SuperFutures is proud to announce the arrival of Mike Daly to lead our Marketing and Gold trading divisions. Mike is a former Goldman Sachs and J.Aron Gold Broker and a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Gold Committee. In addition Mike has been a member and active broker and Trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,Chicago board of Trade, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Mike brings 25 years of knowledge and experience to SuperFutures.

Gold Bears Now Eye Longer-Term Support at $640.00

December Comex gold futures on Thursday morning hit a fresh 14-month low of $695.20. Serious near-term technical damage has been inflicted in the precious yellow metal recently, as price action in just over two weeks' time has seen prices fall below major psychological support levels of $900.00, $800.00 and $700.00 an ounce. Price action the past several weeks has also seen a bearish triple top reversal pattern form on the daily bar chart for December gold futures.

Commodities as a whole have been trending lower in the face of the rising Dollar. We believe this "trend" is temporary at best. We all know that in the long run supply and demand determines price of just about anything of value on this planet. Well the US government in its "wisdom" has in the last few weeks alone agreed to print over 1 Trillion new Dollars to fund all of these bailouts. While the Dollar may be enjoying some strength we continue to see it as a sucker rally. Unless supply and demand no longer matter, which would be a first since the Earth started revolving around the Sun, so call me krazy but this idea that all of these bailouts are good for the Dollar is laughable at best and an outright insult to intelligence at worst. So we remain longer term bulls of commodities and expect to see them begin to find support in the coming weeks.

Are we having fun yet?  Remember the days not so long ago when we were complaining that there was too much complacency in the markets?  Wow, how have things changed!  We have never seen the VIX at the levels seen lately and yes, we lived through the 1987 crash!  Today's markets are different from the previous markets in that we are instantaneous and global.  Today a news item hits all the markets at the same time causing a reaction in all markets.  In the past, news items were slowly spread around the globe and that slowed down the reaction to the news--Today, instant reaction.

December live cattle futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange last Friday notched a fresh contract low of $91.30. Price action Monday and Tuesday morning did see a short-covering bounce in a market that is still firmly in the hands of the bears, on a short-term technical basis. Live cattle futures remain in a 14-week-old downtrend on the daily bar chart, from the late June contract high of $115.25.

When asked what he would do if he was running the country, Krugman cited the move earlier today by the British government to acquire controlling stakes in two of the country's largest banks in exchange for a $64 billion capital infusion as an example of the bold measures needed to stem the crisis. His priorities would be;

"capital injection into the financial system, temporary guarantees on interfinancial institution lending to get the crisis under control, a large-scale fiscal stimulus program aiding state and local governments' infrastructure spending to get us out of this recession," Krugman said. "And then, after all that, universal health care."

Source: Princeton University

As the "Financial Blame Game" continues it is apparent to me the economy is not going to make a miracle turnaround overnight. It certainly took a long period of time to get in this present condition. I remember the days when it appeared all you needed to do to be qualified for a mortgage was to be able to "fog a mirror." I had friends who were making $50,000 per year and living in $500,000 homes, apparently living well above their means.

Well now that the "rescue package" has been signed into law, we will see how markets react to this package. We are already seeing sharp falls in international stock markets early this morning here in the states. Clearly the markets still lacks any sense of confidence and until we regain some reasonable level of confidence, we will trade as if the sky is falling.

The good news on the stock and bond market is; that the talking air-heads have stopped talking about finding a bottom in the market. This is the first symptom of an impending bounce in the wind. This bounce can take the market on a wild ride to the upside, but a ride that may not pan out for the bulls. At this time, we remain deeply mired in a downtrend.

The Baltic Exchange Dry Index, which measures the cost of dry bulk shipping, continued to drop. Although not as good a proxy for commodity indices as it once was, the Baltic Dry's fall is reckoned to reflect weakened demand for raw materials in China. The share prices of shipping lines in China and Japan are also sinking.

City of São Paulo sells carbon credits for €13.689 million

Mercuria Energy Trading, from Geneva, bought the lot at €19.20 per metric ton of carbon. The São Paulo Municipal Government received an equivalent of €13.689 million for the carbon credits (approximately BRL37 million), representing a premium of 35.21% in comparison to the minimum bid of €14.20 per ton. Ten institutions were authorized to take part in the auction - eight of them placing bids.

The United States Gasoline Fund LP (UGA) is an exchange traded security that is designed to track in percentage terms the movements of gasoline prices. UGA issues units that may be purchased and sold on the American Stock Exchange. This ETF is a new way for investors and hedgers to manage their exposure to energy.