Author: Dian Chu

By Andrew Butter This is a chart of oil prices (Nominal-Brent-30 Day Moving Average) superimposed on the FAO Food Price Index (Nominal) as of April 2011. Three points: Given that energy (mainly oil) accounts for 30% of the cost...

By Prieur du Plessis Despite the markets showing their dismay when the manufacturing PMIs for May were published, the pace of expansion in the global economy has actually picked up! The JPMorgan Global Composite PMI, which takes...

By Dr. Mark J. Perry (Graph added by EconMatters to complement Dr. Perry’s article.) From the Idaho Statesman in December 2010: “A Chinese national company is interested in developing a 10,000- to...

By Andrew Butter If you want to know the real “culprits”, have a look at this chart: The blue line is US Employment in Manufacturing (from the St Louis Fed), the purple line is the cumulative amount of money that...

By EconMatters After infecting the stock market last May and hit the precious metals market, silver in particular, primarily due to raised margin requirement, flash crash has now taken a bite of the natural gas market as well....

By Ilene From Phil Davis: Speculators at the NYMEX are doing it again and have NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of accepting delivery of even 1/10th of the 367M barrels they had as open contracts last...

By Bob van der Valk As of Friday June 10, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) of London Brent crude oil price went up $2.38 at $119.06, while July West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil gained $1.87 at...

By Ellen Brown  Countries everywhere are facing debt crises today, precipitated by the credit collapse of 2008. Public services are being slashed and public assets are being sold off in a futile attempt to balance budgets...

By Ramki Ramakrishnan Most traders in the commodity and energy markets watch technical levels very closely. Some say that prices follow technicals because traders watch the technical levels. Others (especially those who practice...