February 2010

Understanding Commodities Risk – out in print early March 2010 The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behaviour and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete. Interesting enough while commodities…Read more

The best piece of news that I saw this morning. While it will probably take two decades for this dream to come true, there is at least “a liquid helium cooled design” out there that will run on nuclear waste. While the world may run out of oil, it is not going to run out…Read more

Events to watch out for this week that will have an impact on pricing and trading behavior for Oil, Euro and possibly Gold. Federal Reserve Chairman testimony begins tomorrow and irrespective of what he says will move currency (and by definition) oil markets. API and EIA crude, oil and distillates inventories numbers will also come…Read more

Euro USD The Euro rose 0.2% to $1.3633, from a nine month low of $1.3444 on Monday.     Closing rate against the US$ on Monday $ 1.3626. Monday’s bottom at $1.3575.   Oil Crude oil rose 66 cents to $80.47 a barrel, before falling back to just above $80. Oil fell from six-week highs to trade…Read more

Understanding Commodities Risk The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behaviour and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete. Interesting enough while commodities markets are older than time, at the…Read more

The US economy is picking steam, the Chinese economy is heating up enough for the central bank to step in and signal the market that they are still in control, the Eurozone is in trouble, Australia is booming and Oil is hovering around 80 dollars a barrel this weekend. Does this mean that we will…Read more

Here what we covered on Saturday at the Treasury Risk crash course at the Karachi Marriot (thank you Agnes for the notes). The one day Treasury Risk workshop in Dubai is now locked in on the 18th of March 2010 at the Dusit Thani in Dubai. You can download the nomination form here for the…Read more

The Fed announces the much awaited and anticipated policy rate hike and the dollar jumps. This is the game changer we had all been waiting for. Given it is Friday, there is going to be a lot of action today in the market in Euro, Oil and Gold. Atleast two if not more of the…Read more

API numbers are in lower than expected, but the real news is not that crude inventories are down and refined stocks are higher by a less than expected amount. The real news is here: “Crude inventories in the world’s biggest oil consumer fell 63,000 barrels. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected them to rise by…Read more

Both API and EIA are scheduled to report petrochemical inventory levels today at 4:30 pm and tomorrow morning. A larger than expected rise is being talked about. With the rally in oil sputtering out this morning, a stronger dollar and the weekend approaching crude prices could just as easily head south. The other interesting read…Read more