commodities

Australian property market is seeing transaction volume fall. Preliminary Melbourne sales data for 2012 from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria says that 69,000 home sales were registered last year. While that is a fall of only 3,000…

According to the Financial Times, the Australian mining group Fortescue has moved into expansion mode on the back of robust iron-ore prices that are now at an eight-month high. The reason for the rebound is the reflation efforts of the…

The top two stories in today's links are on shale oil and the fiscal cliff. I will concentrate on the shale oil issue and say a few parting words about the fiscal cliff. We have three articles on shale oil here and I think the lead article…

This is a good interview with Hugh Hendry, who I always enjoy. It runs twenty minutes. Hugh Hendry, of Eclectica Asset Management, takes the long view on investing at The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering on October 25th 2012. He was…

By Win Thin Recent developments in Iran are worth discussing.  We feel that with Middle Eastern political risk on the rise lately, Iran is more likely to have the largest impact on global markets, while escalating tensions between Syria…

I spoke on the panel of a conference that backed into a keynote address by Dennis Gartman. I thought he had a lot of interesting things to say, a lot of which I agreed with. The basic theme of his talk - and this was an investing in…

By Frederick J. Sheehan Editor's Note: Edward Harrison will be writing about the logic others feel support he other side of this trade based on views that Deniis Gartman espoused at an investment conference earlier today.  Frederick J.…

By Michael Pettis For the past two years, as regular readers know, I have been bearish on hard commodities. Prices may have dropped substantially from their peaks during this time, but I don’t think the bear market is over. I think we…

Editor's note: the price plateaus mentioned in this article are all in nominal terms. When using inflation-adjusted prices, prices have still risen dramatically, though less dramatically. By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist…

By Sober Look Economists continue to insist that there is no connection between Fed's monetary expansion and increases in commodity prices, particularly agricultural products globally (discussed here). Here is a typical comment:  If it is…