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Profit−taking Seen After Strong Rallies in Oil and Gold

Fri, Nov 6 2009, 03:54 GMT
by Oil N' Gold Team

Oil N' Gold

Crude oil retreated for the first time in 4 days amid profit-taking. The benchmark contract slid -1% to close at 79.62. Others in the energy complex also slid with RBOB gasoline losing -1.2% and heating dropping -1.5%.

Natural gas storage rose +29 bcf to 3788 bcf in the week ended October 30. Gas initially soared as the increase in inventory was smaller than consensus. Encouraging jobless claims and productivity data also helped boost price higher. However, price pared gains later as the market anticipated that builds will continue in coming weeks.

Investors also took profits from gold which rallied sharply in recent days. The benchmark contract slipped -0.2% to 1089.3. The pullback does not indicate the end of the uptrend. Rather, the yellow metal should continue making new highs after consolidation.

Unlike the greenback, gold is of limited supply and cannot be 'created' indefinitely. This is one of the reasons that central banks are diversifying their dollar reserve into gold. There have recently been reports showing production decline in gold mine. Iamgold, a miner in North America and Africa, reported -4% yoy decline in gold production in the quarter ended September 30.

Both the ECB and BOE left their policy rate unchanged but the BOE expanded the size of the asset purchase program by 25B pound to 200 pound. However, this is probably the last move that policymakers made on stimulus measures as they appeared to be more optimistic about the economic outlook.

Although both euro and pound surged against the dollar immediately after the announcements, the rises were short-lived as both EURUSD and GBPUSD ended the day flat.

Today's focus is US employment report. The market expected non-farm payrolls to drop -175K in October, a significantly lower figure when compared with -263K in September, -304K in July and -463K in June. The reduction in payrolls probably lifted unemployment rate to 9.9%, up +0.1% from September.

Published on  Fri, Nov 6 2009, 03:54 GMT