Daily FNArena News - Commodities

National Australia Bank’s monthly oil update suggests recent market tightness is likely to be an ongoing issue as supply upside is far from certain and demand is set to continue growing.

Someone has been selling at lot of gold at each price fix recently, but the figures just don’t add up. Will it continue?

There is a growing belief the oil price is inflated by investor inflows and could collapse at any moment. This is rubbish.

While coal prices have been reasonably stable this year the likelihood of increased supply has led to downward revisions in price forecasts for 2007.

As the Lebanon crisis settles down, and the US summer comes to an end, fundamentals look bearish for oil. But there’s still Iran.

The LME has been forced to act to prevent potentially major delivery defaults in the nickel market, such is the current shortage of the metal.

The WGC reports strong investment demand in the second quarter, while technical signals are strengthening and supply remains constrained.

Dennis Gartman has cut his gold exposure by half. Why would anyone who’s bullish on gold do such a thing?

Steel industry consultants MEPS estimates global steel production will increase 7.5% this year, the fifth year in a row where the increase has topped 5%.

While alumina demand from China is falling as its production increases, it continues to require significant imports of bauxite, which shapes as good news for companies in that market.