Crude Prices Firm, But Gold Plunges

Today, several commodities are plunging in price, but particularly gold. Yesterday, gold reached a new all-time high price of $995.30/oz on the April. Gold fell nearly $30/oz. on Tuesday, after setting another all-time high price. This is a sign that bullish momentum is burning itself out.

This also appears to signal an end to the strong commodity prices surge since the first of this year. However, energy prices appear to be holding fairly firm. They are the only commodities that I am maintaining my positions on the daily charts. This seems a little surprising given that the US Dollar continues to explore lower price levels.

Deutsche Bank -- New Gold ETNs

This may spell perfect timing for Deutsche Bank. They just rolled out three new ETNs last week. Two of them are designed to short gold (one short, the other ultra short), and the third one is designed to benefit from being long (ultra long) in gold. Even the long ETN is somewhat unique and offers significant advantages to existing gold ETFs. I won't repeat here what I wrote about in my other blog. Here is the write-up on my ETF blog:

3 New, Unique Gold ETNs

Commodities Broadly Higher, Primer on Commodity Indexes

Commodities in general are broadly higher today. I have been reading over the weekend about the various different indexes used in creating different commodity indexes. Here is a very good primer on the various different ways that ETF companies calculate and manage the commodities in their indexes. It is published by Deutsche Bank in conjunction with the Proshares ETF family, which it sponsors. Obviously, any ETF provider is going to favor its own methodologies of selecting and managing commodities. In light of this bias, it makes sense for any investor to carefully study the available published material and weight that bias against the available data. However, after reading DB's primer (not light reading, but interesting and educational nonetheless), I admit a bias for the DB/Proshares products myself. They are probably the most liquid of all commodities ETFs, consistently maintain the tightest spreads, and make a very strong case for their methodology being the best for investors. See what you think after reading their brochure regarding the many different commodity indexes. I have also included two links to other index-related materials.

Deutsche Bank Guide to Commodity Indexes

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