Trade Ideas

Euro outlook summary – China review, Euro at 1.2170 in Tokyo, next stop 1.18

Most analysts are now talking about 1.18 as the next new low for Euro. There were rumors of Chinese officials reviewing their Euro-zone debt holdings, more concerns about Spain and Italy and the extent, depth and length of a slowdown in Europe on account of austerity measures. The fall in Euro last night in New…Read more

Crude Oil price outlook – Crude oil crosses $71.45 at 2pm Eastern time, NYMEX higher by 3.9%

Interesting whiplash action today compared to yesterday as crude rises by almost 4% despite an EIA reported rise in crude inventories and a drop in gasoline stocks, an improvement in durable goods orders and the first decline in 10 weeks at the inventory number in Cushing, OK where deliveries for the WTI crude oil contract…Read more

Calculating Value at Risk – Caveats, qualifications, issues

Qualifications to using and Limitations of the Value at Risk (VaR) Metric VaR is dependent on historical data and therefore may never fully capture severe shocks that exceed recent or historical norms. Also if the time period used in the calculation is a relatively stable one then the computed VaR will tend to understate the…Read more

Crude Oil Price outlook – Detecting mispricing in precious metals and crude oil using trailing correlations

I asked Agnes, our resident actuarial genius to run some more numbers on the crude oil and commodities correlation series that we had been playing with. Here is what she turned in today before heading home. If you have just arrived, the concept is simple. In times of stress correlations break down. Sometime they return…Read more

Crude Oil price outlook – Is oil fairly priced now or still expensive. Or what can a barrel of oil buy – part ii

A few posts ago we ran a simple basic analysis looking at the relative value of oil with respect to a number of other core commodities. We revisit that post again with more recent and updated data as well as add a table that allows for a quick relative comparison of commodity prices against crude…Read more

Euro and Oil outlook – Trailing correlation between crude oil prices and Euro-USD exchange rates

And here they are. The two graphs that I had promised in my earlier post on trailing correlations on the Euro-USD exchange rate and crude oil prices. The first with the Euro-USD exchange rate. The second with oil prices. While the first does not really suggest a relationship, the second raises an interesting point. This…Read more