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Not so long ago, only few people would have been able to comment on commodities or the commodities markets. But since early 2007 this has changed. The media has been commenting on the increasing prices of metals and oil as a result of the boom of 2003 – 2007. The interest for commodities began to rise with these industrial products, but with the huge leap of some of the agricultural commodities in 2007, the media began to focus on agricultural commodities. Today, everyone is talking about agricultural commodities like they talked about tech companies in the late 90’s.

We apologise to our readers that we’ve not been publishing any new analysis the last few days, even though the commodity markets have been showing many interesting developments.

We are now in the process of changing the website and adding more valued content. In the next few days we'll be informing you about the process and the changes that will occur.

We believe that by going through these changes, we'll be able to provide you with a much better service. A service that we believe the commodity trading community is missing.

I’m not going to put any coating on the index, it’s been quite a depressive start for the year 2008, when it comes to the S&P 500. The index managed to stay in a sideways trending pattern most of 2007, only to crash at the beginning of 2008. Of course there were some dips in 2007, but the index always managed to pick up some steam and lift into “safer” territory. But now it looks like the end, or that’s what we’re seeing on TV and in the news. The Feds had to step in and cut the rates in what looked more like a panic reaction than a calculated move of a long term plan.

The sugar has gone mad, or so they say. One recommendation following the 17. of January run was “Buyer beware: there are no limits on price movements on the #11 world sugar contract. We suggest longs take the money and run. One veteran trader we spoke with said that he had never seen anything like this situation before.” So what was it he’d never seen before, the run in the March contract setting a low of 12.10 cents and a high of 12.65 or 0.55 cents in the pit trade? Or was it the low of 11.74 cents to 13.09 or 1.39 cents in the electronic trade?

When looking at the softs, or exotics, it can’t be said that they’ve had a good year when looking at 2007. For the most parts, 2007 has been steady to downward for the group in general, contrary to the other agricultural products. While grains rally to new heights, the softs just warm the benches, waiting for the coach to call them out to the field. The fundamental attitude has been, for some time now, that there is little in store for the softs, but lately there have been some changes.

It can not be said that the meats have been doing anything marvellous in 2007, as none of the products have been able to make any significant advance in their price. High prices in the grains could change that, with higher feeding cost. If breeders can’t break even due to feed cost, a cut in production can be expected. Usually meats react to higher feed prices some time after the increase of feed prices, as change in breeding takes time to materialise. The year 2008 could see some increases in the price of meat products.

The agricultural commodities market is the oldest and most versatile of the commodities futures markets. 2007 saw a huge price move to the upside in some of the agricultural groups, while others have been more bearish in their price movement. Due to the diversity of the agricultural commodities, we will be looking at them based on the traditional grouping of grains, meats and softs or exotics.

The energy markets have got a lot of the focus that commodities got last year. The emerging commodity interest has been bombarded with a bullish energy market, especially crude oil, the favourite of all bulls. The present world situation is such that a change in the energy market, from a bull to a bear, is unlikely. The only bearish moments could be some temporary corrections.