China is the world’s largest net importer of crude oil, and in recent years, China’s crude oil imports have increasingly come from countries outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). As the EIA reports in a recent blog post, while OPEC countries still made up most (57%) of China’s 7.6 million barrels per day […]

A worried tone at the open of the trading week proved fleeting as Wall Street returned online after the Easter holiday. Gold prices reversed from intraday gains as recovering sentiment weighed against Treasury bonds and bid up yields, boosting the US Dollar along the way. Not surprisingly, this undermined support for non-interest-bearing and anti-fiat assets. Tellingly, financials led US […]

With the break-out over the prior week’s high, we now have structures in gold and silver off the March lows which can be considered strongly impulsive.  And, as I have noted many times in the past, if there is a reasonable bullish interpretation to be seen in the metals complex, I will certainly be adopting […]

Many analysts have been so excited that gold broke to new highs, above $1,262, in late February. I was excited as well, but for a different reason. I’d forecast that gold could bounce back just above the July 2016 highs of $1,373, to around $1,400 or $1,450. And ANY bounce, no matter how high it […]

Retail sales growth in February 2017 was going to be low by virtue of its comparison to February 2016 and the extra day in that month. The Census Bureau’s autoregressive models are supposed to normalize just these kinds of calendar irregularities so that we can make something close to apples to apples comparisons. The seasonally-adjusted […]