If today's (Monday, April 21) price action in commodities could be summarized in one news headline, it could read like this:
"Sugar, Corn, Soybeans, Orange Juice, Wheat, Coffee, Hogs, Copper Fall On A Variety of Concerns, Expectations and Speculations."
That's not an exaggeration. "Concerns," "expectations" and "speculations" were the three words present in most news report about the April 21 sell-off in commodities:
- Corn and Soybeans fell on expectations of the effects of "warmer, drier weather" (Bloomberg)
- Wheat and Rice fell on speculation about improving "crop conditions"
- Copper fell on concerns its prices are getting too high
- Coffee fell on concerns about "increasing output"
- Hogs fell on speculation "that purchases from packing plants will decline"
- And finally, Sugar fell on speculation that "a global surplus will be prolonged"
I don't know about you, but when I hear "commodities trading," I picture control, precision and objectivity: blinking screens with up-to-the-minute data, traders with phones jammed to their ears, and big bright electronic boards with flashing prices. "Concerns," "expectations" and "speculations" don't seem to fit; just replace those words with "fears, hunches and rumors" and you'll understand what I mean. After all, aren't financial markets supposed to be rational?
In theory, yes. And yet, what seems to move commodity prices is not reason – it's emotions.
Ralph Nelson Elliott figured that out eighty years ago. He even went one step further and proposed that financial markets (the stock market, in his case) were patterned. He described thirteen patterns (labeled "1,2,3,4,5" and "A,B,C") that ALL market action fits into. We still use them today; we call them "Elliott wave patterns."
What those patterns describe and predict are market players' collective emotions. So, rather than focusing on rumors and fears, you -- calmly and objectively -- focus on where you are in the current pattern, which allows you to predict where prices will go next.
Here is an example. Every Friday, Elliott Wave International's own Jeffrey Kennedy, the longtime editor of EWI's Daily Futures Junctures, publishes what he calls "The Weekly Wrap-Up" for his subscribers. In the Wrap-Up, he shows you two charts for each of the commodity markets his service covers: a short-term chart and a long term one; about 40 charts total.
Well, take a look at these four charts from the April 18 Daily Futures Junctures Weekly Wrap-Up (some of the labels have been erased for this publication) and look at the direction where the arrows are pointing:
Will Elliott wave analysis always be this correct and precise? Of course not. But what would you rather work with: "concerns," "expectations" and "speculations" -- or thirteen impartial, measurable and objective patterns?
(Editor's note: If you've been looking for a long-term commodity markets' forecast, don't miss the report on how "Elliott Waves Regulate Commodity Prices and Expressions of Environmentalism" inside the April issue of EWI's Elliott Wave Theorist. You get this report and Jeffrey Kennedy's Daily Futures Junctures via a risk-free subscription to EWI's Futures Junctures Service.)