Posts by "qiman"

Hedge funds boosted their holdings of crude oil futures and options last week to the highest level in 13 weeks. Net-long positions on crude oil rose by 25,965 contracts to 135,833 in the week ended Aug. 3, according to the Commitments of Traders report Aug. 6 by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

There was another increase in non-commercial long positions, so money continues to flow into the oil markets and a lot of the commodity markets, said Tom Bentz, a senior energy analyst at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures Inc. in New York. That tends to keep prices above what fundamental reality dictates.

Crude oils monthlong rally may propel prices to a 20-month intraday high of $88.17 a barrel by the end of September, according to technical analysis by Blake Robben, a strategist at Lind-Waldock in Chicago.

The October contract, which becomes the front month Aug. 23, has been trading in an uptrend, a pattern of higher peaks and higher valleys, since touching a low of $72.15 on July 6, Robben said. A line drawn from the July 6 low to the July 28 low of $76.33 shows support at $78.35 as of today, Robben said. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-09/oil-rises-first-time-in-four-days-as-equities-fuel-optimism-over-recovery.html

Have any of you owned some of the 1,000 franc swiss notes? I am intrigued by the possibility of being able to carry so much financial punch with so few bills. And if so, have you had any difficulty exchanging them in your travels?

I think it could break that line if the US tanks tomorrow on the jobs report, the Aussie can periodically be a proxy for the US market, and at those times seems influenced by it even beyond commodities like wheat, copper, gold. There are days it tracks the US amazingly well, we will see how tomorrow unfolds.

Yes, the various aforementioned factors are indeed influencing the price of oil--somewhat. I study these factors based on my academic training. But quite often I read articles which purport to expalin why something went up, while I had been watching the charts, and most important was that at one critical point the resistance was broken just enough, and then longs piled on while shorts were forced to quickly cover their positions. Technical factors alone can account for quite a bit of price movement, traders' anxieties in the face of rising prices and simple momentum take over for days or even weeks sometimes, regardless of fundamentals or logical reasons or explanations. There are many complex situations where the whys will never really be understood, humans are sometimes very illogical in their behavior, but astute traders will simply take advantage of the movement.

Like I thought could very well happen, CL has jumped considerably this morning. If it goes much higher then it could end up creating a short squeeze, and push into levels closer to what it saw in june, a critical juncture now.