So far, despite the selloff in equities and conversely the rampaging in the bond market, crude oil has been rather tranquil, fighting the good fight rather than plummeting immediately to $80. But, with the U.S. Dollar breaking out here, how long can that resiliency last?
Similarly, for what they are, commodities are behaving almost lethargically today. Being down 3-4% and being led by the throes-of-death action in copper and gasoline, that statement may not make much sense to you, but bear with me.
The action in commodities has been led by the weakness in the dollar. We all know that. Earlier in the year, I warned that a storm was brewing in our affairs which could lead to the first major rebound in the dollar since before the recession. Well that storm has arrived, lightning and hail galore.
We have two major conditions which are sure to aid our currency in its move higher. The first is permeating weakness in foreign countries. The second is a deadlocked Congress and wary Federal Reserve that will make it highly unlikely that the outstanding currency be further increased.
So our dollar is complacent while the world burns. It is a fairly simple recipe for a stronger currency.
Thus, we may well be entering a period of prolonged dollar strength. Yet commodities are only selling off a few percent today? What does this do to the trading methods of people long in the teeth with speculative contracts for delivery of materials months from now?
What happens to you if, holding futures for copper and steel and oil and corn, you suddenly find yourself in an environment where the euro and dollar go to par?
You get slaughtered, that’s what happens to you.
The second major problem is an issue of delivery. In the real world, if you’re a major player and have contracts for 1,000 barrels of oil, you don’t necessarily just sell those off and take profits. If you can’t sell them off, well then you’d better have a storage facility that can hold 1,000 more barrels of oil.
But those facilities cost money, and most major financial players right now are feeling the heat. Sure there are guys like in the oil industry who have the resources to just sit oil out at sea and wait patiently.
But now imagine you’re someone like Goldman Sachs, who has expanded your storage facilities aggressively in recent years to really game the commodity market by holding surplus goods and waiting to get top dollar pricing, and suddenly you’re hit by the double whammy: a period of stronger dollar activity and major lawsuits from the federal government for your involvement in the last downturn.
And oh yeah, thanks to historically low yields on government debt, your secured cash flow is virtually nil and you’re already hurting for money.
Well look who’s in danger of losing that fancy new facility, or having to totally idle it and pray to God that a turnaround happens in a timely manner and they’re not just throwing money in storage costs and depreciation of goods into a hole for the next five years.
You see, up until now, the commodity folks have been working to figure out what the world will look like with no growth. But now they have to figure out what the world could look like with no growth and depreciation.
As this move in the dollar endures, expect the biggest players to start dropping left and right. I fully anticipate that the commodity space turns over in a big way if the dollar makes a big enough push; we’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of a 5-10% run.
In such an event, commodities everywhere will bleed out leading the market lower.
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Totally agree….nice insight.
only thing left are agricultural plays.corn, sugar, wheat, lumber, etc. maybe goldman and jp morgan can both get out of “hoarding” oil and aluminum,this should be fun to watch,like melting the wicked witch of the west with a pail of water.
Agriculture might continue to hold up, there’s a lot of crop yield/quality/weather/logistic/granary issues at play there.
Although at first glance there’s the dollar inverse relationship, at the end of the day hunger trumps reasoning. I’d guess if they do sell off, it will be much more controlled, since grain stores are at record lows and demand is way outpacing supply still.
And agricultural commodities strength may lend itself to extra weakness in less necessary good further down the chain, and so on.
i’m tempted to put on a wiz khalifa trade
BLACK N YELLOW, BLACK N YELLOW
Short ool, long gewld
What you think?
I don’t know I’m too bias at this point.
I’ve been short oil for so long, I can’t see myself initiating a position here, and I don’t like the idea of buying gold this late after the short dollar trade.
But if we keep breaking down, it could prove very profitable.
metals and manja chivo. i’d say atk even though bullets are in big demand but the stock began it’s decent when o’bummer got in.
WAT?
thanks Cain.
Do you expect gold to get killed with other commods based on the need to liquidate?
been waitng for that EUR/USD parity since last year. Got my head handed to me last year when I leaned into an already large EUR short at 1.20 expecting 1.00.
JCT and the gang bought a year.
No idea with gold. It’s totally up in the air.
One of the key days was August 19th and on that day the Dow was down something like 500 or 600 points and the HUI gold index was up 4%. When you can outperform an index by 800 basis points in one day, it’s telling you that things have changed.
We all recall that in the last serious market selloff in 2008, the gold stocks got hammered. This time when the markets are weak, typically the gold stocks and gold have done well. So there have been a lot of things that have changed in the market just recently, that are telling us the market is looking at gold very, very differently than it has in the last ten years….
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/9/9_Eric_Sprott_-_From_Here_Silver_is_a_30_Bagger_to_$1,200.html
Excellent article. I’ve seen $8 Bbl oil and at that point Geophysicists are out of a job, rig contruction is halted and the hulks lay rusting, folks walk out of their mortgages, etc. And just as before, this condition can be directly attributed to a lack of strong leadership and moral values.
“The second is a deadlocked Congress and wary Federal Reserve that will make it highly unlikely that the outstanding currency be further increased.”
How on earth is a deadlocked congress good for the $?
The Fed will be QE3ing by another name within weeks.
A deadlocked Congress is a Congress that isn’t deficit spending.
At this stage in the game, the dollar is just a metric. Nobody actually believes that nonsense about “full faith and credit of the United States Government.”
More government spending = weaker dollar. Static government = safe haven.
Start a Bewq Gold Rush, Can’t this Gov’t build some awesome infrustructure, like gold mines..?
open golden minds !
YOURS…
Cain,
Excellent post. Your analysis really correlates with the one below, it seems to me:
http://macronomy.blogspot.com/2011/08/markets-update-credit-terminal-velocity.html