when he wasn’t playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway. With him was Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time. Now he was the tough as nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth. There too were Cliff Asness, the sharp tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card counting team.

On that night in 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street. Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers, had usurped the testosterone fueled, kill or be killed risk takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino. The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable to mere mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. And they helped create a digitized money trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse.

Few realized that night, though, that in creating this unprecedented machine, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness and Weinstein had sowed the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.

Drawing on unprecedented access to these four number crunching titans, The Quants tells the inside story of what they thought and felt in the days and weeks when they helplessly watched much of their net worth vaporize and wondered just how their mind bending formulas and genius level IQ’s had led them so wrong, so fast. Had their years of success been dumb luck, fool’s gold, a good run that could come to an end on any given day? What if The Truth they sought, the secret of the markets, wasn’t knowable? Worse, what if there wasn’t any Truth?

In The Quants, Scott Patterson tells the story not just of these men, but of Jim Simons, the reclusive founder of the most successful hedge fund in history; Aaron Brown, the quant who used his math skills to humiliate Wall Street’s old guard at their trademark game of Liar’s Poker, and years later found himself with a front row seat to the rapid emergence of mortgage backed securities; and gadflies and dissenters such as Paul Wilmott, Nassim Taleb, and Benoit Mandelbrot.

With the immediacy of today’s NASDAQ close and the timeless power of a Greek tragedy, The Quants is at once a masterpiece of explanatory journalism, a gripping tale of ambition and hubris…and an ominous warning about Wall Street’s future.

Order your copy of  The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It




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Commodity Corner: China Increases Rate, Crude Falls

Light, sweet crude futures plummeted Tuesday after China raised interest rates, sparking concerns that demand for raw materials could decrease and sending the dollar higher against the euro. Oil for November delivery fell 4.32 percent, or $3.59, settling at $79.49 a barrel, the lowest in eight months. The November contract expires Wednesday.

In an effort to slowdown China's rapid growth, the People's Bank of China Tuesday increased its lending and deposit rates by 25 basis points each for the first time since 2007. China's oil imports reached record highs in September. Investors fear that China's decision could hinder global growth and decrease its demand for oil and other commodities. Amid increasing U.S. stockpiles, traders turn to global demand; China, the second largest consumer of oil after the U.S., has become an important channel for oil supplies.

The dollar rose 1.8 percent against an index of foreign currencies, indicating wariness that the Chinese move may reduce economic growth. As the greenback gained momentum, demand for oil decreased. Oil prices fluctuated between $79.39 and $83.21 a barrel Tuesday. Meanwhile, Henry Hub natural gas futures rose Tuesday as traders sensed a buying opportunity after oil prices plunged. Front month natural gas settled up at $3.51 per thousand cubic feet, after plunging to a 13 month low of $3.40. In earlier trading, natural gas posted a session high of $3.53.

November reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB, settled at $2.05 a gallon after declining 4.98 percent the biggest one day percentage fall in more than a year. The intraday range for gasoline was $2.04 to $2.15 a gallon.

Courtesy  of  Rigzone.Com

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Brian Shactman: Where is Crude Oil and Gold Headed on Wednesday

CNBC's Brian Shactman discusses the day's activity in the commodities markets, and looks ahead to where oil and gold are likely headed tomorrow.



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Stock Market and Commodities Commentary For Tuesday Evening Oct. 19th

The U.S. stock indexes closed solidly lower today and were pressured by profit taking from recent gains and on news that Bank of America is in some trouble with its mortgage financing. The stock index bulls still have the overall near term technical advantage as price uptrends are still in place on the daily bar charts. Stock index bulls have been very pleased with price action so far this autumn a time which is normally not favorable to market bulls. My bias is that prices will trade mostly sideways, but with a slight upside bias, into the end of the year.

Crude oil closed down $3.44 at $79.64 a barrel today. Prices closed near the session low today and hit a fresh three week low. Chart damage was inflicted today as prices saw a bearish downside "breakout" from a sideways trading range at higher price levels. Sharp gains in the U.S. dollar index and lower stock index future prices today pressured crude.

Natural gas closed up 8.8 cents at $3.519 today. Prices closed near the session high today and saw short covering in a bear market. Prices hit a fresh contract low early on today. The bears still have the solid overall near term technical advantage.

Gold futures closed down $35.20 at $1,337.00 today. Prices today hit a fresh two week low, closed near the session low and were pressured by sharp gains in the U.S. dollar index. Profit taking and long liquidation were featured in gold today, and no serious chart damage occurred. However, good follow through selling pressure on Wednesday would likely produce some near term technical damage to begin to suggest that a near term market top is in place. Bulls are hoping bargain hunters once again step in to buy weakness in the gold market.

The U.S. dollar index closed up 138 points at 78.52 today. Prices closed near the session high today and hit a fresh two week high. News that China raised a key interest rate today boosted the greenback. Dollar index bears still have the overall near term technical advantage, but the bulls did gain fresh upside momentum today to suggest that a market low is in place.

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Gold's Sell-Off: Don't Panic

John Doody, editor of GoldStockAnalyst.com, says Tuesday's sell-off is no big deal and that investors can always look for opportunities to buy.



Is Gold Poised to Go Higher or Lower?

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Phil Flynn: Paying the Price for an Economic Recovery

While the Fed tries to sell us the virtues of inflation, the poor consumers at the pump are getting soaked. As oil prices rise and French strikers strike, we see the national average retail gas price start to surge as the price increased to $2.834 a gallon which is the highest price since May 17th. Retail Prices have surged close to 14 cents a gallon in three weeks which just happens to coincide with the price increase that we have seen in crude since the September, 21 Fed meeting.

Since the Fed sent the signal that the printing presses were about to roll we have seen crude add over 11 dollars a barrel from peak to valley, a move that has had an immediate impact on the price of oil at the pump. Gas prices are 26 cents, or 10%, above a year ago while demand for gas hit the lowest level in almost 8 months. Demand for gas is running about 4.8 percent below last year while gasoline stocks are 4.3 percent above a year ago. The threat of quantitative easing, while giving the stock market a lift, is giving consumers the squeeze. A fine price to pay to save the economy......Read the entire article.


Just click here for your FREE trend analysis of crude oil ETF USO

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Michael Bagley: $100 Oil to Counter Dollar Weakness?

From Michael Bagley Oil Price.Com.....

The 13 percent decline in the Dollar Index since June has led some OPEC members to call for oil to rise to $100 a barrel. The U.S. currency's weakness means the "real price" of oil is about $20 less than current levels, Venezuelan Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said last week at an OPEC meeting in Vienna. The group, which accounts for 40 percent of global crude output, left targets unchanged and called for greater adherence to quotas, which are being exceeded by a supertanker load a day. OPEC is also concerned about the dollar because as the dollar weakens, prices go up. They're not paying any attention to production discipline.

The Dollar Index, which tracks the currency against those of six U.S. trading partners, has dropped 6.1 percent in the past month. The nominal value of OPEC's net oil export revenue will be $818 billion in 2011, 10 percent more than this year, according to U.S. Energy Department forecasts. Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya's National Oil Corp., said a higher crude price would help OPEC offset the loss of revenue from the weaker dollar.
"We would love to see $100 a barrel," Ghanem said last week in Vienna. "We're losing real income. Libya in particular would like to see a higher oil price."

Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah said in an interview that $70 to $85 is the "most comfortable" range, while his Algerian counterpart, Youcef Yousfi, said between $90 and $100 is "reasonable." Speculation that the Federal Reserve may further loosen monetary policy through so called quantitative easing has weakened the dollar. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today the central bank may expand asset purchases because inflation is too low and unemployment too high in the U.S. OPEC kept its production target at 24.845 million barrels a day at its meeting last week. Output from the 11 members bound by quotas exceeds the group's ceiling by 1.9 million barrels a day, or about the same as produced by Nigeria or Angola, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Given our line of business, we receive quite a number of emails asking for our picks on energy and oil stocks. While we don't offer stock tips, I might suggest a resource for those of you who are looking for some additional insight and assistance. We have no paid relationship or affiliation with Pennystocks.com but Peter Leeds seems to be on a roll at the moment based on the charts and numbers I have seen lately so if you have some extra cash to put to work, you may want to visit his site so see what they are doing over there. www.pennystocks.com

In the meantime, As more details seep out about the European Union crisis meetings last April regarding Greece and the future of the euro, the key role of European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet in hammering out the compromises to stabilize the situation has become clearer. It also has made the picking of his successor that much harder. Trichet, whose term expires next year, has always been the ultimate fixer. He cut his first policy teeth in the 1980s as director of the French Treasury and head of the Paris Club, where he steered government debtors through the Latin American debt crisis of that period.

But he also put on central bank gravitas as head of the Banque de France and gained sufficient credibility to be acceptable to the Germans and other conservative northern Europeans as the second president of the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank. Trichet's eight-year term is due to expire in November 2011, and the jockeying for his succession is already well under way. For more insightful analysis on ECB moves, I encourage you to read further below where my colleague, Darrell Delamaide, has offered his insights as to who the players on the board are for the next president of the ECB.

Read more great post from Michael Bagley at Global Intelligence Report.Com


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Using Calendar Spreads to Play a Short Term Top in Gold

From guest analyst J.W. Jones, an independent options trader using multiple forms of analysis to guide his option trading strategies. So far he's as on point as we've ever seen!

Recent price action in stocks and commodities reinforces the “don’t fight the Fed” mantra. What would our central bank be doing if it were not devaluing our currency, attempting to create inflation, and openly manipulating financial markets through a series of supposedly calculated open-market operations? I do not have any market prophecies; my crystal ball is on permanent vacation. The only certainty that presents itself is that the market pundits, the academics, and the analysts do not know exactly what is going to happen in the future.

We are in uncharted territory regarding government manipulation. We watch as our federal government actively and openly manipulates financial data in an attempt to boost asset prices with the hope that if Americans feel richer they will spend money more freely. What is going to be the catalyst to drive growth when the federal government and the Federal Reserve run out of manipulations?

By now the secret is out, the expected weakening of the U.S. dollar has propelled commodities and stocks higher in short order. The easy trade has likely passed and there are a few warning signs that are being largely ignored by the bullish masses. Business insiders are selling heavily while few are accumulating positions. The banks have not broken out and were under pressure for most of the trading day during Wednesday’s big advance. If the banks do not rally with the broad market, caution is warranted. We are approaching an uncertain period of time regarding earnings and the upcoming elections and we all know that financial markets hate uncertainty.

Additionally, the U.S. dollar is at key support and should that support level fail, stocks and commodities could continue their ascent in rapid fashion. If the level holds, the U.S. dollar could have a relief rally to work off the oversold condition, however a bounce will likely be short lived and the dollar will test and likely fail at that level. The chart below is the weekly price chart of the U.S. Dollar Index......Read the entire article.




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Crude Oil Daily Technical Outlook For Tuesday Morning Oct. 19th

Crude oil was slightly lower overnight as it extends the trading range of the past two weeks. Stochastics and the RSI are turning bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term.

Closes below the 20 day moving average crossing at 81.24 would confirm that a short term top has been posted. If December renews the rally off August's low, the 75% retracement level of May's decline crossing at 88.07 is the next upside target.

First resistance is the reaction high crossing at 85.08.
Second resistance is the 75% retracement level of May's decline crossing at 88.07.

Crude oil pivot point for Tuesday morning is 82.24

First support is the 20 day moving average crossing at 81.24.
Second support is the reaction low crossing at 75.10.


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