Also appreciate your insight, Bobby, and the thought provoking questions you ask! More on commodities; Latin America downgraded, copper recovers from 4 1/2 year low, Rothchilds calls for ECB to require that central bank gold sales be conducted by auction:
FUND VIEW-Latin America hit by weak commodities
biz.yahoo.com
>>LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) - Old Mutual Asset Management is lowering its investment stance on Latin American equities to underweight from overweight because of concerns about the effects of the Asian crisis and falling commodities prices.
''We were big bulls but we reckon growth in the region will slow to three percent in 1998 from 5.4 percent in 1997,'' said Hilary Wakefield, emerging market portfolio manager for Old Mutual in London...
..He said that lower commodities prices, competitive pressure from Asia and global pricing pressure could constrain earnings in the region.
''As well weak commodities prices will knock fiscal accounts somewhat. We are concerned by deteriorating external accounts in Mexico and Argentina. This year may herald some currency weakness.''..
..Wakefield said he is encouraged by the broad improvement of corporate management practices in Latin America<<
FOCUS - Copper prices continue strong rally
biz.yahoo.com
>>LONDON, Mar 2 (Reuters) - World copper prices on Monday continued last week's strong rally as investors rushed to reduce their sales commitments...
..Traders said the strong advance in copper was a speculative, fund-based rally...but the main upward impetus came when the price broke through a chart point at $1,710.
Chartists said this signalled a turnround and, indeed, it immediately saw a wave of fund covering of sales made earlier in the year.
Fundamentally, the market is waiting to see if there are sizeable shipments of copper from Hamburg to China as has been talked recently.
But brokers Mcquarie said in a weekly report that the market was still in oversupply and that despite news last week of BHP Copper's production cutback of 68,000 tonnes a year, there is still too much capacity relative to likely demand.
''...further cuts will be needed to prevent the current rally in prices from being only temporary,'' the broker said.
Macquarie said that so far over 170,000 tonnes a year of copper production cuts have been enacted.<<
FOCUS-Copper prices score strong gains
biz.yahoo.com
>>LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) - A wave of investor buying took world copper prices sharply higher on Thursday but analysts were still not sure that recent gains were anything more than a correction to the overall downtrend.
On the London Metal Exchange (LME) the three months delivery price burst upto $1,818 a tonne, up more than $200, or 12 percent, on last week's 4-1/4 year low, its highest since mid-December...
..Just a week ago prices had drifted down to $1,616 on a general gloomy outlook for the metal prompted by a oversupply and the economic crisis in Southeast Asia...
..Scrap has been in very tight supply because merchants have been holding off selling supplies they bought when the market was higher... Until now $1,800 has been seen as the magic number which would trigger selling, but some UK scrap dealers said even at this level it was not worthwhile...
..But, overall copper still remains in a supply surplus and further closures are needed, said Wilson...
..At the conference in Australia, banking group N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd called on the new European Central Bank to require national European banks to sell any gold reserves by auction.
Goldman Sachs said at the conference that the appetite for gold among big U.S. hedge funds had been reduced by low inflationary expectations and uncertainty over future sales by central banks.<< |
