The Metals have been having some good time the last few years. The precious metals have continued the advance, but the none precious metals have not been so lucky. We believe that there are many profitable opportunities in the metals, mostly the precious metals, even though a short term trading in the none precious metals could turn out to be profitable.

At the beginning of the new year, we will be going over the markets and looking at the possibilities. We will be publishing analysis about the metals, energy and agricultural markets the next few days, hoping to give our readers an overview for the next year.

In general, we believe that the markets will continue their bullish sentiments, with occasional correctional moves to the downside. Some markets will be very bullish and others only bullish, with some markets taking a dip. But what ever will be the trend for each market, be believe the opportunities to be abundant.

We’ve been following the December futures contract of the S&P 500 index for some time now and frankly the index has been rather insecure. Though it has offered some profitable opportunities for swing traders, a conventional bull or bear, has not been able to make a lot of profit from the long term perspective. The market has shown to be rather insecure when it comes to directions for the S&P 500 index.

The January Crude Oil contract has now ended its life and the February contract taken over. The contract did not manage to break the USD 100 mark and went into correction mode, a possibility we foresaw in November. Now that the February contract has taken over, one wonders what will be its first task. Will it try to take out the USD 100 mark or will it continue in a sideways movement? When looking at the chart, an interesting formation is taking place, in the form of a head and shoulders formation, a sign of a trend reversal or at least a correction.

Cotton has had a hard time the last years, competing with the synthetic materials. Now it seems that cotton is back, or at least having a go at it. Since 1983, cotton has been trying, on several occasions, to break through a barrier that had formed on the monthly chart from about 80 to 95 cents. In 1995 it managed to break through and reach around 117 cents, only to drop down to about 28 cents in 2001.

On November 13, we declared that the Oil was bound for a pullback, a bit novice idea amongst the aggressive talk of Oil above 100. From that day, the price has been lower and higher, but yesterday the price made a new low. On a time scale, it hasn’t been lower since October 25. Even though the OPEC declared that it would not increase production, the prices didn’t manage to move upward on that news. Speculation about adequate supplies being said to be the reason.

The Soy family has been showing an incredible run the last few months and record prices are being seen in all three of them. Even though both Soy beans and Soy meal, have been showing huge increases, the Soy oil is the only one of them that has surpassed highest price since 1983. When we look at the monthly chart, only one month since September 2006, has closed lower than the open.

Gold got our attention at the end of September, when we expected it to break out of a resistance and reach 800 cents early 2008 or even earlier, as seen here. The goal was hit quite early as the December contract reached 800 on October 31. reaching 800.8 cents during the day.

The last few months, oil prices have been like a car driving on a one-way street. They’ve just been getting higher and higher. The market seems to be fully accepting the fact that oil will reach USD 100, a target that has been discussed for months. The continuing of the rally has since, been projected to new highs with targets set for USD 120 or even 150. Oil could continue to new highs and why not reach these new targets. The if’s don’t seem to be the question, but the when’s.

In June 2005, the sugar prices broke out of a resistance level that had formed on the monthly chart. The breakout level was around the 9.40 cents level, but the run that continued came close to the 20 cents mark in February 2006, or around USD 11,000 per contract. The increasing demand for Ethanol and cuts in European sugar beat production, was the said reason for this run. Funds participation is a more likely reason, since the price of sugar dropped to around 9.20 cents.